Death of Drama

Over at BigHollywood.com, S.T. Karnick discusses the decline of drama movies in America due to their politicization by Hollywood leftists.

I'd say he's right but that this isn't a new trend. The Drama Movies of the 60s and 70s were arguably left-leaning because playwrights have been producing progressive plays for decades and its easier for Hollywood to adapt than create.

But this is nitpicking. Mr. Karnick points out that genres such as Comedy and Action have been successful because they offer the escapism folks want. While there is a chicken and the egg element to this argument, the deep basic fact about comedies, westerns, sci-fi and action movies is the heart of their genres revolve around basic human conditions. Around the overwhelming question of "How do you behave as a human being after being kicked in the groin (comedy), facing a gunfight (western), in outer space or dangling from suspension bridge while fighting spies?"

Fight or flight, love or hate, laugh or cry, those are the deep core reactions to human situations found in well crafted films of all genres. However, writers of comedy and action movies must inevitably go to the right in certain genres like the individualism inherent in the "we must do something" of most action movies.

Now like comedies, sci-fi and action films, Ancient Greek dramas struggled with the concept of the "tragic flaw" as a deep core value that must be maintained or violated in the face of an extraordinary situation. The truth that makes you laugh or the struggle for right that drives action, these are the great-great-great-great grandchildren of Ancient Greek Dramas.

These deep cores are tossed down the drains of the kitchen sink in modern dramatic plays and films. Modern Drama politicized and devolved into political propaganda for the leftwing progressive movement decades ago. And every few years, they get bolder and bolder, until we are "stuck" with the repugnant dross on film screens today.

Or not.

What leftwing Hollywood does not understand is that they are the ones out-of-touch. They are the ones with the poor values and bad taste, not the American consumer. These modern drama films fail to make box office because Hollywood no longer asks "how will this play in Peoria?" but "how will this play in Manhattan's West Village Angelika theater?"

In short, Hollywood no longer values mainstream America. Filmmakers no longer wonder if their parents or grandparents or children can watch the film they are making. They are only interested in performing an intellectual/creative circle jerk with their like-minded friends.

Then they wonder why their modern dramas do not make money and blame the consumer for not swallowing their money shots.

This intellectual/creative self-pleasuring is rampant throughout all creative industries. I stopped being an advertising copywriter because I was nauseated by the complete lack of interest in actually selling product. You see it every day on TV and in print.

Seriously, who wants to eat a sandwich that came out of an oven that implies it gets sexual gratification from toasting said sandwich? Eeeew!

Journalists have decided their opinion is more important than the facts. Advertising is failing to do its job and sell product. Fiction no longer sells in bookstores compared to cookbooks, self-help, and non-fiction because fiction is as out of touch as the Modern Dramatic movie is.

Theater, film, journalism and schools are the major tools of propaganda in any socialist state and we've let them creep into our own great America without a fight.

Yet we can fight back.

When we take no place no value on this leftwing-propaganda-disguised-as-entertainment, when we do not buy movie tickets to such weak fare, then we are taking positive steps towards free thinking liberty where choices and values are more diverse than Hollywood can possibly imagine.

Video Proof Pelosi Knew About Torture

Brietbarttv.com delivers a B-Side that shows Pelosi knew.

Long but good.

Solar House Failure

Ha Ha!

Yes, I know its mean to gloat but the more people know the truth about how inefficient and expensive these alternative energy power sources are, the better.

Sun Shot

Super hot pictures of the shuttle flying across the face of the sun.

Cool!

Carless = Clueless

I never owned a car when I lived in Manhattan. Now, I could never concieve of doing without.

HalfSigma makes some excellent points here. If you are for a car-less society then you are either a very wealthy Manhattanite or completely clueless.

Democrat Fundraising is Corrupt?!? Yes.

Norman Hsu could really do some damage to Democrats, including Obama if he wants to.

Fun.

Watch Sonja Schmidt's tear Elizabeth Edwards and the mainstream media two big new ones.

Fabulous!

Poor Judgement in Jokes as Well

Who made this threat?

And your university President and Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.

That's right, Obama. In his ASU commencement speech - full transcript here.

Certainly it was a lame joke revealing poor judgement and bad taste but as TaxProf.com points out in his post on the matter, that statement of Obama's would have gotten him fired if he worked for the IRS.

It was a joke. In the great scheme of things, no big deal. But what it reveals about Obama's seriousness and callousness is quite another thing.

More Chicago Corruption

This time in the "affordable" housing market. Why isn't the FBI investigating every single Chicago politician and official just as a point of honor?

Food Snobbery in Homeless Shelters

This piece here makes a strong point that homeless shelters funded with TARP/Taxpayer dollars should not throw out perfectly good food just because its not trendy. The example being a Washington DC shelter that tosses fresh donuts because they aren't "healthy" enough for the drug addicts and homeless folk how come to their institution.

Now I think that is a correct view. While the homeless absolutely should be fed wholesome and healthy food with dignity, arugula salad and steak on the taxpayer's dime is a bit beyond the pale.

That said, my daughter and I recently volunteered at a local shelter via her Girl Scout Troop. Because our troop is almost entirely Muslim, the mothers prepared a chicken and rice dish with their traditional seasonings. I sat down and ate with some of the folks in the shelter once and chatted with them. And they told me the meal was a big hit. So often they get the same bland food over and over again. The flavor and spice of their Muslim meal was a welcome break. One lady pointed out a man whom she said went up for three servings of the meal and she's never seen him do that.

Perhaps, the chefs at these homeless shelters are less concerned with feeding the people who come in and more concerned about exercising their culinary prowess. Quite frankly, if you are too much of a food snob to make something palatable and inviting out of canned veggies and Velveeta, then you have no business calling yourself a chef. And instead of imposing your own view of "good" onto others, perhaps feeding them simple but flavorful food options would provide more dignity than any geoduck and frisee salad.

Best Explanation of Debt EVER!

Just watch this!!



Visit PoliticalMath here.

Now All We Need Is A Yard.

I want. I want. I need. I need.

But I'll also take this.

Obamacare is Fiscal Suicide

David Brooks in an op-ed from The New York Times (!) points out the many flaws in Obama's financial policies, in particular Obama's "attempts" at healthcare "reform".

Sky's The Limit Tax Rates

Bruce Bartlett over at Forbes.com has an article up with the chilling title, "The 81% Tax Increase" about funding Social Security and Medicaid via payroll tax increases.

Kinda makes going John Galt look real good right now.

Don't Let Congress Turn 2009 into 1984

(Originially posted by my husband on NRO - The Corner)

CEI and the National Taxpayers Union have teamed up again to produce a video drawing attention to (or should I say "raising awareness of"?) the Orwellian nature of global warming policies. And guess who plays the role of Big Brother? Click here to see the video and tell your Congressmen that you're not happy. Following the YouTube link will enable you to send the video on to others.

Why go anywhere?

Here is the video my husband is talking about and the accompanying fact v. fiction. But you should go to the site to make a donation.

This is an important fight, unless you want your heating and cooling bills to be as much as your rent or mortgage. Because if we let Congress pass this "cap and trade" bill or any other energy-restriction bill, it's YOU who will pay!

Fiction: Global warming is a threat that is rapidly getting worse each year.
Fact: There has been no global warming over the last decade. In fact, global average temperature was lower in 2008 than in 1998! [1]

Fiction: Sea levels could go up 20 feet, according to Al Gore.
Fact: Sea levels rose about 8 inches in the 20th century, and the rate has not increased in the 21st century! [2]

Fiction: We can cheaply reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Fact: As President Obama said in the campaign, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” [3]

Fiction: Cap-and-trade will help the economy by creating lots of new green jobs.
Fact: A recent economic analysis estimates that 2 million jobs would be lost if Congress enacted President Barack Obama’s cap-and-trade bill! [4]

Fiction: We can easily replace coal, oil, and natural gas with wind and solar power and ethanol.
Fact: 85% [5] of our energy comes from coal, oil, and natural gas. The alternatives are much more expensive [6] and less reliable! [7]

Make Your Voice Heard in Washington!
Stop the $2 Trillion Hidden Tax on Energy!

And in case you think I'm biased because it's my husband and all, here is a Wall Street Journal piece by Mitch Daniels discussing exactly how bad it could get.

The Waxman-Markey legislation would more than double electricity bills in Indiana. Years of reform in taxation, regulation and infrastructure-building would be largely erased at a stroke. In recent years, Indiana has led the nation in capturing international investment, repatriating dollars spent on foreign goods or oil and employing Americans with them. Waxman-Markey seems designed to reverse that flow. "Closed: Gone to China" signs would cover Indiana's stores and factories.

"indefinite detention"

So Hope & Change has become "Bush's third term".

According to The Wall Street Journal article, here, Obama is finding some way to detain the Gitmo terrorists "indefinately" - but he's closing Gitmo.

Wow. What a difference.

Contentions.com is right - When Jon Stewart turns on a liberal, said liberal is in trouble.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Waffle House
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

What a (scary) moron!

The Peek-A-Boo Problem

(As posted by my husband at NRO - The Corner)

Ken Starr and Viet Dinh have an important article in the WSJ today about the constitutional affront that is the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB, otherwise known as Peek-A-Boo). The nub of the matter:

In writing the 2002 law, Congress created a striking Constitutional anomaly – a powerful executive branch agency with a structure that gives the President almost no say over its policies. With minimal oversight and no real supervision, the PCAOB decides which accounting firms to inspect and how to conduct an investigation. It interprets sections of Sarbanes-Oxley, deciding, for instance, what is an "internal control" under the act's Section 404. It was also given the power to levy an "accounting support fee," essentially a tax on all public companies, to fund its operations.

Yet, under the law, the five members who run the PCAOB are appointed not by the President – but by the five commissioners of the SEC. We hold that this violates the Constitution's Appointments Clause, which states clearly that principal "officers of the United States" shall be appointed only by the President "with the advice of and consent of the Senate."

The "constitutional flaws in the PCAOB statute are not matters of mere etiquette or protocol," Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the federal appeals court of the District of Columbia wrote last summer. "By restricting the President's authority over the board, the act renders this Executive Branch agency unaccountable and divorced from Presidential control to a degree not previously not previously countenanced in our constitutional structure."

That's why, in his strongly worded dissenting opinion, Judge Kavanaugh called our challenge to the PCAOB "the most important separation-of-powers case regarding the president's appointment and removal powers to reach the courts in the last 20 years."

Indeed. Sarbanes-Oxley and the PCAOB together have cost the U.S. economy more than $1 trillion, according to a joint study by Brookings and AEI. Yet the board appears to be proud of having no oversight. That must change.

Held To A Higher Standard

I usually like the Camille Paglia column over at salon.com but today's kinda irked me.

In essence, she is holding all conservatives in general and conservative talk radio in particular to a higher standard of decorum than her fellow liberals.

Technically, that's hypocrisy. But Camille tries to be fair for the most part so I'll try to be nice.

It just doesn't seem legit that conservatives are criticized for slipping up occasionally and saying something unkind or unfair and liberals get to screech and scream vile, vicious and intellectually vapid crap all the time.

It's as if you aren't taken as "serious" by liberals unless you are foaming at the mouth claiming some kind of victim status. Otherwise, in Ms. Paglia's books you are Seven Days In May "paranoid".

I Got New Windows

And I am sooo happy!!

Window World - man. Very happy gal!

The Devolution of Media

Forbes.com callin' like it is. Newspapers are dying.

"Something Awful Is Being Done To You"

Read all about it here via TigerHawk (note - this article is heavily linked for references, you could spend the day).

Basically Obama's attempts at corporate taxation are ham-fisted and dangerous and YOU will be the one who pays.

For those of you who know a little about federal personal income or corporate tax, or who just want to get a sense for the scope of the tax increase, I commend to you the more extensive write-up produced by Deloitte Tax. I've clipped some inflammatory excerpts for your morning indigestion, but it is worth scrolling through to get a sense for the breadth and nature of the proposal. The short version is that President Obama is pushing absolutely staggering increases through the corporate and business tax systems. Direct taxes on business are, in general, inefficient and economically disruptive, but they are also peerless in their complexity, which means that few voters and essentially no reporters will make the effort to understand what is being done to them.

"Five Dead-Weight Democrats"

Because turnabout is so much fun.

Good luck getting these jokers re-elected DNC.

It's Okay But Only For The One

Apparently, bank executives can't go off to conventions in Las Vegas but Obama can hold a mega-fundraiser for Reid there without a single concern about ethics whatsoever.

No hypocrisy here, folks. Just move along. Nothing to see.

Pay All Our Lives - For NOTHING

(Copied in full from NRO The Corner)

Social Security is a bad deal. If you're under 40, it's a really bad deal. [David Freddoso]

This afternoon's big news on Capitol Hill is the release of the annual report of the trustees of Social Security. The news is as grim as one might suspect:

The projected point at which tax revenues will fall below program costs comes in 2016 — one year sooner than the estimate in last year’s report.

The projected point at which the Trust Funds will be exhausted comes in 2037 — four years sooner than the estimate in last year’s report...

Over the 75-year period, the Trust Funds would require additional revenue equivalent to $5.3 trillion in today’s dollars to pay all scheduled benefits.

I notice that the trust fund is exhausted in 2037 — just in time for me to retire. But that makes little difference, because there's no money in the trust fund anyway. Every dime has been spent once. The pain begins in 2016, when the revenues are exceeded by the payouts.

A few lawmakers' statements roll in, among them that of Rep. Mike Pence (R, Ind.):

Our nation’s entitlement programs are quickly going bankrupt and yet President Obama has not offered a plan to preserve Medicare and Social Security for our children and grandchildren. Instead the Administration and Democrats in Congress would rather pass a government-controlled health care plan that will deprive roughly 120 million Americans of their current health care coverage and lead to federal bureaucrats denying critical care for patients.

So assuming that the retirement age is pushed back say five to 10 years, right about when we can retire, Social Security will completely collapse. Thanks a freakin' lot you hippie-scumbag-baby-boomers and FDR. Nice ponzi scam you set up for us.