On his Wednesday show, Adam Carolla interviewed Andrew Breitbart to discuss Andrew’s new book, Righteous Indignation. Let me assure you, you’ll LOVE this duo. Andrew’s been a guest on Carolla’s show before, but this was hands down the most entertaining so far.

Check out some of the comments from Carolla’s regular listeners – not surprisingly, some aren’t exactly Breitbart fans (which makes it that much more enjoyable for me, at least).

Carolla tackled topics with Andrew on just about everything – from Righteous Indignation to Communism, the Left’s Racist meme, the racket of building permits and greenwashing, and unions, just to name a few. And a whole lotta LA, which, as Andrew illustrates for us, ain’t what is used to be. The two were on such a rant roll over our waning freedoms, Carolla, who has described himself as having libertarian leanings, almost sounded like another grassroots activist. Who knows? Sounds like he may just have a bit of Presidential appeal. Andrew certainly thought so!

“By the way, are you aware that the Republican Party has nobody running for the presidency right now, and if you had put that out there by mistake and people heard that, and that was your spiel, you would have gone up to Donald Trump level, you would have gone up to 17%?”

Oh yeah – Carolla’s also not a big fan of Maxine Waters. Not. At. All. Which reminds me, this audio is NSFW.

(more…)

Did Dr. Martin Luther King really give his life to protect the inherently corrupt system of Public Union collective bargaining? The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and whoever else is part of this April 4th AFL CIO “We-R-1″ protest– oops, I mean “Day of Action,” sure seems to think so. Below the fold, you’ll see their call to arms to keep the wretched process of corrupting our democracy alive. But first we go to the videotape!

—–

You see, this is how it works — at least how it works in my home state of Wisconsin:

1. Public Sector Unions give upwards of 90% of their political donations to help get Democrats elected.

2. With the help of all this public union money, Democrats get elected to local and state offices.

3. Guess who the Public Sector Unions then collective bargain with? That’s right, the very same people who they helped get elected. And guess what the elected Democrats give away in order to keep that union money coming into their campaign coffers? Taxpayer money! You want to retire at 55 with full pension and benefits? No problem. We’ll just raise the money by increasing the tax burden on the working class. Sure, that means private sector workers will have to work till their 70 due to the tax burden necessary to cover public worker pensions, but sometimes the “social justice” omelette requires a few broken eggs. 

4. And yet somehow, with all these “rights” and a salary and benefit package worth around $100k a year for nine months work, Milwaukee Public School teachers still manage to not educate their students.

Yeah, that’s what King gave his life for.

(more…)

Scores of people gathered this weekend on the national mall as part of the One Nation Working Together rally, offering, in the words of one of the event’s featured speakers, NAACP President Ben Jealous, “the antidote to the Tea Party,” and promoting liberal answers to issues ranging from job creation to immigration, to education and the environment – namely, more government intervention and higher taxes and regulation.

Actually, the attendance was easily in the tens of thousands, but sometimes it’s fun to take a cue from the MSM and just understate any fact that doesn’t serve your narrative.

Still, despite the impressive numbers, the predominately white rally does differ from Glenn Beck’s recent Restore Honor rally, and the Tea Party movement in general, in one way that illuminates the core difference between left and right.

Specifically, the Tea Party tends to be a movement of individuals, each pursuing their own interests, self-organizing in defense of their own rights, whereas the One Nation Working Together rally was the product of partnerships between over 400 labor, civil-rights, and other liberal organizations, many of whom bussed in their members by the thousands to bolster their numbers.

If there is any better picture of the top-down, coercive nature of liberalism than their approach to “grass roots” organizing, I’m not sure what it is. (more…)

The Wrap:

An international group of actors’ unions, including SAG, has warned members not to work on “The Hobbit” because of failed efforts to organize the film’s New Zealand production — a move Peter Jackson disparages as a “power grab.”

Members were advised [1] in an alert sent over the weekend “not to accept work on this non-union production” of the MGM blockbuster-to-be, which is still awaiting the official greenlight from financially troubled MGM before shooting — tentatively scheduled for next year — can begin.

Guilds involved include SAG, AFTRA and several international unions. The New Zealand unit of an Australian union had made attempts to organize the film, according to the alert.

But Jackson fired back in a statement Sunday, saying the Kiwi organization represents a very tiny percentage of actors there, and is leveraging his production to gain membership.

Actors guilds are known to issue member alerts of this sort from time to time, but it is extremely rare for a major studio franchise film to be involved.

Here’s the full text of the alert:  (more…)

The Screen Actors Guild just announced that a whole lot of its members will soon be without health insurance. That’s because the union has lost most of its clout and income. Now, you don’t become an actor because security is high on your wish list. If that’s what you want, go to work for the post office (where one of your fellow workers may shoot you). But we used to have a pretty good union with pretty good benefits. What happened?

Fifty four years ago, I was elected first vice president of the New York local of the television actors union which came to be known as AFTRA. My fellow board members and I fought hard to convince members to merge with the Screen Actors Guild.  Double the size of the union, double the bargaining power! But some of the members resisted, afraid that the number of actors competing with them for jobs would multiply. (Virtually all work produced for television was live and did not involve film and therefore SAG. Why let all those west coast people in on a good thing!)

As time went by, things shifted, more and more shows began to be produced on film and SAG became dominant. Now, it was the film actors turn to fear competition. Why let that little TV union in on a good thing. There’s almost no live TV left, these guys are nothing but news-casters and talk show hosts.  Every attempt at merger has failed because a vocal frightened minority in first one union and then the other fought tooth and nail against it on the grounds that there would be more actors competing against them for jobs. These actors are, I think, insecure in their talent so, naturally, scared of competition. (more…)

With the health care debate getting loud and furious, you have to wonder why Hollywood has been so remarkably silent. Maybe the Celeberati don’t care whether citizens have health care, or maybe they are happy with the generous coverage they get from SAG and AFTRA, and believe the President who tells them they will get to keep their current coverage.

It can’t be accidental. Certainly there must be one celebutard who has an opinion on the debate. I long for a wonderful bit of wisdom from Sheryl Crow, perhaps a suggestion to save costs and the environment by washing and re-using band-aids.

Where is Barbra Streisand? Barbra has been noticeably absent from all political debate lately. Probably not coincidentally, she just released a new album. Perhaps her handlers advised Babs to tone it down; that her target audience is  composed primarily of senior sitizens now, a demographic that has a tendency to skew conservative and worry greatly about their health care. (The profit motivation is an  awesome force, strong enough to restrain torrents of wisdom from the Great Barbra Streisand.) (more…)

I’m a member of two performing arts unions. I pay dues to two organizations that actively support efforts to influence producers to hire fewer actors of my gender and race. They also spend millions of my dollars supporting candidates and issues which are anathema to me. Here’s the latest example: The first letter below was sent out to all AFTRA members urging them to send this form letter supporting Card Check to their representatives in Congress. They urged us to customize the letter so it wouldn’t look so “form,” so I did! I don’t think my letter is what they had in mind. I urge all SAG and AFTRA members who are readers here to do the same. (more…)