Hollywood Idiots
John Cusack Calls for ‘Satanic Death’ of Fox News, GOP Leaders
Once again we see the hypocrisy of the left. They say the Tea Partiers are hateful and dangerous, but have nothing to back up their claim. However, we are constanatly hearing liberals say horrible things like this and the MSM doesn’t bat an eye.
John Cusack Calls for ‘Satanic Death’ of Fox News, GOP Leaders
FoxNews.com
By Jo Piazza
Published August 31, 2010
Excerpt:
Actor John Cusack went on a caustic Twitter rampage Sunday evening, attacking former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Fox News.
“I AM FOR A SATANIC DEATH CULT CENTER AT FOX NEWS HQ AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICES ORDICK ARMEYAND NEWT GINGRICH-and all the GOP WELFARE FREAKS,” Cusack tweeted.
Cusack has long been outspoken about politics. He supported Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election and has contributed to The Huffington Post, but this is the first known time he has stooped to the level of making threats.
And while the U.S. Constitution protects Cusack’s right to speak his mind, some critics say he should be more careful about what he says, since he has more than 200,000 Twitter followers.
“His provocative tweets could easily incite a rabid fan to commit violent acts against Fox News Headquarters and others he names,” said Dr. Carole Lieberman, a Beverly Hills-based psychiatrist and author of “Coping With Terrorism: Dreams Interrupted.”
“Fans could not only be influenced because of their devotion to Cusack, the man, but also because of their love for one of the characters he plays,” she told Fox411.
Cooper Lawrence, the author of “Cult of Celebrity” told Fox 411: “The fear isn’t that a celebrity will influence someone to do something violent or out of character due to the sheer devotion to the celebrity, the fear is that someone who is already vulnerable, mentally disturbed, already considering something dangerous, may be encouraged to do so if it is advocated by their favorite star,”
Lawrence explained that while celebrities don’t make healthy people do things they wouldn’t normally do, they could impact someone who is on the fence or mentally unstable.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )The Top 20 Most Offensive Liberal Women
I couldn’t have made a better list myself…
The Liberal Heretic’s: The Top 20 Most Offensive Liberal Women
Since top 20 lists seem to be quite the cause du jour, the Heretics decided to do one of their very own – The Most Offensive Liberal Women. We had a distinguished panel of judges that included- US, and it wasn’t that difficult because these women so wonderfully embody everything that is ICK about liberalism. So without further ado, here they are:
1. Nancy Pelosi
Everyone’s favorite Liar of the House. I’m not sure where to even begin. Perhaps her wonderful statement that illegals are the only true Americans, or maybe her lies of having no advanced knowledge of the U.S.’s enhanced interrogation techniques. No, I have it! Of course it has to be this one, “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.” Talk about your A-1 DOHHH moments. Btw Nancy, please lay off the botulism err botox, I heard it kills brain cells, and believe me you need all three. –Kerrie
2. Michelle Obama
Something tells me this first <cough> lady, wears the pants in the Obama family. Before she planted her behind in the White House, she had this gem to say on the campaign trail: “For the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” Is that so Mrs. Obama? So then winning two world wars, defeating communism, ending segregation, and landing on the moon were just expelling gas in the wind then? Guess that’s why you sat in a church whose pastor said “God damn America” for twenty years, eh? Please let us know when you think the country has been sufficiently destroyed enough for you to be proud. -Sharon
3. Jeanine Garafolo
While Janeane’s rabid two fans flock to her movies or stand up show, we’re subjected to not only her ignorance, but her blatant bitterness as well. Don’t blame me for eviscerating her, however, in her own words, “I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth.” But this isn’t why the wonderful Miss Janeane made this list, it’s for this resplendent proclamation, “Let’s be very honest about what this is about. This is not about bashing Democrats. It’s not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about. They don’t know their history at all. It’s about hating a black man in the White House. That is racism straight up. This is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks.” -Kerrie
4. Rosie O’Donnell
During the April 19, 1999, broadcast of her talk show, she stated, “You are not allowed to own a gun, and if you do own a gun, I think you should go to prison.”…”655,000 Iraqi civilians dead. Who are the terrorists?”…”And just one second, radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.”…I know I needn’t even bother to say another word. -Kerrie
5. Helen Thomas
Thomas, a once respected author and member of the White House Press Corp, has recently gone on an anti-jewish tirade or two. Like this gem: When Rabbi David Nesenoff asked if Thomas had any comments on the state of Israel. Thomas replied, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied, and it’s their land; it’s not German, it’s not Poland’s.” When asked where Jews should go, she replied: “they should go home” to “Poland, Germany, America and everywhere else.” It wasn’t the first time this Lebanese Trilpoli Rose went off her rocker. “The United States is not that helpless. It could have stopped the bombardment of Lebanon. We have that much control with the Israelis… we have gone for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine.” To all our relief, the old bat finally retired, at the age of 89. -Kerrie
6. Sonia Sotomayor
Newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, or otherwise known as the ‘wise Latina woman’, had this to say about her oppressive white contemporaries, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” I’m sorry Ms Sotomayor, but wasn’t Martin Luther King who said to judge a man not by the color of his skin, but on the content of his character? The lovely Soto also earned her racist Hispanic judicial activist credentials when she ruled against the New Haven firefighters in 2003, when they sued over reverse discrimination in the workplace. We all must remember though, liberalism dictates that racism is OK when white people are on the receiving end. Don’t think that’s fair? Too bad buddy, one of the justices sitting on the highest court in the land does. Oh and by the way her circuit court rulings have been overturned by the High Court a whopping 60% of the time. How’s that for a wise Latina woman? -Sharon
7. Sandra Bernhard
For lack of a better word, the first one that pops into my head when I hear this thing’s name is, Ewwwww. Alleged former lover of Madonna (oh Madge how could you, oh wait, because you’re amoral that’s right), Sandra Bernhard went on a racist hate-filled tirade against the left’s favorite chew toy, Sarah Palin. In her one woman bark-fest, she said she hoped Sarah Palin would get gang raped by some big black New Yorkers, along with calling her a turncoat b*tch, and a “whore”. Now granted if I had to go around life with a face like hers I might be pretty bitter too, but come on Sandy, you kind of let your racism show when you assigned race to Palin’s would-be attackers. That’s one good thing about the left; they are like clockwork with their hypocrisy. -Sharon
8. Bernadine Dohrn
If there was ever a woman who just needs to die immediately to cleanse the world, this is the one. In the 1960’s this crazy bitch was part of both the Revolutionary Youth Movement, a communist group that wanted to stage a war within the United States, and the Weather Underground. A fanatical follower of Charles Manson, she said of the Tate-LaBianca murders “Dig it! First they killed those pigs and then they put a fork in pig Tate’s belly. Wild!” She said of the LaBiancas (who were repeatedly stabbed): “Offing those rich pigs with their own forks and knives, and then eating a meal in the same room, far out! The Weathermen dig Charles Manson!” In greeting each other, delegates to the war council often spread their fingers to signify the fork. Since this is just a blurb, I can’t go much further. Another time, perhaps. -Kerrie
9. Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton on being part of that famous village, “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.” Look I have to hand it to the woman, she has had enough dirty rotten scandals to make Al Capone look like one of the Jonas Brothers. Don’t count Hill out just yet though, in grand Clinton fashion, she has placed herself in a perfect position, poised and ready to dump the Obama’s in the Potomac with some very nice cement shoes, I joke I joke, I kid I kid! -Sharon
10. Janet Reno
If you own guns and live in Texas you probably don’t want to get on the bad side of this incredible Reno Hulk. Supposedly El Reno and crew had word that the Branch Davidians were stock piling weapons, you know as all right wing zealot Christian inbred mutant freaks do in the backwoods of Texas (note sarcasm). So Reno and the FBI decided to lay the smack down on April 19, 1993. What resulted was one of the saddest days in American history, nearly 100 men, women and children died in the completely unfounded raid that included flash grenades and smoke grenades that ultimately blew up the compound. In characteristic liberal hubris Janet “Incredible Hulk” Reno held her head high after the incident, and made a quick amendment to the story- see the kids were being abused! Silly us, I am sure they were much better off dead right? -Sharon
11. Rachel Maddow
If you have ever had the misfortune of accidentally sitting on the remote and switching the channel to MSNBC (as I assume that’s how they get all 4 of their viewers), you may have seen this lovely specimen of androgeny and sarcasm. When she is not insinuating that Sarah Palin is a caribou barbie bimbo, she is calling the tea party movement racist and ignorant. I have had the rare honor of seeing [sic] her in person, and oddly enough she appeared to have a body guard who looked like her twin (note sarcasm). -Sharon
12. Shelley Berkley
Shelley Berkley: Ah one of my illustrious congresswomen. Let’s just look at some of her voting records:
Voted NO on restricting interstate transport of minors to get abortions. (Apr 2005)
Voted NO on making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime. (Feb 2004)
Voted NO on banning partial-birth abortion except to save mother’s life. (Oct 2003)
Voted NO on forbidding human cloning for reproduction & medical research. (Feb 2003)
YES on TARP, Health Care, all three stimulus packages, Bailouts
YES on Death Penatly Moratorium
Voted YES on more funding for Mexico to fight drugs. (Jun 2008)
Voted NO on military border patrols to battle drugs & terrorism. (Sep 2001)
Voted YES on investigating Bush impeachment for lying about Iraq.
But this is my favorite view of her, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO5u7D8Rnis. -Kerrie
13. Anita Dunn
Who smacks their lips like a camel, cites a murderous dictator as one of their favorite political philosophers, and was unceremoniously kicked to the curb after Glenn Beck exposed them? None other than former White House Communications Director Anita Dunn (emphasis on the former). Dunn also had this to say about the Fox New Network, “They’re widely viewed as a part of the Republican Party. Take [the GOP’s] talking points, put them on the air, take [the GOP’s] opposition research, put them on the air,” Yes I suppose Chairman Mao also had major beef with any opposition too, right Nita? Good night Mrs. Dunn wherever you are. -Sharon
14. Kathy Griffin
Kathy Griffin, where do I begin? Well this is a woman who became famous for not being talented or attractive enough to be famous, hence her life and subsequent self-effacing show, Life on the D List. Not only is she crass and just not funny, she has made a sport of making fun of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. In a recent stunt, she first courted Levi Johnston in Alaska (you know the meat-filled skull who ditched his baby to pursue showing off his naked gooball body), and in the same show brought him on stage and proceeded to infer Palin performed sex acts on John McCain. Tell me Kathy you’re still on the D list, has it ever worked for you? No need to project darling. -Sharon
15. Roseanne Barr
Roseanne Borisofsky Barr Pentland Arnold Thomas: Only one name is needed for this pig: Trainwreck. Let’s just take a peak at some of the ridiculous things that have poured out of this toilet’s mouth like diarrhea. “I have no more tolerance for any religion in any way, they are all obsolete and harmful.” “Marie Osmond’s poor gay son killed himself because he had been told how wrong and how sick he was every day of his life by his church and the people in it. Calling that ‘depression’ is a lie!” And to Jon Voight and Angelina Jolie, Voight “is a frightened little girl in a pink ballet tutu, who acts like Obama just wandered in from the rain forest with a bone thru his nose and a communist pamphlet in his loincloth.” But she couldn’t stop there, “Do you not know that the African daughter you hold in every picture had parents who suffered and died because of the Republican party’s worldwide economic assault on Africa over the last few decades since Reagan?” Would someone stuff something in its mouth to finally shut it up? Please? -Kerrie
16. Joy Behar
Known as the harpiest (not a word, but it should be, if only to describe her) of The View harpies, Joy Behar has made a name for herself as being one of the most obnoxious liberal women on daytime television. When she is not busy saying she doesn’t give a “Flying f*ck about Glenn Beck”, she is hell-bent on tearing her adorable and very conservative co-host, Elizabeth Hasselback a new one (or at least tries to). Give it up Joy, Elizabeth has already told you she will not sell you her youthful blood to drink when the moon is full and the witching hour is upon you. -Sharon
17. Shelia Jackson Lee
This Texas Rep should be voted out immediately. She travelled to Venezuela in 2007 to worship at the shrine of Hugo Chavez, saying, “We’ve made a serious mistake in not engaging with President Chavez,” the Democratic lawmaker said a few hours after returning from a three-day trip to Caracas. “I came to break the tension, to warm up a chilled relationship. Venezuela has many friends in this new Congress.” Indeed. She also called on the Bush Administration to lift the ban on arms sales to that nutty dictator. It would open the door to Lockheed Martin to sell Chavez parts for their aging fleet of F-16’s. But how odd, it seems one of her donors is GASP none other than Lockheed Martin. -Kerrie
18. Janet Napolitano
Do you remember those 7 years after September 11, 2001? Remember how we didn’t hear a peep out of anyone looking for Allah Akbar brownie points? Well it may have had something to do with not having this woman manning (perfect word btw) the Homeland Security front. When a Swedish man on an Amersterdam-Detroit flight thwarted a would-be suicide panty-bomber, Napolitano was quoted as saying, “the system worked.” Yet somehow he was able to smuggle explosive liquid onto the jet? When probed further about how the man got by security so easily Nappie had this to say, “We’re asking the same questions.” Can we just hurry up and hire the guy who bags my groceries to replace her? I mean really it would probably be a whole lot cheaper and I bet you he wouldn’t have a problem with calling terrorists, well, terrorists. -Sharon
19. Elena Kagan
As Obama’s newest pick for the Supreme Court, despite the fact she has never actually sat on the bench, her record, or lack thereof is raising more than a few brows. But it’s her tenure as dean of Harvard Law School, she kicked all military recruiters off campus. When the Solomon Amendment was passed in the 1990’s, requiring all federally funded colleges to allow recruiters on campus, Kagan sent a mass email to students, decrying the don’t ask, don’t tell policy, calling it “a profound wrong- a moral injustive of the first order.” Not happy with the results, using her private role as a professor, she filed a friend of the court brief with other professors challenging the Solomon Amendment. When federal appeals court struck it down, she immediately barred the military again. After the federal government told her Harvard would lose funding, amounting to more than $300 million a year, she backed down, and then reached out to the Student Veterans Association. Unfortunately for her, they didn’t take the notion of helping her discriminate too kindly, and told her to take a hike. In 2006, the Supreme Court upheld the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the Solomon Amendment, and Kagan was forced to allow the military onto campus. -Kerrie
20. Barbra Streisand
In 2002, Babs held a star-studded benefit concert for the endangered Democrats. Streisand charged that Republican control of the House had caused the following: “Poison in the water, salmonella in the food, carbon dioxide in the air and toxic waste in the ground.” Oh Barbara where are you now when the environment needs you most? Perhaps a benefit concert for the gulf coast might be apropos, perhaps one of the songs can be “Crystal water color memories, of when we didn’t have an inept egomaniac running the country.” By the way, your music sucks. -Sharon
LINK: http://www.theliberalheretic.com/blog/node/1119
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 9 so far )Woody Allen says President Obama Should be Granted Dictatorial Powers
What an idiot!!
Woody Allen says President Obama should be granted dictatorial powers (seriously)
Fox 411
Excerpt:
Woody Allen has a strange take on the democracy that allowed him to become rich and famous.
The “Scoop” director said it would be a cool idea for President Barack Obama to be dictator for for a few years.
Why?
So he could get things done without all the hassle of opposing views getting in the way.
In an interview published by Spanish language newspaper La Vanguardia (that we translated), Allen says “I am pleased with Obama. I think he’s brilliant. The Republican Party should get out of his way and stop trying to hurt him.”
But wait – there’s more!
The director said “it would be good…if he could be a dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly.”
Of course, Allen has a famously strange relationship with reality.
-SNIP-
LINK: http://entertainment.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/05/17/woody-allen-president-obama-dictator/
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )Idiot Alert: Tom Hanks says US Wanted to Annihilate the Japanese Because They Were “Different”
Idiot alert! When will these Hollywood idiots get a clue? What a stupid statement. Hey Tom, I believe the reason we fought the Japanese is because they BOMBED us and were trying to take over. I realize that y’all don’t know your history, but since that’s the case, then just keep your pie-holes shut!
Tom Hanks: US Wanted to Annihilate the Japanese Because They Were ”Different”
2010 March 10
by Michael van der Galien
Although I am used to Hollywood stars making the most outrageous, anti-American and downright stupid statements, I’ve got to admit that I was taken aback by this post over at Hot Air, nonetheless. Its subject: Tom Hanks said recently that America wanted to ”annihilate the Japanese because they were different.” Yes, seriously:
He is pleased that The Pacific has fulfilled an obligation to our World War II vets. He doesn’t see the series as simply eye-opening history. He hopes it offers Americans a chance to ponder the sacrifices of our current soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. “From the outset, we wanted to make people wonder how our troops can re-enter society in the first place,” Hanks says. “How could they just pick up their lives and get on with the rest of us? Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”
As John Nolte explains at Big Hollywood, “no matter how many times you read this passage the context is clear. By ‘different’ Hanks is clearly referring to race, culture and religion, not ideology.” Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey adds:
I thought it was the fact that they bombed us and then fought us relentlessly across the Pacific rather than surrender, but maybe I should tune in for The Truth. So screwy is his read, in fact, that I’m not sure it’s even fair to the Japanese: As I understand it, they hit Pearl Harbor not because “our way of living was different” but because they wanted the oil in the south Pacific and needed to neutralize the American fleet before they made their move. I’m also surprised to learn that whereas the Nazis were unambiguous evil, their strategic ally in the far east — whose imperial army utterly terrorized the civilian population of mainland Asia — was merely “different,” much as jihadists are now. That sure does help me get a handle on that Iraq election held a few days ago.
Hey Tom, perhaps you should stop reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and buy and read a good history book instead. The United States fought Japan, because the Japanese attacked the US and tried to conquer the entire continent of Asia. Not only did they occupy other countries, they proceeded to pillage and ethnically cleanse them. They truly were ruthless. The US, on the other hand, was fighting for freedom and democracy. The Japanese were not being attacked because they were ”different,” but because they were the enemies of humanity.
Please also note that he thinks the West is fighting in the Middle East nowadays, not because Islamists – who adhere to an extreme, intolerant, violent and hateful ideology – attacked us and want to destroy our way of living, but because we’re all racists. I’m sure that makes perfect sense if you’re a cocaine sniffing megalomaniac, but to everyone else, not so much.
I don’t mind Hollywood minions having an opinion about politics, but it would be nice if they’d keep them to themselves. That way I can at least enjoy watching the latest movie without thinking about the lead actor’s stupidity.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 10 so far )The 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2009
Good list. Once again it shows the hatefulness of the left.
The 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes Of 2009
John Hawkins
40) But it is really not easy to make fun of the Obamas, because they’re really — they’re kind of really perfect, aren’t they?” — Joy Behar
39) Yo Taylor, I’m really happy for you, I’ll let you finish, but Beyonce has one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time! — Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift’s MTV Video Music Awards speech
38) The governor is hiking the Appalachian Trail. — Spokesman for Mark Sanford
37) …the total mindless, morally bankrupt, knee-jerk, fascistic hatred — without which Michelle Malkin would just be a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it. — Keith Olbermann
36) I know it wasn’t rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don’t believe it was rape-rape. — Whoopi Goldberg on Roman Polanski’s rape of a 13 year-old girl
35) Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t. But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy! — Maureen Dowd
34) Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’ The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you. — Joe Biden
33) The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act. The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is. — Energy Secretary Steven Chu on the public’s lack of concern over greenhouse gasses
32) And one thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked. — DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano comment about a terrorist attack stopped by passengers
31) think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American. — Jimmy Carter
30) If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district. — John Murtha
29) I write a lot of songs that could be interpreted as big patriotic songs, but in reality they’re questioning the direction the country is going. After every song in Boston, 20,000 people were going, ‘USA, USA.’ I thought, man. I almost asked them to stop, stop doing that. I don’t like it. I don’t like hearing that chant. — John Cougar Mellencamp
28) Do you remember tea baggers? It was just so much easier when we could just call them racists. I just don’t know why we can’t call them racists, or functionally retarded adults. The functionally retarded adults, the racists – with their cries of, ‘I want my country back. You know what they’re really saying is, ‘I want my white guy back.’ They apparently had no problem at all for the last eight years of habeas corpus being suspended, the Constitution being [expletive] on, illegal surveillance, lied to on a war or two, two stolen elections – yes, the John Kerry one was stolen too. That’s not tin-foil hat time. That’s just…” — Janeane Garofalo
27) Frankly, if there is repression in Cuba we didn’t see it. — Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO)
26) How do we know when someone like Hasan is going to make his move and do we know he’s an Islamist until he’s made his move? He makes a phone call or whatever, according to Reuters right now. Apparently he tried to contact al-Qaida. Is that the point at which you say, ‘This guy is dangerous?’ That’s not a crime to call up al-Qaida, is it? Is it? I mean, where do you stop the guy? — Chris Matthews
25) But I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking. — Barack Obama
24) Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards. — Attorney General Eric Holder
23) You can’t call yourself a black man and vote against the healthcare bill. — Jesse Jackson
22) So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement. But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases. And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet. — Paul Krugman
21) The climate right now is that Republicans use everything they can to undermine and delegitimize this president. And it‘s actually un-American. It‘s traitorous, in my opinion. Do you want to give aid and comfort to our enemies? Continue to treat this president like he wasn‘t elected and he doesn‘t know what he‘s doing! He knows what he did. He knows what he‘s doing. I‘m proud of him. I believe that he has the stalwart, resolute nature to get this done. — Joan Walsh
20) The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: “You vote for revenue and your career is over.” I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair. — California’s Speaker of the Assembly, Karen Bass
19) Fox News and their Republican collaborators are the enemy of America. They’re the enemy of anybody who cares about health care, the enemy of anybody who cares about educating their children, the enemy of anybody who wants energy independence or anything good for this country. And certainly the enemy of peace, there’s no doubt about that. — Alan Grayson
18) I could have turned everything into a crime scene, like OJ, cutting everybody’s throat. You live half a mile from the 20,000-square-foot home you can’t go to anymore, you’re driving through downtown Clearwater and see a 19-year-old boy driving your Escalade, and you know that a 19-year-old boy is sleeping in your bed, with your wife…I totally understand OJ. I get it. — Hulk Hogan
17) Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is, ‘We are above that now. We’re not just parochial, we’re not just chauvinistic, we’re not just provincial. We stand for something.’ I mean, in a way, Obama’s standing above the country, above — above the world. He’s sort of God. He’s going to bring all different sides together. — Evan Thomas, Newsweek
16) You guys see Live and Let Die, the great Bond film with Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy, Mr. Big? In the end they jam a big CO2 pellet in his face and he blew up. I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we’ll be there to watch. I think he’s Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto. Are you watching, Rush? — Chris Matthews
15) The Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. . . . What I think we know — separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in their country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact. — President Obama on Gates’ arrest.
14) I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg. It wouldn’t be worth wasting the urine. — Pete Stark, to a constituent
13) The real internal terrorists are the Republicans, I mean, isn’t that clear? Rush Limbaugh is a bigger threat to this country than Osama bin Laden. He’s a bigger threat than anybody that the CIA can invent. He’s a bigger threat than any terrorist that ever leveled its sights against the United States, Limbaugh is, so why isn’t he arrested and sentenced for treason?… — Mike Malloy
12) If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly. That’s right. The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick. — Alan Grayson
11) The Republicans lie! They want to see you dead! They’d rather make money off your dead corpse! They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for her. — Ed Schultz
10) Them Jews aren’t going to let (Obama) talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office. …They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. — Jeremiah Wright
9) We don’t know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she’d have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don’t know, as always, could fill a Metrodome. Still, ignorance doesn’t preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn’t automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded. Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it. — Melissa Lafsky
8) Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. — Thomas Friedman
7) Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away. That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture al Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq. There’s no question that the leader of the military operations of the U.S. called back our military, called them back from going after the head of al Qaeda. — Congressman Maurice Hinchey
6) From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this, though: despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death. — CBS Sports commentator David Feherty
5) The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it’s going to take a grassroots, bottom-up pressure, because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. Only — it’s an absurd situation. Again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary. — Michael Scheuer
4) (Rush Limbaugh) just wants the country to fail. To me that’s treason. He’s not saying anything different than what Osama Bin Laden is saying. You might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight. … Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? — Wanda Sykes
3) really don’t give a f*ck (about Polanski’s rape of a 13 year old). Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?”– Gore Vidal
2) The recent shootings at Ft. Hood and the resignation of top Foreign Service officer Matthew Hoh demonstrate how even our military officers are opposed to US strategy in Afghanistan. — Code Pink
1) I have a good news to report; Glen Beck appears closer to suicide – I’m hoping that he does it on camera; suicide is rampant in his family, and given his alcoholism and his tendencies towards self-destruction, I am only hoping that when Glen Beck does put a gun to his head and pulls the trigger, that it will be on television, because somebody will capture it on YouTube and it will be the most popular video for months. — Mike Malloy
LINK: http://rightwingnews.com/2010/01/the-6th-annual-40-most-obnoxious-quotes-of-2009/
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Kicking Rush When He’s Down: The Hateful Rhetoric and Hypocrisy of the Left
HYPOCRITE ALERT!! HYPOCRITE ALERT!! HYPOCRITE ALERT!!
Liberals are soooo hypocritical! They accuse conservatives of being nasty and mean (just for disagreeing with them), but the truth of the matter is that THEY are the hateful ones. WE disagree on issues, THEY hope for someone’s death. They say that they are frightened because of our mean rhetoric – are you kidding me????? We criticize their ideas and their stand on the issues, we don’t cheer if one of them almost dies. The hypocrisy is unbelievable. It’s too bad that the MSM is on their side, which means that a lot of people will never realize the scope of the double standard.
Bozell Column: Kicking Rush When He’s Down
By Brent Bozell
January 5, 2010
The news that Rush Limbaugh had entered a Hawaii hospital over the New Year’s weekend complaining of chest pains triggered a volcanic internet eruption for the hard left the likes of which we’ve never seen before. If Mt. Vesuvius could vomit in a literal sense, this would be it.
This time these radicals let their guard down and showed their true colors.
The Twitter lines were ablaze as liberals celebrated the news, news that suggested Mr. Limbaugh was at the very least very ill, and quite possibly dying or maybe already dead:
“Rush Limbaugh was rushed to the hospital in Honolulu. Maybe Santa did get my letter.”
“Rush was rushed to the Hospital. Just when I thought Christmas was over…”
“Come on God, I don’t ask for much, and I very rarely ask you to smite anyone, but please kill Rush Limbaugh tonight.”
Sounding boards like “Democratic Underground” had field days, living down to their reputations for wishing the very worst for conservatives. One very early conversation among their members carried this exchange:
“I hope he croaks. The world would be a better place.”
“No such luck! Remember, ‘only the good die young.’”
“If that holds true, the miserable troglodyte will make Methuselah look like a teenager by the time he dies.”
Over on the pop culture TMZ site there were some strong words of encouragement for the radio talk show titan but still the leftist hatred dominated. Examples:
“Best news I’ve heard in years… Hope he joins [Michael Jackson] the sooner the better.”
“Won’t miss ya! There will be a little less rage in this world if this druggie goes.”
“I hope he fails.”
“I hope he dies.”
And yet nothing quite matched the bile belched by those fine men (and women too?) at the far left’s Valhalla, the Daily Kos. Who writes for the Daily Kos, you ask? Well, to quote the site (even at the risk of exposing its need for a wee bit updating) “Among luminaries posting diaries on the site are President Jimmy Carter, Senator Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi,” etc., etc. In other words, the most powerful voices of the left in America purportedly reside at the Daily Kos.
And what do Senator Barack Obama’s fans think of the news that Rush Limbaugh was at that moment in a hospital presumably fighting for his life? One blogger at the Daily Kos had the temerity to actually suggest that others not wish Rush ill will since it “feeds his ego.” No such luck. Among the responses to his plea:
“It is nature’s way of telling a—holes like Limbaugh that beers are being thrown back in celebration of that heart attack.”
“If he gets well, so be it. If he gets worse, be it paralyzed, comatose, or dead, he’s earned it. I hope he dies and I’m glad he’s sick. All this fat a—hole has done is encourage a whole generation of Americans to be right-wing, bigoted scumbags like him. I’ll never apologize for hating Rush. Or wishing death and illness on him.”
“So if Adolf Hitler were to die today would we see a bunch of RIP diaries and ‘our heart should go out to his friends and family’?”
It is heartening (pun intended) to note that not every liberal institution behaved so abominably. Let us hold up for commendation sites like the Huffington Post which made the editorial decision not to run any vicious attacks on Rush, instead limiting its commenters to good wishes for his recovery.
Likewise there were numerous liberal activists out there who, while clearly expressing their political differences with the conservative leader, also loudly expressed their desire for his well-being and equally loudly (and futilely) called for their fellow liberals to well-behave.
But too many liberals didn’t, because too many liberals just can’t, and I don’t ever want to hear another sermon from them about “civility”, or “the politics of personal destruction.” They are no longer allowed to talk about “hate” or pass judgment on what is “mean-spirited.” I don’t want to hear the words “character assassination” or even “cheap shot” leave their lips.
Unless, of course, it’s preceded by “I am guilty of…” Roger Ebert, the long-time movie critic was for many years a very fat man. He is thinner now after a series of cancer surgeries on his throat and jaw which have left him unable to speak without a machine. It is beyond curious – it is crass, and downright sick, wholly unprofessional, and personally pathetic — that this man found it appropriate to make Rush-is-a-fatty jokes on Twitter (especially since Rush no longer is overweight).
“Rush: Hawaii is the only country where the Hawaiian shirts come in S, M, L, XL, Rush, and Sumo.”
“Surgeons: ‘Rush doesn’t require a heart transplant, but an installation.’”
“Tests find nothing wrong with Rush Limbaugh’s heart. Physically.”
Ebert has apologized. Whatever.
Rush, it’s good to hear you are well. It’s a helluva way to start the new year.
LINK: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2010/01/05/bozell-column-kicking-rush-when-hes-down
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Coming to a School Near You – Celebs to Kids: America Stinks!
Beware America!! Here are more America-hating liberals who want to spread their hatred to our school children (even more than they usually do). It makes me sick! If they don’t like America I invite them to move somewhere else. We are not perfect, but we are the best country in the world and I’m sick of these jackasses spouting this kind of crap!
Celebs to kids: America stinks!
’55 rich white men drafted Constitution to protect their class – slaveholders’
Posted: December 14, 2009
By Drew Zahn
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
Hollywood celebrities and education gurus have teamed together to distribute to schools across the country a dramatic new curriculum that casts American history as an epic march of victims seeking to shrug off the shackles of the warmongering, racist, capitalist, imperialist United States.
The History Channel’s airing of the “The People Speak” last night marks the public coming-out party of a movement that has been in place since last year to teach America’s school children a “social justice” brand of history that rails against war, oppression, capitalism and popular patriotism.
The television special featuring performances by Matt Damon, Benjamin Bratt, Marisa Tomei, Don Cheadle, Bruce Springsteen and others condemns the nation’s past of oppression by the wealthy, powerful and imperialist and instead trumpets the voices of America’s labor unions, minorities and protesters of various stripes.
The accompanying curriculum guide for schools that show “The People Speak” in classrooms, for example, highlights an 1852 reading from abolitionist Frederick Douglass:
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy – a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
The program and discussion guide is the most ambitious resource among many offered to America’s schools by the Zinn Education Project, a collaboration of Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change, as part of a push to encourage history instruction based on educator Howard Zinn’s 1980 tome exposing the abuses of America’s past, “A People’s History of the United States.”
The project states its goal is to “introduce students to a more accurate, complex and engaging understanding of United States history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. … Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’ emphasizes the role of working people, women, people of color and organized social movements in shaping history. Students learn that history is made not by a few heroic individuals, but instead by people’s choices and actions, thereby also learning that their own choices and actions matter.”
The History Channel, furthermore, touts “The People Speak” as a program that “gives voice to those who spoke up for social change throughout U.S. history, forging a nation from the bottom up with their insistence on equality and justice. … ‘The People Speak’ illustrates the relevance of these passionate historical moments to our society today and reminds us never to take liberty for granted.”
The celebrities featured in “The People Speak” claim the stories of bold protesters and oppressed minorities and workers are “inspiring,” while Zinn himself has stated that casting history as a people’s movement toward change offers hope.
Critics of the Zinn Project, however, warn that the curriculum is more about pushing Zinn’s admitted pacifist and socialist agenda on the next generation.
Michelle Malkin blasts “The People Speak” as an effort to promote “Marxist academic Howard Zinn’s capitalism-bashing, America-dissing, grievance-mongering history textbook, ‘A People’s History of the United States.’ … Zinn’s work is a self-proclaimed ‘biased account’ of American history that rails against white oppressors, the free market and the military.”
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A new approach to patriotism
While critics have alleged Zinn’s education plan tears down America and its famous founders, a lesson plan titled “Unsung Heroes” begins with “an essay by Zinn defending his philosophy of education.
Zinn writes, “A high school student recently confronted me: ‘I read in your book “A People’s History of the United States” about the massacres of Indians, the long history of racism, the persistence of poverty in the richest country in the world, the senseless wars. How can I keep from being thoroughly alienated and depressed?’
“It’s a question I’ve heard many times before,” Zinn writes. “Another question often put to me by students is: ‘Don’t we need our national idols? You are taking down all our national heroes – the Founding Fathers, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy.’ Granted, it is good to have historical figures we can admire and emulate. But why hold up as models the 55 rich white men who drafted the Constitution as a way of establishing a government that would protect the interests of their class – slaveholders, merchants, bondholders, land speculators?”
Curriculum writer Bill Bigelow further explains of the popular perception of what it means to be patriotic, “There is a lot of ‘us,’ and ‘we,’ and ‘our,’ as if the texts are trying to dissolve race, class and gender realities into the melting pot of ‘the nation.'”
But Bigelow rejects the idea of identifying America as one, solid union.
“A people’s history and pedagogy ought to allow students to recognize that ‘we’ were not necessarily the ones stealing land, dropping bombs or breaking strikes,” he concludes. “‘We’ were ending slavery, fighting for women’s rights, organizing unions, marching against wars, and trying to create a society premised on the Golden Rule.”
His point is crystallized in a lesson plan he created for the Zinn project about the Pledge of Allegiance called “One Country! One Language! One Flag!”
The plan points out that the lesson’s title was actually a chant that followed the original Pledge – written in 1892 – as schoolchildren saluted with an extended arm, palm downward. The traditional gesture was replaced by a hand to the heart, the lesson points out, after Germany’s Nazis began using the same salute to shout “Heil Hitler!” in the 1930s.
“It seems to me that teachers ought to know something about the history of the Pledge before we ask our students to repeat it,” Bigelow writes. “How has it been used, and by whom? Why not lead kids in the original Pledge to the Flag, including the ‘One Language!’ chant and the Nazi-like salute, and then lead a discussion about the politics of the Pledge.”
The curriculum itself instructs students: “Read over the original words of the Pledge. In 1892, who did and did not have liberty and justice in the United States? (In the 1880s in the South, over 100 African Americans were lynched yearly; segregation was the norm and would soon be ratified by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson. Women could not vote. In the previous 50 years, Mexicans had been stripped of land and property in what had been their country. Discrimination and violence against Chinese immigrants had grown increasingly severe. In the summer of 1892, 8,000 Pennsylvania National Guardsmen had helped Henry Clay Frick break the union at the Carnegie Steel Co. in Homestead, Pa.) How about in the 1920s, when the Pledge was introduced more widely into the schools?”
The spread of the Zinn Educational Project
According to a Zinn Educational Project report, in April 2008, with support from an anonymous donor, ZEP partnered with 32 organizations to offer 31,000 teachers and teacher educators free packets for instilling the “people’s history” in schools across the country. The ZEP reports it quickly received requests for its available 4,000 free packets, nearly half of which were sent to schools in California, New York and Illinois.
The ZEP website boasts many of the teachers have begun implementing the curriculum and has published the following testimonials:
“These resources are an asset,” reportedly responded Meaghan Martin, an elementary school teacher in Manassas, Va. “We are always looking for ways to offer students a critical perspective. The unsung heroes unit is outstanding! I have tailored it to meet the needs of my 2nd graders when we study American biographies.”
Lara Emerling, a middle school teacher in Baltimore, Md., reportedly replied, “Knowing that resources like the Zinn Education Project exist make me feel so hopeful about the network of people who are engaged in this kind of dialogue with their students. I am a young, white female living in Baltimore and teaching at an all black middle school. These resources are so valuable to me personally and to the relationships being built between the students and the faculty. Thank you to everyone involved in keeping this collaboration evolving!”
Zinn himself has testified of his hope that the project will continue to spread.
“We’re dreamers,” writes Zinn. “We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don’t want war. We don’t want capitalism. We want a decent society.”
LINK: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=119046
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Why We Need Highly Paid CEO’s: Why Do People Resent Overpaid CEO’s but not Overpaid Stars?
The article below is very long, therefore I’ve only included some excerpts but it does make a very good point, so if you have the time, go to the link and read it.
We keep hearing about the evil CEO’s and how they are overpaid compared to the normal working people, about how they are abusing the ‘system’ to keep getting richer. But this article points out really well the realities of business. Yes, some of them may be evil and should be dealt with, but that does not mean that the majority are corrupt. In fact, most of them are NOT corrupt.
Then comes the issue of their being overpaid. I agree that some of them make an obscene amount, but as you’ll see in the following article, maybe they really are worth it. You do get what you pay for.
Why is it that we don’t mind movie or sports stars making unbelievable amounts of money but we mind CEO’s making a lot? Do you really think Jennifer Aniston or Tom Hanks DESERVES 20 million dollars per film while the camera guys get WAY below that? Yet, no one says anything about it. Why? Because folks say “as long as people are willing to pay the bucks to see these stars, they will continue getting the money”. Movie companies and sports clubs are willing to pay these huge amounts because these stars are making them BIG bucks!! So why should we look at CEO’s any differently? As long as people are willing to pay for their product, they are providing a service and making money for all the stockholders, which is their job, so how can we be angry?
Next time you hear someone ranting about CEO’s, ask them if they feel the same way about their favorite movie or sports star because, as far as I’m concerned, those folks make a ridiculous amount of money!
And they’re doing it while not working as hard as CEO’s, getting long periods of time off, getting tons of perks and freebies, and then usually giving nothing back to society. In fact they usually lead disgusting lifestyles.
So either lay off the CEO’s or treat the stars the same way!!
Are Business Executives Overpaid and Corrupt?
by Michael Medved
-snip-
…Publicity for executive indulgence (even without flamboyant touches like vodka-spewing ice sculptures) always serves to reinforce the notion that corporate chieftains constitute a class of selfish, shallow, preposterously pampered and ludicrously overpaid parasites.
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During periods of economic hardship, corporate leaders inevitably inspire rage and resentment because they seem so powerfully isolated from the suffering that afflicts the rest of us; during years of growth and prosperity they draw comparable hostility for their “disproportionate” or showy share of national success. When the economy goes down, it’s easy – and almost irresistible – to blame business leaders. When indicators turn upward, on the other hand, those executives rarely get credit. Conventional wisdom associates economic recovery and boom times with natural cycles or the plans and programs of some popular politician. We assume that progress occurs in spite of the greed and selfishness of corporate bosses, with no real connection to their pursuit of profit.
-snip-
According to embittered critics of the market system, the most glaring evidence of that cheating and corruption comes from the swelling pay disparity between workers and bosses.
-snip-
There’s no evidence at all that cutting the compensation of Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke would magically raise the wages of his 2,100,000 employees, but levelers like Ralph Nader pay far more attention to the privileges of those at the top of the corporate ladder than they do to the welfare and advancement of those at the bottom. According to the Census Bureau, median household income went up from $41,613 in 1982 (in inflation adjusted dollars) to $59,233 in 2007—a hefty increase of more than 20% and providing a significant addition of $8,620. At the same time, the earnings of the typical CEO as compared to an average U.S. worker went up from 30-to-1 (it was never the nostalgically remembered 7-to-1 recalled by Ralph Nader) all the way to 344-to-1, according to the liberal advocacy group United for a Fair Economy in a much-discussed 2007 study.
-snip-
More recently, Madhukar Angur, Professor of Marketing at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan, examined executive compensation at top U.S. corporations and found little evidence of systemic plunder of big companies by greedy CEOs. As he wrote in Investor’s Business Daily (March 23, 2009): “Recent research, however, suggests that this abuse of corporate finances may not be as prevalent as it seems. Indeed, over 40% of the 94 U.S. corporations I have studied had CEO compensation generally based on proportionate increase or decrease in company’s net worth or paid less to CEOs despite an increase in company net worth.” Professor Angur saw this surprising tendency to cut CEO pay even when they led thriving companies as a healthy sign of an economic system swinging back to balance and shareholder control. “Given that nearly a third of the top Fortune 100 companies paid less compensation to their CEOs despite an increase in the companies’ net worth, that suggests that the threatening economy has kick-started corporate governance and other self-regulatory systems in a significant number of U.S. companies. If this trend continues, the nation will see more companies tying CEO compensation to corporate performance. The end results might be more sustainable business and renewed public trust.”
-snip-
One savvy and respected observer from the left side of the political spectrum takes the courageous position that the breathtaking increase in CEO compensation actually makes perfect sense, given deeper changes in the American marketplace. “There’s an economic case for the stratospheric level of CEO pay which suggests shareholders- even if they had full say – would not reduce it,” writes Robert Reich, the outspoken Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton and now a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. In the Wall Street Journal (September 14, 2007) he predicted that these shareholders were “likely to let CEO pay continue to soar. That’s because of a fundamental shift in the structure of the economy over the last four decades, from oligopolistic capitalistic to super-competitive capitalism. CEO pay has risen astronomically over the interval, but so have investor returns.”
Reich perceptively compares the corporate heads of today with those who ran major companies in the 1950’s and 60’s, when even the most powerful business leader “was mostly a bureaucrat in charge of a large, high-volume production system whose rules were standardized and whose competitors were docile. It was the era of stable oligopolies, big unions, predictable markets and lackluster share performance. The CEO of a modern company is in a different situation. Oligopolies are mostly gone and entry barriers are low. Rivals are impinging all the time – threatening to lure away consumers all too willing to be lured away, and threatening to hijack investors eager to jump ship at the slightest hint of an upturn in a rival’s share price.”
He compares the shift to the much-discussed changes in the movie business. Fifty years ago, eight big studios utterly dominated the United States market, shutting out all would-be competitors and comfortably dividing the available audience among them. These secure, well-established companies became household names, signing the biggest stars to long-term, exclusive contracts and thereby limiting their competition. As Reich notes: “Clark Gable earned $100,000 a picture in the 1940’s, roughly $800,000 in present dollars. But that was when Hollywood was dominated by big-studio oligopolies. Today, Tom Hanks makes closer to $20 million per film. Movie studios – now competing intensely not only with one another but with every other form of entertainment – willingly pay these sums because they’re still small compared to the money these stars bring in and profits they generate. Today’s big companies are paying their CEOs mammoth sums for much the same reason.”
Secretary Reich cites the storied (and controversial) pay out to Lee R. Raymond, chairman of Exxon Mobil, who retired in 2005 with a compensation package totaling nearly $400 million, including stock, stock options and long-term compensation. “Too much?” Reich asks. “Not to Exxon’s investors, who enjoyed a 223% return over the interval, compared to the average 205% return received by shareholders of other oil companies, a premium of about $16 billion. Raymond took home just 4% of that $16 billion.”
In other words, under the circumstances, even a pay day of nearly half a billion dollars can represent a real bargain for exceptionally gifted (or lucky) CEOs. Professor Angur notes that “using company net worth as the basis of performance measures, Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, is considered underpaid. Through his unique leadership style and business acumen Welch took the company’s worth from about $14 billion in 1981 to $500 billion just before retiring.”
As Robert Murphy noted at Townhall.com: “In our increasingly global economy, certain individuals are incredibly productive and can command incredibly high earnings as a result. Corporate executives really do perform valuable tasks, and it really does make a difference who is running the company. Once we concede that productive individuals will earn more than less productive ones, the fact that some make 364 times what others do is largely irrelevant. After all, a TV set might be 364 times more expensive than a gumball. Is that ‘unfair’ or does it merely reflect the forces of supply and demand?”
-snip-
Hodak sympathizes with the sense of outrage that afflicts lower-level employees at major companies with head honchos who earn millions. “I know it’s hard for someone making $50,000 a year to imagine that anyone can be worth 10 or a hundred times that. But they might be. How do I know? Because if I don’t pay them, someone else will. When an executive across the table tells me, ‘The guys down the street are offering $2 million a year,’ he’s not bluffing. The experienced buyer of managerial talent can see the difference between a $500,000 executive and $2 million executive as surely as a home buyer can tell the difference between a half-million-dollar home and a $2 million home.”
My former law school classmate Robert Reich— who has argued for forty years for activist government, higher tax rates and closer corporate regulation– nonetheless recognizes that executive salaries reflect basic realities of supply and demand, rather than the back-scratching indulgence of some insider old-boy network. “The pool of proven talent is small because so few executives have been tested and succeeded,” he writes in the Wall Street Journal. “And the boards of major companies do not want to risk error. The cost of recruiting the wrong person can be very large – and readily apparent in the deteriorating value of a company’s share. Boards are willing to pay more and more for CEOs and other top executives because their rivals are paying more and more for them.”
As both a Berkeley academic and a former member of the Clinton cabinet, Reich has never been shy about deploying the power of some federal bureaucracy to achieve some worthy goal, but he shuns the idea of utilizing such a mechanism to limit compensation packages in the business world. Not even the most ambitious and audacious reformer would support the notion of forcing salaries and bonuses to match some concept of the intrinsic worth of work. As Rob Preston argues in InformationWeek (January 13, 2007): “If salaries were just about the importance or perils of the work, teachers and nurses and power plant technicians and soldiers would be pulling down the big bucks. That they’re not doesn’t mean they’re any less critical; it just means that employers could find more of them at the pay they now earn. Water is cheap because it’s abundant. Gold is expensive because it’s not. Which is the more critical commodity?”
-snip-
In the long run, however, only one effort can insure profitability and prosperity: reliably providing to others some good or service which they need or want, and for which they are willing to pay with the fruits of their own labor. In this sense, every successful executive becomes a benefactor to his customers, as the free market system compels service to your neighbor.
That’s why business bashing usually falls flat when Americans have the chance to put the anti-capitalist messages in context. In the midst of presidential primaries of 2008, the widely-admired former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, (in collaboration with his wife Suzy, former editor of the Harvard Business Review) responded to a demagogic Democrat from North Carolina who said, “For the past seven years, we’ve had a President who has stood up for corporations. It’s time we had a President who stands up for you!”
“You, who?” the Welches asked. “Who are these ‘you’ people, we wonder, who aren’t part of business in some way? Sure, some portion of the population is made up of students, government employees and workers in the nonprofit sector.
“But let’s be real. The vast majority of Americans make their livelihoods from business, and not all of them are faceless, bloodless, megabonus-earning executives on Wall Street. They are the field workers of Big Oil, toiling in some of the harshest conditions on earth, from the oil sands of Canada to the high seas off the coast of Norway. They are the immunologists and oncologist of Big Pharma, hunkered down in their labs trying to find cures for AIDS and cancer.
“They are immigrants from Ecuador and Vietnam, running the restaurant around the corner or launching a high-tech venture in their garage. Our point is, corporations are not a bunch of buildings. Like all businesses, they are flesh and blood. They are human beings. And most of the time, they are human beings trying to make the world a better place for their families and employees….
“Business isn’t the enemy of people –it is people. And business doesn’t destroy hope. It creates it.”
LINK: http://townhall.com/Columnists/MichaelMedved/2009/07/08/are_business_executive_overpaid_and_corrupt
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )Comedy, Bullies and American Politics: How the Left Use Comedy, the Media, Bullying and Name-Calling to Further their Cause
Very well said!! The libs have been using the MSM and comedians against us for years and we’ve been too bullied to do anything about it! They have used these tools very well and we have just ‘tolerated’ it. We just laugh (to show them we have a sense of humor and and can take a joke) and brush it off like it means nothing. Actually, it means a LOT and they have used it to chip away at our credibility and our effectiveness. They have made jokes out of Republicans and the uninformed public doesn’t know any better, so they just believe what these people keep cramming down their throats; and when called on it, the libs say “We’re just kidding…”. Again I say, the libs have been BRILLIANT in their use of the MSM and comedians against us. We need to take notice and stop the bullying!
Comedy, Bullies, and American Politics
By Rosslyn Smith
Saul Alinsky taught two generations of American leftists to use ridicule as a potent political weapon. When the left infiltrated America’s entertainment outlets, the practice achieved industrial scale.
As I read about the ongoing controversy about David Letterman’s vicious attack on Sarah Palin’s 14 year old daughter, my first thought was that I wasn’t surprised. I have always found Letterman to be a bit of a misogynist. In recent years he has also been increasingly unfunny.
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For years now much of our comedy has gotten increasingly mean. It laughs less and less at the contradictions inherent in the human condition and increasingly picks out and personalizes targets to demean and humiliate. In the world of the comedian-cum-bully, wit has been replaced with name calling and the wry irony of the nerdish observer with the swagger of the schoolyard bully who decides who is among the in group and who are “them”, the outcasts to be made the butt of every mean spirited politically correct joke. Name calling is the stock in trade of the bully. So is telling the target who protests, “What’s a matter, can’t you take a joke?”
The entertainment industry has been bullying Republicans for most of my adult life and I am 56. It started with stereotypes in movies and TV shows. The small town prude, the uncultured suburban hypocrite, the greedy capitalist, the perverted man of God, the southern white bigot. By the 1980s among the self described elite, the very name of Ronald Reagan was treated like the punch line to an inside joke, the way to get a laugh those rubes who supported him could never even begin to understand.
By the 1990s the assault began in earnest with the likes of a best seller attacking Republicans with the words “fat” and “idiot” in the title. While Republican men would routinely be portrayed as slowwitted slugs the worst vitriol was reserved for Republican women and minorities, those who refused to adopt the mantle of victim and the spoils of affirmative action.
By the first few years of this decade, things had deteriorated to the point where jokes were made about assassinating George W. Bush and well known cartoonists portrayed Condoleeza Rice in the vilest of racist, sexist stereotypes in major newspapers. It became a firestorm of rage with the nomination of Sarah Palin, an effective administrator who governed from the libertarian side of the party while following social conservative principles in her personal life, and thus would appeal to many voters. But attacking Palin wasn’t good enough. The attack was carried to her children.
Truly good comedy can be a form of moral education. Jane Austen wrote very funny and enduring books during a period of great political and social turmoil in which her characters almost never discuss politics or even the wars raging across the English Channel. Yet her characters better illustrated the very real plight of women-only households under property laws dating from feudal times and outmoded notions of inheritance than any number of overtly reform social tracts.
In fact, Austen’s method of highlighting injustice is so effective the same formula is still in use today. The very funny 2005 novel Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea, uses many of the same character types to illustrate the frustrations of four educated Saudi women seeking romance and marriage in a world of “capital funds and mothers with sons” Mr. Bingley, Colonel Brandon, Marianne Dashwood, Willoughby and Emma Woodhouse have contemporaries in modern Saudi Arabia.
Bullying and name calling passing as humor, on the other hand, is all about exerting control over the audience. The schoolyard bully determines the social order. His targets are shunned both by those who are in the in clique and those who fear becoming the next target of scorn. The comedian-cum-bully has a secondary target as well. In addition to exerting control over the political landscape, he seeks to instill self doubt in his target. For in the realm of the bully, people come to believe that the targets did something to bring it on themselves. This is especially true when the target doesn’t effectively fight back.
The rage over Letterman’s comments may not go away and not just because he went after a child. It may not go away because for many it was the proverbial last straw, the final outrage that has the cowed outcast finally ready to kick the schoolyard bully right in the crown jewels.
I’m telling you, people are pissed off – a lot of them. I don’t know where it’s all going and maybe it’ll take something else to finally explode somehow. But the anger over this is palpable, widespread and about more than just Sarah Palin. It’s about years of being told we are intolerant and intolerable when we are not and having to eat anything and everything an elitist liberal media culture throws our way.
Chalk this up as another issue on which the grass roots may be well ahead of the some political insiders.
“If the right goes after Letterman, they make him look big and themselves small,” says Mark McKinnon, a former campaign adviser to George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Defending a 14 year old girl from an unprecedented attack of a known misogynist makes her protectors look small? No wonder the Republican brand has shrunk. If Mr. McKinnon won’t defend our children, what will he defend? His all important right to be invited to appear on Meet the Press?
I have long suspected that one reason so many people who live their own lives by conservative principles increasingly shun identification with the Republican Party has to do with the cumulative effect of the bullying of the media entertainment industry. Self promotion is almost a reflexive condition among the professional class in urban areas. Those who aren’t always talking about themselves and putting down the other guy must not have anything worth defending.
Another factor is that a great many of the professional class have little time to follow much outside of their narrow career specialties — but also like to see themselves as being well educated and informed. Thus they seldom adopt positions outside the conventional wisdom as espoused by the media entertainment culture they pick up in passing. By letting the bullies dominate the cultural debate, Republicans have allowed the worst of the stereotypes to rule in the minds of those economically upscale members of urban and suburban America who are mostly passive users of political information.
When I lived on Chicago’s lakefront I would listen to some of the most outrageous falsehoods being passed along as truth about the Republican base for the simple reason that the person doing the speaking had never heard the other side of the story. A lot of my frustration with the Bush administration came not only with the rise in government spending but with the way that it allowed blatant falsehood to go un-rebutted after the 2004 election. For the ultimate target of the comedians-cum-bullies with a political agenda are those who only read headlines until two weeks before the election. While this group may not buy into all the bullies’ criticism, above all they want to avoid the scorn being heaped on Republicans as lower class, intolerant and provincial boobs.
Allowing the bullies to go unmolested has hurt the party among other voters, too. One lesson I learned when I moved to rural America is that while blowing your own horn doesn’t cut it here, defending one’s honor does. The reticence of party insiders to challenge the elitist liberal media culture has been a huge source of dissatisfaction with the Republican brand among the rank and file outside the major urban areas. Nowhere has it been more apparent than with the media scorn heaped on Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber and the me-too echo of certain party insiders anxious to keep their credentials on the Sunday news show circuit.
Maybe it is mark of great sophistication to allow a wife and mother to be openly ridiculed as a slut in Washington, DC or New York City, but in small town America it can still get one a black eye.
No matter which way I look at it, while turning the other cheek in the face of the relentless media entertainment industry bully may be good for one’s soul, it has turned out to be a terrible way to build a political party.
LINK: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/06/15/comedy_bullies_and_american_politics_97000.html
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Bono Discovers Sustainable Development Isn’t Sustainable
This is priceless!! Bono sees up close that capitalism is the only way to go and that all the ‘touchy-feely’ crap they’re spouting just DOES NOT WORK and actually harms people. I wonder when the rest of the morons will wake up??
Bono Discovers Sustainable Development Isn’t Sustainable
by Phelim McAleer & Ann McElhinney
THE BIG problem with renewable energy is that it just doesn’t renew itself. The sun does not shine enough and the wind doesn’t blow enough to power the towns, cities, factories, hospitals and schools that make our lives so livable.
No environmentalist would ever allow their child to be treated in a hospital fully powered by “renewables”. They would not take the risk that the wind might stop whilst their baby was on the operating table. They would insist that the hospital and the life support systems had a fossil fuel powered back-up.
And so it is with “sustainable development”. It just isn’t sustainable. At least it does not sustain a lifestyle that those who promote it would consider acceptable for themselves. But of course that is the key. Renewable energy and sustainable development are for “other people”.
Even though environmentalists come from societies and very often families that became rich because of their use of non-renewable energy and unsustainable development they will not allow these opportunities to be extended to the poor in the developing world.
Environmentalists come from wealthy societies and families who cut down forests and burned coal and oil to make their families and societies healthy and prosperous. But, nowadays, for the poor in Africa and Asia and even middle America their path out of poverty must be “sustainable.” No fossil fuels or factories for them. But what this really means is sustainable poverty. It is a system that condemns people to a lifetime of drudgery and subsistence farming because modernity and industrialisation is “unsustainable.”
Which brings me to Bono, the lead singer of rock band U2 and more lately a campaigner for sustainable development in Africa, Asia and south America. In 2005 Bono and his wife Ali Hewson set up Edun a clothing range that was going to prove there is a different way to end poverty. It was going to be a non-corporate and of course “sustainable”.
At he time MSNBC said it would be “clothing with a conscience”. Vogue magazine said Edun was going to “flip capitalism on its head”.
But now it seems that Bono has now discovered that big companies with their big carbon footprints are useful if you want to keep paying the wages and produce the goods and sell them. Last week the rock star announced he has sold out to LVMH, the worlds largest luxury goods company. Announcing the deal Bono all but admitted that his touchy feely version of capitalism and development just didn’t work. Selling out to LVMH was a great deal, said Bono, and would “bring greater and longer-term stability to our manufacturers and the communities they support”.
In other words my Clooneyesc view of business is plain wrong and I now have to admit that I can’t pay the workers salaries without a proper business running the company. They, with their international marketing skills and economies of scale will make the business truly sustainable – that is – they will ensure that the workers have work and a salary every week and for years to come.
It is an admission that capitalism works and is the only way to ensure a better future for some of the world’s poorest people. And now Bono’s clothes with a conscience will be marketed and sold by a company that also sells Louis Vuitton, Donna Karan and Givenchy. LVMH’s also make and sell the delightfully unsustainable Moët & Chandon, Dom Pérignon and Veuve Clicquot. It also makes and sells parfum Christian Dior and Givenchy and luxury jewellery and watches such as TAG Heurer, Christian Dior and De Beers Diamond Jewellers.
Neither side felt it necessary to say how much Bono got for selling half the company to LVMH. Edun has, in the past, made much of the company’s transparency. However it seems that the transparency only extends to poking our noses into what the workers earn. Bono and his wife are exempt from such questions. But good luck to them. It is really not important to know how much money they have.
But it is important for them to stop keeping people in poverty in the name of sustainability. We used our resources – we burned coal and oil and chopped down our forests. We drove our cars and flew our planes. We have used capitalism to conquer disease and poverty and as a consequence our children are the best-educated and healthiest in history.
But it seems that now some of these children want to stop the poorest on the planet from having what we have. Bono loves sustainable development but only for other people. U2’s latest album was recorded in separate sessions in France, the UK, Morocco, the US and Dublin. The band is now going on a worldwide tour to promote it.
This is not “sustainable” but it is necessary to keep people in work and to keep Bono’s bank balance healthy. And this is a good thing. U2 will provide employment for hundreds if not thousands through selling the album and going on tour. But it is being done the old fashioned way – through unsustainable but wealth creating capitalism.
If it is good enough for Bono and his band of Irish multi-millionaires then it should be good enough for the poorest on the planet.
Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney are the directors and producers of “Not Evil Just Wrong,” a documentary which looks at the true cost of Global Warming hysteria. noteviljustwrong.com
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