Too Big to Fail, which premieres on HBO on May 23, 2011, features a star studded cast recounting the events that led to the financial crisis and bailouts by the U.S. government in 2008. It is a mini-series packed into a 98-minute made-for-television movie where several essential characters are quickly introduced and where finance and economics are casually discussed. It may help if one has a baseline of knowledge about the crisis before watching the movie. If one doesn’t know who Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Timothy Geithner are or what Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and AIG are, it may prove slightly difficult to follow.

Although the Director, Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, 8 Mile), was limited to telling a very long and complicated story in a very short amount of time, he was able to skillfully pull it off. Perhaps this is because the screenwriter, Peter Gould (Breaking Bad), deftly adapted Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 prize winning New York Times Bestseller, Too Big to Fail.

The cast was right out of a Robert Altman film, there was a large number of well known actors including William Hurt (Paulson – Sec. Treasury), James Woods (Fuld – Lehman Bros), Paul Giamatti (Bernanke – Chair, Federal Reserve), Bill Pullman (Dimon – JPMorgan Chase), Ed Asner (Buffet – Berkshire Hathaway), Billy Crudup (Geithner – President, Federal Reserve), Matthew Modine (Thain – CIT Group), Tony Shalhoub (Mack – Morgan Stanley), Topher Grace (Wilkinson), Cynthia Nixon (Davis), and many others. They all looked and played their parts very well with the exception that there seemed to be no effort made toward sounding like the people they played. It was difficult to get past the notable voices of the actors. Paul Giamatti sounds like Paul Giamatti and nothing like Ben Bernanke. Hurt sounded nothing like Paulson. Crudup nothing like Geithner. Perfection wasn’t necessary, but it seemed as though there was little to no effort made at all by the actors to at least sound a little more like the real people they were portraying and less like themselves.

The story opens on a  shot of Ronald Reagan. It is news footage of a speech he gives on deregulation. Credits play as we see an image of Clinton signing a piece of legislation as the audio of newsmakers make mention that this is Congress’ bill being singed. Alan Greenspan is seen and states, “Don’t regulate for regulation’s sake,” which is followed by Bush proclaiming everyone should live out the American dream and own their own home. Miscellaneous clips talks of high profits and subprime loans, and then mortgage meltdown and government bailout.

At this point, I am thinking this film is going to be about blame… and that blame is going to be deregulation ushered in by Reagan, the Republican Congress during the Clinton years, Bush 43, and Reagan through Bush’s Federal Reserve appointee, Alan Greenspan.

This prompts me to check the cast and crew to see who they support and if they are bringing their agenda to this story in their hopes to rewrite history and put Republicans in a negative light and Democrats in a positive light before the election in 2012. And, of course, the Director and the Writer are both ardent Obama supporters. All those at HBO support Obama like Co-President Eric Kessler, Co-President Richard Plepler, President of HBO entertainment Sue Naegle, President of HBO Films Len Amato and Executive Producers Paula Weinstein, Carol Fenelon, and Ezra Swerdlow. Even the Cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau and Casting Director Alexa Fogel have contributed to Obama’s 2008 campaign. And the Obama supporting list of actors is long too: Topher Grace, William Hurt, Matthew Modine, Cynthia Nixon, and Amy Carlson. As if that’s not enough, there are many other ardent left-wingers like Paul Giamatti, Bill Pullman, Tony Shalhoub, and Ed Asner.

Then the story opens on James Woods playing Dick Fuld, Chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers… an ardent Democrat and Obama supporter. James Woods stands out as the political maverick in the cast. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Woods is quoted as saying, “I’ve always said that the next Obama slogan should be, ‘Barack Obama: Putting America Out of Business,’ because that’s what he’s doing.” So I decided to turn off my bias filter and give this story a chance.

As the story unfolded, I saw that the villains in this film weren’t the Republicans, rather it was a single villain… the total and complete financial collapse of our nation, or as Bernanke puts it, “[replaying] the depression of the 1930s. Only this time… far, far worse.” So, regardless of any one American’s political affiliation watching this film, total and complete financial collapse is an enemy we can all collectively desire to defeat.

The heroes, however, that’s a little more complicated. The actual heroes of the story are Republicans Henry Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury), Ben Bernanke (Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve), and Independent Timothy Geithner (President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York). They artfully maneuver their way through the minefield of economic collapse. Bear Stearns has already collapsed, Lehman Brothers is on the brink, Merrill Lynch next, and with all this going on, AIG – the safety net for all these creditors – was in the process of imploding from its own lack of liquidity and inability to meet its obligations. If AIG falls, all the banks fall. People would pull their money out of their banks and there would be no George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) trying to stop the “run on the bank” by convincing his depositors to take only what they need from his honeymoon stash. America, as we know it, would be in ruins.

Every maneuver in their quest to stabilize the markets is met with unpredictable reactions. Once they believe they’ve averted disaster, the pundits, investors, and citizens react differently than expected. It’s a reminder of Nobel winning economist F.A. Hayek’s precept that, “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”

But in the end, as we all know, it was capital injections in the form of a Troubled Asset Relied Plan (TARP) that would “save the day.” In short, the plan would see the U.S. government purchase assets and equity from all financial institutions, even if they didn’t need it, in order to stabilize and strengthen the financial sector. As Bernanke put it, the upside would be stabilizing banks faster, the downside would be nationalizing a few banks. Their plan to soften the blow was that they would force private banks to participate in this plan under law, but that the government would not have a voting interest or the ability to tell the banks how they use the money injected into their coffers… leaving the question to the viewer, “They will lend it out, won’t they?”

But, was TARP the right solution? If one believes it was, then the heroes of this story are without a doubt Republicans Paulson and Bernanke. But, if one believes it wasn’t the right solution, then the Republicans are just kicking the can down the road. Regardless, the story is a quest for a private solution, according to Paulson.

As Republican public relations guru Jim Wilkson (Topher Grace) says at one point, “You just can’t hand the banks massive piles of cash. Nobody’s going to go for it. To the Republicans, it’s nationalization. To the Democrats, it’s a bailout. And the banks are going to go ballistic.”

The story is well crafted and builds suspense out of the unexciting topics of finance and economics. There were parts that bothered me, like making the Republican Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox, look like an immature boob, or Republican presidential candidate Senator McCain look like he is clueless on economic matters contrasted by Senator Obama’s grip on the subject, or simplistically blaming deregulation while omitting the fault of Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, or that derivatives and subprime loans were born during Clinton’s presidency, or more importantly that in 2006 Republicans pleaded with the Democratically-controlled Congress to begin taking measures by pulling the reigns back on Fannie and Freddie to mitigate the impending economic disaster.

Those criticisms, however, were offset by so many of the lines delivered by Topher Grace’s character, Jim Wilkson, who best resembled the attitudes and feelings of most Americans during this time. At one point, it is suggested that the government purchases up the toxic assets of the banks, to which he responds, “Ohhh, call it cash for trash,” he also calls nationalization “the N-word” and that it is un-American, and he suggests that the government running the banks would be like the government running the Post Office, which they “run like a dream.” Another character addresses the issue that the government having the ability to dictate compensation would be the biggest “brain drain this country has ever seen.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is characterized as something like the head of the Mafia. Her character comes across as an elitist snob, which I particularly enjoyed.

The movie was a surprise. Although it wasn’t 100 percent balanced, it was enough for this right-winger to actually enjoy it. And the filmmakers did a pretty decent job packing in a lot of characters and a lot of story into a short amount of time. If Obama-loving HBO can pull off the upcoming Sarah Palin story, Game Change, and the Dick Cheney movie, Angler, with the same deftness and fairness, I will be pleasantly surprised.  Better yet… I will be astonished.

Like many Americans, on October 3, 2008 my world changed. That afternoon, Congress had passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, also known as the Wall Street Bailout.  Like many Americans, I had written Congress, had called the Congressional switchboard, had done everything I could to let my voice be heard. But my government had not listened. I grew up in the 80s, at a time when kids were still taught America was a good idea, because we were a free people with a voice. That Friday I discovered, along with many other Americans, that I no longer had a voice in my government. Somehow, now I was no longer a member of We The People. On paper I was, but in the unwritten evolving “Constitution” of Congressional precedent, Wall Street and special interests were The People who mattered now. Standing there in my kitchen, washing my dishes, watching my kids play in the dwindling daylight, I felt small before the face of my government, and I felt a deep solidarity with all those people who had called the Congressional switchboard with me.

But unlike many Americans, I happen to be a college professor who researches how to understand and model complex systems. My doctoral work dealt with how metaphor and narrative model complexity in economics and neuroscience. All very wonkish to be sure. This work earned me an invitation to research and lecture at the Joint Forces Staff College, Norfolk VA, on how military commanders can lead, understand, and model complex operational environments in real time.

It was my days working in development and movie production in Indie Hollywood that first convinced me of the power of narrative. Narrative is not only found in literature books, or movies themselves, but in days on set, in the hundreds of production details, in shot choices, in schedules, in actor issues, and all financial decisions that go into making a feature film. Complex systems are understood through narrative.

During the week that followed the passage of TARP, I reviewed the news coverage of the Bailout and sensed parts of the story were missing. DC and the media all said that TARP was necessary, but was it? Really? Why had TARP encountered so much opposition in the House when all the power brokers supported it? Why had the Bailout failed on the Monday vote? Why did it pass so easily in the Senate? What changed the minds of those who flipped their votes to support it? Who were the people on the inside who were actually fighting the bill? What did the power brokers do to stop them? And why aren’t those who fought the Bailout getting to tell their side of the story?

The more I researched the data, spoke with eyewitnesses, and reflected on what I know of the way complex systems behave, the more a conviction arose in me that a complex political battle had been fought inside Congress, one that did not easily fit parties or political organizations. In an atmosphere of great panic, a powerful few, with much to lose, used the system of American government to save themselves. Those who fought them were actually taking the stand that we, so many of us, were asking them to take.  Given my background in both film production and complex systems, I realized I had the available resources to understand this battle and work with other filmmakers to bring the inside story of this monumental event to the big screen.

Now, after two years of extensive research, including off-the-record interviews with the eyewitness congressman, staff members, and other witness, my production company is partnering with Advent Film Group, a Virginia based production company, to produce RED SEPTEMBER, a theatrical feature film recounting the inside story of the fight against the 2008 Bailout of Wall Street. As George Escobar, founder of Advent Film Group explains, “Other movies about the Bailout are focused on Wall Street. RED SEPTEMBER is the only film centered on Congress. It shows clearly how Congress, not Wall Street, caused the financial crisis. Going into the 2012 election year, this movie will be a powerful rallying cry for voters who seek to rein in Congress and the President.”

Consistently, in off-the-record interviews, I heard the fight against this bill was the most bi-partisan cause that Congressmen could remember. RED SEPTEMBER tells the story of this great bi-partisan fight for our country. Current polls show that the debt is the most important issue on the minds of 2012 voters. Recently Democrat and Republican leadership negotiated to cut 38 billion dollars from the budget, but it turned out that actual cuts, without the funny math, amounted to only a few hundred million. Another budget cutting proposal currently offered by Republicans will cut 6 trillion from the budget, but that 6 trillion is only from what President Obama wants to spend over the next ten years, not from the actual budget. Given the looming debt crisis, many are wondering why the government is not taking decisive action to get its financial house in order. Even Standard & Poors is threatening to downgrade the rating on US sovereign debt. After watching RED SEPTEMBER and seeing how many of these officials behave under pressure behind closed doors, the current political absurdities will make a lot more sense.

The production of RED SEPTEMBER will be fashioned after two classic films: APOLLO 13, depicting the intensity of a crisis, and MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, demonstrating the courage necessary in doing what’s right for the people and by the people.

My partners and I expect RED SEPTEMBER to resonate with the Tea Party and many independents. We’ve been careful not to water down the economics of the Bailout or the financial crisis. Like the recent film INCEPTION, RED SEPTEMBER respects the intelligence of the audience. Some in the media have popularized a caricature of the Tea Party as an anti-intellectual, anti-academic, hick movement, but the concerns of the Tea Party are far more intellectually defensible, and I think the film will show that.

Michael Snyder, Advent co-founder, has said, “This story is critical because the Bailout gave rise to the Tea Party. The Bailout is also widely recognized as America’s watershed moment toward overt socialism. It opened the door to trillion dollar deficits that now plague our economic future. RED SEPTEMBER shows what we must do to reverse our course.”

Nevertheless, this project has caught the attention of conservative activists, actors, and investors. They’re attracted to RED SEPTEMBER because it shows the solution and the choice for the next generation: either restore America to what the forefathers intended for their children, or sell it and enslave them. “Investors have been calling even as the final offering paperwork is still being finalized,” Snyder explains. “We’re on a fast-track schedule to get funding in place for a summer 2011 production start. We want RED SEPTEMBER to be a tipping point for electing true leaders in 2012 who will defy the corrupt forces of Washington and defend American liberty.”

The 19th Century political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “A democracy cannot get at the truth without experience, and many nations perish for lack of the time to discover their mistakes.” What Tocqueville observed almost two hundred years ago is equally true today. When democracy forgets its experience, it forgets the truth it discovered. The ramming of the 2008 Bailout of Wall Street through Congress, against the loud protests of the American people, slap-startled American democracy to the reality that Washington no longer represents the People. Rather, it steals from them. This knowledge led to protests and a change in the balance of power in Congress in 2010. But the momentum toward corruption, big government, entitlements, bailouts, etc, is so great, that only the concentrated effort of the American people over time can change that momentum. But democracy can forget its experience. If it does, no matter the party in power, momentum against these evils will halt, and America will return to her self destructive course. To sustain a long war, we must remember why we fight.

We need leadership.

Who in our government has the courage to look directly upon the festering face of our debt crisis? Upon the complex vascular structure of political issues that feed it? Who has the courage to lead us clear of it? America has had great leaders before. What would that kind of leadership look like today?

The first step is to remember our history. This is why I believe RED SEPTEMBER is so important at this moment in our history.

Historical fact supports that George Washington was a great leader. We need not be suspicious of that even though we live in a cynical age. There really are great women and men. If we want great leaders, we must be faithful to remember the faithfulness of great leaders who have gone before us. Especially given the cultural importance of history and of accurately remembering our history. History is a story, and our history is our story. Because our history is a story, and because our current reality flows out of our real past, it is vitally important that we tell it right.

This is because values are meaningless without stories.

Courage. Justice. Sacrifice. Faithfulness.

Without stories, all virtues are just words. Look at them. To see them each on a page, followed by a period, makes the eye stumble. Each is nothing without a person acting, and a person acting with courage, or faithfulness, is part of a story. Values are not intelligible without stories. To destroy our nation’s values, an adversary must change our traditions and history, and, specifically, make our citizens either forget our history or believe the values of our forefathers no longer apply.

Those who would undo and overtake our nation are doing both. It’s not enough to preserve the memory of our history. Cynicism in the present will make us treat our true past as mere legend.

In September 2008, America learned irrefutably that we no longer have a government by the people and for the people, and we will live with the consequences of that month for years to come, as this film illuminates. But what America doesn’t know, is that in that great struggle, we did have leaders with the character of our forefathers. Leaders who were willing to put their security and sacred honor on the line for the People.  The nation needs to see that our national character is not a legendary folk story. There are people like that today. And if we are faithful, we can be that nation again. But we need to see what that character looks like in the 21st Century.

And there were people who demonstrated that character in real recent history. If we want to be a nation of people with this kind of character, we must remember with esteem those people who demonstrate the values and character of our founders. And if we who love America, and the values of our founders, do not call “honorable” those who live out those values, who will?

Those who name win.

If we cannot name this kind of virtue and character as “honorable” in our present day, we by our silence cede the initiative to those who want to “change… our history….” If we let our values only be the stuff of legend, we rob them of their power to give a spine to our next generation, and we make men without chests. As C.S. Lewis writes, “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” It goes without saying that honor is worthy of praise. But when many shame what is honorable, noble character is all the more praiseworthy.

Motion pictures are irrefutably the most vivid way to mass-communicate narrative. And narrative (history) establishes values. If we want to have people like the founders, like Washington, in the future, we need to show our nation, especially our young people, in the way that resonates with our culture, what that kind of moral character factually looks like in the present, and that it’s possible to lead as that kind of character-driven leader in the real world.

If you want America to have those kinds of leaders then believe in RED SEPTEMBER.

To learn more or for interviews, visit: www.RedSeptemberMovie.com or contact Michael Collender at 626-214-8920, or email producer@3-r-productions.com. Mike Snyder can be reached at 540-338-8023, or email mike.advent@gmail.com.

So the guy makes a big stink and demands that if he is going to be replaced the bank has to buy out his contract.

The bank offers him 30 million dollars to take a hike.

“That isn’t good enough,” the guy says. Not only does he want his money but since he is being let go a lot of his staff will also lose their jobs. So he demands another 12 million so they all enjoy a soft landing.

The bank says “ok” and pays out the money.

How do you think the Obama Administration would have reacted? What do you think the coverage of this event would have been in the mainstream media? I think there would have been all sorts of outrage in the press and on TV. I also think every leftie from President Obama to Nancy Pelosi to David Axelrod would be screaming about getting our money back from these thieves.

So why is nobody screaming about the huge failure-bonus being paid with our money to Conan O‘Brien? Because that is exactly what the money NBC paid to O’Brien is; a huge golden parachute for failing on The Tonight Show. More importantly, it’s money from the people of the United States. I wish I had a blackboard so I could go a little Glenn Beck on you, but follow me for a minute.

NBC, National Barack Communications, and its other so-called news outlets like MSNBC, are a part of General Electric. General Electric is run by Obama loyalist and advisor Jeffrey Immelt, who until recently allowed GE to continue to do business with Iran through middlemen, as documented by Bill O’Reilly. General Electric, as part of the economic bailout, received billions in loan guarantees for its GE Capital division. So why no Obama outrage over a company that took our money and paid out huge dough to an under-performer? Why no Tim Geithner or Larry Summers demanding that salaries at GE and its subsidiaries be kept to $500,000?

Imagine if Conan had a real job, perhaps at a bank or one of those evil health insurance companies the current administration loves to demonize, and he dropped the business by half when he took over. Would the President and his friends be alright with him walking away with a huge payout? Why is it cool to honor Mr. O’Brien’s contract but not the contracts of hundreds of bankers and other Wall Street employees who at one time actually made money for their employers?

My theory is that like AIG and GM, Conan was too big to fail!

Side Note: Why is it that Mr. Obama wants to make sure there are no banks that are too big to fail but doesn’t feel the same about car companies? Could it be that car companies have union employees whose bosses funnel hundreds of millions from their members’ dues to the Democrat Party?

Minority broadcasters are asking tax-cheat Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for financial assistance.  Sounds like the financial and auto industries, and it is.  These broadcasters, including the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, the Inner City Broadcasting Coalition, the Spanish Broadcasting System, and others say they can bounce back because “unlike the auto business, broadcasting has been healthy for many years.”  Has it now?

Ad revenues for broadcasters started declining severely in late 2007 and throughout 2008 were down up to 40% in some cases. The ad decline not only impacted broadcasters, it impacted newspaper groups and many such as the Seattle Post Intelligencer and others have gone out of business.  Stock prices of some radio groups have fallen to absolutely nothing. So, minority broadcasters have a rosy picture ahead? 

Most industry financial forecasters say local ad revenue for 2009 will be down 22% and most ad revenue is derived locally. This will continue into 2010 and these forecasters say (maybe) it will begin to turn in the last half of 2010. But, we also heard that forecast for 2009 and it was false. 

As the nation digs itself further into debt and unemployment continues to increase, media is being hit as hard as any sector.  But, there is an important point to be made.  Perhaps suspect business models should be allowed to fail.  If there is bailout money for minority broadcasters, what about bailout money for the nation’s non-minority broadcasters who face what many believe is their only path – bankruptcy.  The answer to that is a forgone conclusion.  Minorities will get a bailout because after all they are minorities and deserve special treatment.  But, other broadcasters – especially the consolidated media will not get a dime.  No media should be bailed out. 

The bottom line is the table is set for more government intrusion into media.  When government bails out media, it will want a hand in how that media is operated.  It’s exactly what the government wants.  Red flags should be waving en masse.  Any media that considers itself an objective voice should refuse government bailout money and fall on the sword even if it means going out of business.  Where government plays a role in the nation’s financial structure of media, danger to our core freedoms exists.  We already have National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and even with taxpayer money these organizations are hurting.   

We need to keep the fox out of the chicken coop and let the free marketplace selectively reward or destroy businesses as the free market economy was meant to work.  But, I forget, there is no “free” marketplace in the Obama Administration’s game-plan.  Expect the lineup at the public trough to grow longer.

–

From the USA Today:

The still untitled film, which opens Oct. 2, will zero in on the corporations and politicians he says caused the global financial crash.

Wall Street robber barons are Moore’s new on-screen enemy.

“The movie is not going to be an economics lesson; it’s going to be more like a vampire movie,” the filmmaker jokes. “Instead of the main characters feasting on the blood of their victims, they feast on the money. And they never seem to get enough of it.”

When the collapse walloped the country last September, Moore says he knew not only that it would matter to regular people, but also that the inherent decadence was ripe for his style of satire.

“If you go to see my movies, even if you don’t agree with everything in the movies, you’re going to have a good laugh,” Moore says. “I want them to walk out at the end saying ‘Wow, that was something!’ And in this case, maybe they also walk out asking the ushers, ‘Um, excuse me. Where are the pitchforks and torches?’”

Moore’s cinematic hey-day has hopefully passed. ”Sicko” made less than 25% of what “Fahrenheit 9/11″ cleared, and Moore’s last film, a love letter to himself, ended up being distributed on “Captain Mike’s” website … free of charge.

Admittedly, while I agree with nothing Moore stands for, that doesn’t mean he’s not a talented filmmaker. During the summer of 2007, the summer of the terrible threes: Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, Oceans 3, Bourne 3, Pirates 3… “Sicko” was the rare entertaining bright spot.

As propaganda, however, “Sicko” failed and then some. If anything, the film’s lack of intellectual firepower and comically absurd portrayal of Cuba’s health care system probably set the socialized medicine cause back a few years.

As chance would have it, at the very moment Moore was summoning everything he had to convince me to back his cause, I was awaiting final test results regarding a spot on my lung. A big one. Combine my family history of cancer and my personal history of alarmism and you got yourself one sorry s.o.b. ready to renounce everything he’s ever stood for if it means just one more day of life. But even with the Grim Reaper sharing my tub of popcorn, Moore’s engaging but profoundly stupid propaganda piece only increased my gratitude for our wildly imperfect health care system.

The spot on my lung turned out to be nothing, by the way. But I am closer to Jesus.

Barney Frank I ain’t touchin’… I’m not a homophobe; I simply suffer from an irrational childhood fear of Elmer Fudd.

And Nancy Pelosi?  I’m sending my friend Andrew Breitbart in to cross-check her hard into the glass.  (I know he’s been dyin’ to get the go-ahead.)  I am certain that if I confronted her, she would hit me with that death ray from those Neutronium eyeballs of hers…the same ones that hypnotize the Washington press corps into not busting up every time she opens her mouth.

But seriously, folks.  I don’t know why anyone’s surprised.  Obama for two years told us what he’s all about.  Made it clear as day.  And everyone just sort of…looked the other way. ”Oh, he’s not a socialist!  He’s just saying those things to keep the far left loonies happy.  You watch, he’ll govern from the center.”

Oh really?  Well, it’s been only two months and let’s take a look at what he’s done.  (Everybody follow along, and please feel free to add anything I’m missing.)

Mr. Obama took Mr. Bush’s bad idea of hundred-billion dollar bailouts and ran with it – on steroids.  When Bush’s bailout did nothing to revive the ailing economy, did our new president say, “Wait, that doesn’t work – let’s try something else.”

Uh…no.  Instead he figured that because having taxpayers borrow hundreds of billions of dollars from Communist China and handing it over to banks, insurance companies and auto giants to ‘stimulate’ economic activity didn’t do any of that…why he should just go ahead and quadruple the amount and try again!  That outta do it!

Then, more than half of his cabinet appointees turn out to be either tax cheats or plagued with scandal.  (The same people who are hell-bent to raise our taxes and ‘keep us honest’.)

Obama goes on You Tube and does a touchy-feely Neville Chamberlain appeasement stance with Iran’s Ahmadinejad, a man from a culture who views such behavior as weak and womanly (sorry – it’s actually an insult to women to call Barry womanly; my wife could kick his ass), doing a pathetic Rodney King “C-c-can we…can we just get along?” with the Iranian psychopath.

Then, his choice for Treasury Secretary, the one man, apparently, uniquely suited to fix the ailing economy, Tim Geithner, lays out plans to regulate all of American business; and in effect, give the Obama administration carte blanche power to inject it’s will directly into any private business it deems necessary, and for any reason whatsoever.

So…let’s get this into perspective.  The guys from government, the people who can’t make the post office run well, the folks who have never owned a business themselves…are now going to oversee, regulate, and in essence meddle with the mainspring of American progress – private businesses.

Just yesterday, Mr. Obama took that little power adjustment for a spin – and promptly fired the head of General Motors.  Did he consult with the stockholders in a hastily constructed shareholders’ meeting?  Take a vote?  Ask for comments?  Show of hands?

No.

Too bad the phrase “a confederacy of dunces” is already taken, or I’d be tempted to use it here.

But …we’re told by the press there’s a “crisis of unprecedented proportion”, one that “the markets can’t fix.”   And my fav… “only the Federal government can fix this crisis.”  Reminds me of Ronald Reagan’s nine most terrifying words in the English language, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”  (Also – Jackie Chan getting his ass kicked in Shanghi Noon, and Owen Wilson, trying to help, making it worse, and Chan shouts, “Stop helping me!!”)  That’s what the American taxpayer is feeling like screaming right now – “Stop helping me!!!!!!”

Obama is a typical Big Government Goon.  The typical BGG has a standard way of dealing with problems.  (And make no mistake, any sort of problem, once it can be stretched and twisted into the concept of being a ‘crisis’, represents one thing, and one thing only:  An opportunity to control, for the ultimate goal to gain personal Power.)

Yes, we underestimated his ambition.  We didn’t think he’d really do all the things he said he was going to do.  (well…in our defense, nothing he said he was going to do was very specific.  Mostly generalities about hope and ‘change’…yeah, close Gitmo…get us out of Iraq…no time limits, but yeah, that was specific.)  But he really meant it that he was going to change this country.  Just… no one actually believed he meant he was going to change this country into something completely unrecognizable from anything we’ve ever known.  (At least those of us who have never lived behind the Iron Curtain, or known the horrors of a despotic dictatorship.)

But look at who Obama’s mentors have been all his life – A Black liberation theologist, Reverend Wright… two avowed Marxists, Saul Alinsky and Noam Chomsky… and an unrepentant terrorist bomber, Bill Ayers.  Obama came up through the ranks of the Chicago political system, the most corrupt group of hacks, con artists and extortionists in the country.  And rather than learning the American dream in the business community, Obama learned how to intimidate, manipulate, and scam the system as a ‘Community Organizer’.  (This term, for reasons unclear to this columnist, seems to hold some sort of nobility, carrying with it a misplaced virtue that is the substance of…smoke.   And mirrors.)

So, the good B. Hussein Obama organized within the communities.  But, organized them…to do what exactly?  Find funds.  Get money.  Guilt various businesses and branches of government to yield to white guilt and cough up some dough.  And thus, noble and honorable organizations such as ACORN come into existence.  Strong-arming and intimidation raised to an art form.

But I think Barry is not content.  As arrogant and audacious as he’s already proven to be, I believe we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet, sports fans.   No…just as we underestimated the amount of damage he wished to inflict (I’m sorry – social engineering and progress) upon our Constitution, our traditions, our entire American way of life…there’s more to come.

And it’s not going to be pretty.

We apparently are in the most catastrophic economic crisis ever in the history of mankind.  But ya know?  I drove on the freeway this morning and it was pretty full.  People driving their clean, shiny cars off to work.  Dressed nicely, smiling, going about their day.  I saw people shopping in the stores.  They’re going out to dinner.  They’re ordering online.  Commerce is happening.  I do not see hundreds of people begging in the streets.  I have not heard about a single food riot.  No cardboard box cities sprouting up.  Door-to-door begging?  Lawlessness in the streets?  Okay, so it’s a little harder to borrow money, a little harder to refinance your house, or get a loan to buy a new car.

So what??

Does this ‘crisis’ justify transforming the most successful nation in the history of mankind into some socialist Euro-trash model of twisted central-authority collectivist oligarchy??

My fellow Americans…all I can say now is…

Quick!   Before he gets back.  Let’s do it!  We’ve only got eight days.  He’s going on a five-country Apology Tour, meeting with countries upset over 1) the Iraq War, and 2) treatment of enemy combatants at Gitmo.  He’s got a lot of groveling and appeasing to do, but he’s coming back in just over a week, so we’ve got to act fast!  He’s already screwed this nation up almost beyond recognition, and it won’t be easy.  We’ve got to restore our country so that Liberty, not government is the predominant force.  We must re-institute Capitalism as the primary engine of Freedom, and put government back into its proper role – an institution that works for us, not against us.

Breitbart — Hit Pelosi high, she’ll go down like bag of used condoms.  And don’t worry about Barney Frank…I think Lou Ferrigno is going to go have a little ‘chat’ with him.

Something didn’t sound quite right when I listened to Jon Stewart’s set-up for his sarcastic blast of CNBC’s Rick Santelli as a hypocrite who thinks federal bailout money for corporate America is just fine while a helping hand from Uncle Sam (a bailout by another name) for strapped mortgage holders isn’t. So I reverted to the method I’d come to rely on while an investigative reporter when I could not follow what a fast talking con artist was actually saying: I transcribed what he said. And sure enough, the words on paper revealed Stewart’s sophistry that my ears could not pinpoint:

Actually, our guest tonight was supposed to be this guy. His name is Rick Santelli. He’s an analyst for CNBC and he’s a former derivatives trader. The reason he became famous was because of a sort of Howard Beale moment on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He had done some critical reporting on the hundreds of billions of dollars of bailout money going to failed banks, failed auto makers and insurers of failed banks and auto makers (laughter). But when it looked like the president wanted a small percentage of that money to go to actual homeowners, whu ho!!!!! (laughter). David Banner became The Incredible Santelli.

As you can plainly see, Stewart admits Santelli was critical of the federal bailout money that went to fat cats. Why that got a laugh makes me wonder whether Stewart’s audience warm-up includes nitrous oxide. But Stewart could not continue with that acknowledgment and still expect to rip Santelli for being a hypocrite, the most dastardly of demons in the pop pantheon of evil (except for those hypocrites on the political left, of course), because he would then be left without the necessary hypocrisy peg on which to hang Santelli for derision. So Stewart did the only thing he could do, he did a quick trick of the tongue to make the listener forget what he just said.

Stewart did that by quickly implying through his energy and tone of voice that Santelli was for big corporate bailouts but against little homeowners in dire straits being given some tax dollar help. The actual switch is obfuscated within the emotional context of Stewart’s transition. It’s a verbal illusion common to con men, comedians, politicians (which covers both) and some others who make their living manipulating people with spoken words. Some have to learn it, others do it naturally. I’ve no idea which category Stewart falls in, but I first had the technique defined to me and demonstrated while working at a carny side show in Ocean City, Maryland one summer. In it, a pitchman would regularly shame hundreds of people at a time for being greedy, dishonest victimizers of his good nature when they would expect to be given a prize he had offered them earlier for free. Call it an oral bait and switch. Some caught on and walked, but enough actually paid for the item to assuage the guilt the pitchman had tricked them into feeling for him and the show to keep a nice cash flow going.

Whether Stewart is good enough to pull off that pitchman’s trick in front of a cold audience I can’t say, but he was certainly good enough to manipulate his warmed studio audience, his predisposed home audience and the national media’s perception (ok, it’s generally predisposed to Stewart’s side too) of what Santelli actually said to what he wanted them to believe he said. He had to in this case because without creating the impression that Santelli was talking out of both sides of his mouth, Stewart’s whole rip would have made no more sense than his mixed Beale and Banner metaphors except in that alternate sophomoric universe where facts and form don’t matter. But isn’t that where we have been culturally stalled for some time? You know (residuals to Caroline Kennedy), the cosmos where even if something isn’t true, it’s still the truth (more on that line later) because the lie validates the biases generally held by most, in this case, who watch Stewart’s show?

But that’s OK — to a point.

Stewart isn’t doing real news and both he and those behind the scenes are candid about that. Comedy Central Network describes “The Daily Show” as the top name in fake news while its writers say “they do not have any journalistic responsibility and that as comedians their only duty is to provide entertainment.” All literally true. So is one wag’s alternate title for Stewart’s show: “We Pander to Liberals & Attack Conservatives without Scruple,” a rather self evident fact. Even so, Stewart is doing satires on the news which means that, like Michael Moore’s “documentaries,” he cannot be hamstrung by fact, because satire is comedy and, as Moore says, “how can comedy be factual?” even if it’s packaged within a form that is by definition supposed to be a documentation of fact?

What is bothersome about Stewart’s “Daily Show” in that respect is that those who watch it, by my observation at least, tend to be some of America’s brightest in terms of an SAT score. My anecdotal conclusion is buttressed somewhat in a 2004 presidential election study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. According to Annenberg researchers, “Daily Show” viewers “know more about election issues than people who regularly read newspapers or watch television news.” Those sampled were asked things like “Who favors allowing workers to invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market?” Answer: Bush. And “Who urges Congress to extend the federal law banning assault weapons?” Answer: Kerry. If those two questions are indicative of the rest and set the current bar for being well informed, we have dumbed down as a people much farther than I ever thought.

But if Stewart’s viewers are the best informed, I must also note that most of those viewers I have contact with also qualify as some of this country’s most arrogant, angry and intellectually dishonest. All are traits of successful sarcasm just as they tend to be endemic to those who are the most sarcastic. I await correction if wrong, but my recollection of Stewart’s vicious, cheap shots (another element of sarcasm) at Tucker Carlson’s expense when he tried to do a friendly interview of Stewart causes me to believe I’m spot on. I’m not a fan of Carlson’s dancing or bow ties either, but he appears to be a genuinely nice man who did nothing to provoke the nastiness that Stewart hit him with. If that behavior was the real Stewart, it reveals a repugnant characteristic I have also found among Stewart’s biggest fans. In short, they are often the luminaries of a dark matter, Parkeresque universe in which an ideological whore can be led to knowledge, but not made to think, even within my own family.

A number of those members are past or present top academics at such schools as Johns Hopkins, Duke, UCLA, Stanford and Harvard. They are different people at different universities but they all have one thing in common: their main TV “news” source is Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show.” Same for most of their faculty friends and students from what I have seen. The reason seems to be that they tend to be angry souls who find vicarious release in Stewart’s attacks on people and ideas they consider “bad” (aka conservative) without having to worry that he will gore their own liberal oxen except as an exercise in tokenism. That is especially disturbing because these are the very people that claim to be learned and open minded, but in fact, often do nothing more than perpetuate long disproved beliefs and even outright academic frauds. There are many examples, but two among the college smorgasbord of deceit will do.

RIGOBERTA MENCHU

When “I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala” won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her book, Menchu’s first person, personally written account of the evils of capitalism and the brutality of the US financed Guatemalan military against her and other Guatemalan indigenous peoples became required reading in many college classrooms. Still is, even after the book was exposed as a fraud. According to those who checked out her story, Menchu did not write the book, a French Marxist did. Neither did the events in the book happen to her as claimed. They were fabricated along Marxist narrative lines to sell that ideology. So why is an academic fraud still being taught as fact? When I asked Marjorie Agosin, head of the Spanish department at Wellesley College that question many years ago, she said, “Even if it isn’t true, it is still the truth.” The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Many professors say they will stand by Rigoberta Menchu’s memoir”) quotes Agosin as saying, “Whether her book is true or not, I don’t care.” Other professors told me the same thing in different words.

MICHAEL BELLESILES:

When Emory University professor Michael A. Bellesiles published “Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture,” he was roundly hailed for having proven the National Rifle Association and its affiliated “gun nuts” had been lying about historical evidence that the Second Amendment was a guarantee of an individual’s right to own a gun. Bellesiles was
awarded Columbia University’s prestigious Bancroft Prize, among others. That was until a researcher named Clayton Cramer discovered that Bellesiles made it all up. Bellesilles was forced to resign from Emory, his publisher pulled the book and Columbia took back its prize. No matter, Oxford University hired Bellesiles as a distinguished professor and put his book back on the market where it continues to spread an academic fraud.

True to the origin of the term, sarcasm is an especially appropriate form of humor to attack those one hates because of the way it shreds its targets when done well. Stewart certainly does that. But if all humor is redirected hostility and those who tell jokes for a living are inflicting their own inner pain via words that they would like to inflict by physical force if they had the nerve to do it, as I am told, how many comedians besides Ray Romano would dare admit that they would be accountants if their fathers had told them they loved them? More to the point, do we really want to have a comedian’s personal demons setting the standard for national discourse?

If you didn’t grow up in the ’70s watching Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings, this might need a bit of setup:

Catchy, huh? I don’t think they even had the term “brainworm” back then.

And now, with apologies to ABC, legendary vocalist Jack Sheldon, and my childhood:

For more of Batton Lash’s great stuff, check out exhibitapress.com!

Stage Right explains, “There is a problem with the American Theatre.” But American street theatre, if judging from the The Taxpayers Clearing House Prize Patrol, offers no similar cause for concern. No budget? No problem. Conscript Senators Chuck Schumer and Olympia Snowe as unwilling players in your drama. Use AIG’s headquarters and the U.S. Capitol as a set. Rain dollar bills upon the Secretary of the Treasury as if he were a stripper. That’s just what a bunch of twentysomething amateur thesbians did in their hilarious guerrilla theater YouTube short, The Taxpayers Clearing House Prize Patrol.