—–

In these trying times, this story of one man’s unrelenting efforts to succeed can serve as an inspiration to many. I know “His Way” inspired me. After learning how Jerry cold-called Elvis Presley’s Manager, Colonel Tom Parker, every day for an entire year for the right to take Elvis on tour (for the first time in nearly a decade), I decided to roll the dice and take my own film out on the road to build an audience. Concluding our interview with Douglas McGrath, director of the documentary “His Way,” we talked about more of the film, including the amazing segments on Weintraub’s experiences with Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker and Frank Sinatra.

KW: How did you go about choosing which stories or chapters to cover or not cover from the book?

DM: Well, I didn’t do it that way. I didn’t think of them in terms of chapters. I just thought of them in terms of stories. But, I knew we’d have ninety minutes, an hour and forty-five maybe at most and I just thought, there’s no way to go through everything. I just thought “I’m going to ask about all the stuff I liked the best and the things that were really the big tent poles of his life.” So, I thought I’d better go with the things that really tell us, without repeating it, what his magic was. And the Elvis story is emblematic of his whole career, you know, that tells you how he started with nothing, he persisted. He won the contract, so to speak, the right to take him. He almost blew it. When you think of 20th Century entertainment, particularly musical entertainment and particularly male musical entertainment — you know, you have Elvis and you have Sinatra. Those guys are the big tent poles in that story.

KW: Jerry’s relationship with Frank Sinatra seemed much more direct than it did with Elvis. His relationship really was with the Colonel (Elvis’s Manager). Did you have to approach the Elvis segment any differently than you did from the Sinatra segment or in trying to work a connection between the two as a bridge?

DM: Oh no, that is a very good question. I don’t remember consciously doing that. You know, we came to the Elvis story first, because in my memory of his life, I worked through it in order so he could kind of work it in order. Sometimes if you’re telling a story about your childhood or some early part of your life, certain feelings come along with these stories that can then add to the overall feeling of what you are talking about. But [with] the Elvis stuff, he was a different guy. Meaning when he came into Elvis’s life, he was “aspiring” at that point. He had some clients, he was successful, meaning he could pay his bills and he was married and had a nice life. But, he was not by any means, what he became and he knew that this was his way out. But when we came to Sinatra… which I knew is the next big seismic event in his professional life… he [Jerry] was then a different person.

He had chased Elvis, but Sinatra came to him. Now nobody was confused about anything in that situation. Sinatra was still tough, extremely powerful and I’m sure a fairly terrifying person to work for, because he had a temper and knew what he wanted and had been a huge star and a big success for, by that point, 30 years or something . And while he wanted Jerry’s help, he was hardly a helpless and frail creative person looking for tough guidance from Jerry. And the Madison Square Garden Concert (“The Main Event,” 1974), Jerry really had to talk him into it. Really had to talk him into it. I think the reason Jerry flew to Las Vegas so quickly when Frank called and sounded so upset [and depressed] was I think he (Jerry) thought, “Oh. I could lose him.” A smart manager will hear something like any kind of qualm in a client’s voice. A smart manager gets on it. A lot of them don’t. Which is why people change managers. But, Jerry knew that was “his guy” at that point.

KW: Does that come from growing up as he did [in the Bronx and Brooklyn] and being able to shake a guy’s hand and knowing if he is a good guy or a bad guy?

DM: I think you’re right. I think you’re right. He does have a very good sense of people and I remember Matt Damon saying this to me and I felt it as well… when he first meets you and shakes your hand, you can feel it for one second, he looks at you very intensely and you think, “I think he just X-rayed me.”

KW: Do you have a favorite Jerry Weintraub story yourself?

DM: Every time I try to pick one, I think of another one. There are so many that are so good. But that Elvis story is just amazing. The persistence to call the Colonel for a year, the hilarious business when the seats aren’t sold (at a Miami FL matinee) and he has to get the convicts to come take the chairs out… but I also love when the Colonel takes him into that electrician’s booth and with the suitcases of money. When he tells the story about the Colonel pouring the money on the table and whacking it with his cane. That’s yours, that’s mine… are we good? It just tells you that that it is a whole different part of show business that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s still got a foot in the “Carnie” world. That’s probably my favorite.

KW: Do you think there are more “Jerry”s out there or there’s still room for them?

DM: There must be because there’s no reason there shouldn’t be but I will say the business used to be comprised of more people like Jerry and now it isn’t. You know, that kind of renegade, non-corporate, non-business school, non-film school, come to it out of passion, bootstraps, hard work, gift-of gab, full force personality. I don’t run across many people like that. Maybe to be fair, maybe there were never a lot of people like that. I don’t know. But, there sure aren’t a lot of people like that now. There certainly a lot of people who approach it in a more systematic way with their foreign sales estimates and all their numbers that they run.

KW: The spreadsheets.

DM: Yeah, the spreadsheets and all the things that don’t connect to the thing that makes him so winning. Which is to say, a genuine passion for movies or music or the artists that he’s working with. That you don’t feel so much anymore. And I think we’re the worse off for it too. Look what he did with that passion.

KW: And what are the upcoming projects, if you can talk about anything?

DM: I am making a TV pilot with Nathan Lane. He was in my film “Nicholas Nickleby.” We’re casting now and we’re going to shoot in December (2011). It’s a funny and kind of touching half-hour single-camera comedy.

One comment I read put it best: Too bad Frank Sinatra isn’t alive to kick his ass.

ABC News:

[On his radio show, Howard] Stern then asked Bennett about how America should deal with terrorists, specifically those responsible for the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

“But who are the terrorists? Are we the terrorists or are they the terrorists? Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Bennett said.

In a soft-spoken voice, the singer disagreed with Stern’s premise that 9/11 terrorists’ actions led to U.S. military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“They flew the plane in, but we caused it,” Bennett responded. “Because we were bombing them and they told us to stop.”

Following seconds of silence, Stern said that his guest was “making some good points.”

Before leaving, Bennett recalled an evening in 2005 when he was honored at the Kennedy Center. Meeting President George W. Bush at the event, the singer said that the commander-in-chief shared his opinion about the Iraq War.

“He told me personally that night that, he said, ‘I think I made a mistake,’” Bennett said.

Bennett believed that the president made this revelation because “he had a special liking to me.”

Bush told a lib crooner he made a mistake in Iraq?

Looks like Bennett also left his credibility in San Francisco.

Yeah, this will sell albums.

Via NBC:

The  festival, “9/11 Reclaiming the Truth, Reclaiming our Future,” is organized by the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance, a group that formed shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The lineup of films and speakers kicked off at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland this afternoon, and will continue on Sunday at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco after a march from Justin Herman Plaza to the theater.
   
Similar events are being held in Seattle and in Toronto, and a portion of those events will be broadcast live in the Bay Area as part of the film festival.

The slate of films includes “Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup,” “9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out,” and “We Were Also Killed on 9/11: First Responders.”

“We’ve had rallies every year,” said Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance co-founder Carol Brouillet. She said the group organized its first film festival in 2004 and has had similar events every year since.

She said the main goal of the festival is to inform attendees about “the disparity between the official version and the actual events.” …

The rub below the fold:

However, she believes that the federal government was at the very least informed about the attacks and allowed them to happen as justification for a shift in foreign and domestic policy.

While that view has never gained traction in the mainstream, a recent BBC News poll found that 15 percent of those polled in the U.S. believe that there was a conspiracy behind 9/11 that involved the federal government.

Those last two paragraphs buried near the bottom the story spell it all out. This isn’t really about believing in some sick conspiracy, this is about spreading hatred for America through lies and propaganda.

I may go to Hell, but I’ll have better living quarters than any one of these bastards.

No matter how close two people’s opinions might seem to be, eventually there will be a difference of some sort between them.

In short, we are all confronted eventually with the isolation everyone feels because of their own inalterable uniqueness.

Not even Siamese twins can agree about everything.

At such times, philosophers such as France’s Jean Paul Sartre conclude that “Hell is other people!”

“L’enfer est les autres!”

I don’t agree, of course.

What had always been hell for me was the fear and experience of isolation itself.

I then realized how God’s very existence in the lives of men was inspired and maintained by such moments of inevitable isolation.

“Someone or something must and does understand me!”

Then, of course, one’s relationship to such a Something is up to debate.

Does the Something expect something of you, demand something of you and, of course, if you don’t measure up?

Hmmm … what are the consequences?

This is where my immeasurably vital experience with Alcoholics Anonymous comes in: “Let go, let God.”

That is their incantation: “Let go, let God!”

Which means: “Stop asking yourself that stupid question and let God answer it for you and He will.”

And He has.

How?

By erasing the nightmares of anxiety that arose from your asking the stupid questions in the first place.

If you know for certain that no one in the world can ever understand you completely, you begin dropping such stupid expectations of them.

Even your enemies begin to look almost human because … well … there’s no denying that they are only human.

This, of course, leads me to the responses erupting from my article, Sarah Palin’s Pre-Presidential Power.

“If you don’t like the message, malign the messenger.”

Sarah Palin is a growing threat to all who have surrendered to “America’s inevitable decline” and who have bought the equally inevitable obligation for America to humbly join the Progressive New World Order.

From Bush Sr. to Clinton to Bush Jr. to Obama, the Progressive New World Order vision has held the reins of the White House for over 22 years.

That Communism, for these four Presidents, became an acceptable governing philosophy to share the world with? This concession by four Presidents not only ended the Cold War but prepared the way for an undeniably Marxist President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama.

I sensed such “inevitability” 18 years ago. In the Fall of 1993 I met Attorney General Janet Reno and knew that this most powerful law enforcement officer in the world had been given orders to attack the Koresh Compound in Waco, Texas and to attack television as a primary cause of violence in America. The Clintons, both of them, had begun their Presidential administration with the same Marxist arrogance we still find more openly and shamelessly in Barack Obama.

In 1994, when my protests fell lamely through the nets and sifters of the MSM and the Clintons were not only reelected ’96 but Janet Reno retained her post as Attorney General, I knew America was in for the longest spiritual bloodletting of her entire history.

Mankind’s last and greatest hope for continued individual freedom and responsibility,  the United States of America, had been co-opted by the most cunning sabotage efforts in world history.

The Soviets and their KBG, ordered initially by Joseph Stalin to primarily infiltrate the “soft underbelly” of the American performing arts, had successfully turned Hollywood and New York into its very own propaganda machine.

The subsequent invasions of Washington D.C. and the White House by the increasingly radical Left became inevitable until we ended up with a President Barack Obama.

Thank God I left for Canada.

Canada, suffering through decades of the same love affair with the Marxist Utopia and having a large taste of it with Pierre Trudeau, has begun, with the invaluable leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to right herself as the individually, freedom-loving half of North America.

 What has happened to the United States?

22 years of steady decline into the arms of President Obama.

A Marxist Islam or Red Jihadists are what my former homeland is quivering under now.

We Americans were more at peace, more prosperous and more self-assured under President Dwight Eisenhower’s Cold War of the Fifties than under any of the last four Presidents. If you don’t believe me, read Bill Bryson on the United States in the Fifties. Despite the Cold War or perhaps because of it, America became the most entirely self-sufficient nation in the history of the world. That is obviously and shamelessly not what President Barack Obama wants.

Now, with any line in the sand between freedom and Communism erased?!

The bipartisan, Bush/Clinton New World Order policies have driven America into debt and increasing dependence upon utterly hostile corners of the world, both Islamic and Communist.

With President Obama we see the End Game of New World Order Chess: a decidedly Marxist vision of humanity’s future. When a fraudulently Independent Mayor of New York prohibits men of faith, priests, ministers and rabbis from participating in a 9/11 Memorial Ceremony, what do we have?

An olive branch offered to none other than Godless Communism and the blood-lusting symbols of Islam.

Mayor Bloomberg isn’t offering the appeasement policies of Neville Chamberlain. He is pure Marshall Petain of Vichy France.

What percentage of Americans who have died in two world wars, Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East defending the freedom of religion are now rolling in their graves over Mayor Bloomberg’s heinous and undeniably Leninist insult to America’s national identity?

I offered, in my most provocative editorial, Sarah Palin’s Pre-Presidential Power, the only possible Presidential candidate for the 2012 election: Sarah Palin.

Only her profoundly personal value system and her classically American, conservative values can drag not only the United States but the entire world back from the brink of Red Jihadist suicide.

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.

—–

Oh, but wait… Even though, according to –wait for it! wait for it! — MSNBC, “waterboarding aided the bin Laden raid,” below is Jon Stewart yesterday celebrating the results of same waterboarding with proclamations about America being back, uhm, baby. Yep, according to Mr. Stewart, America has its “balls” back, but of course neglects to mention (or doesn’t yet know) that we wouldn’t have without a little of what he described and defines as “torture.”

I guess the results of “torture” and the actions of Cheney’s “secret assassination squad” are all good if Obama gets a poll bounce:

—–

Not that we ever needed to be back, but part of the reason Stewart thinks we are is due to the fact that the Bush Administration and our intelligence services ignored people like him — people who put their own false sense of moral superiority and the scoring of political points above the safety of our troops, the lives of innocent people (including Muslims), and the safety of this nation.

Go jump in your clown car Stewart, you’re in the way.

Dana Loesch has much, much more.

Via Jim Treacher, Stephen Colbert in April of 2009:

—–

But, but, but, now I’m confused. Last night, Stephen Colbert wildly and without any detectable irony celebrated the results of that same secret, lawless assassination squad that was also using intelligence achieved through “enhanced” interrogations at Gitmo. Oh, wait…

Maybe Colbert is practicing some sort of super secret kind of hipterism where you show no irony at all to increase the power of irony in order to make a devastating political point that… Secret, lawless assassination squads using intelligence achieved through enhanced interrogations at Gitmo are wrong even when they boost a Democrat President’s sagging polls!

That must be it. What else could it be? Did Colbert think we wouldn’t find the 2009 video? No one’s that insulated, are they?

So see if you can detect Colbert’s super secret message below. I couldn’t, but I’m no hipster:

—–

While I root around old Jon Stewart videos, read some Human Events:

Catherine Herridge of Fox News reports that “Years of intelligence gathering, including details gleaned from controversial interrogations of Al Qaeda members during the Bush administration, ultimately led the Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden to his compound in Pakistan.”  U.S. intelligence first learned of the “trusted courier” who led us to bin Laden in 2003.  Guantanamo Bay inmates provided key information under the influence of both regular and “enhanced” interrogation. 

One of those inmates was the Left’s favorite al-Qaeda commander, Saint Khalid of the Wet Towel.  Until last month, the Obama Administration wanted to extend the full panoply of American civil rights to this creature, and give him a civilian trial in New York.  That would have prevented any meaningful form of “interrogation” at all.  Criminal defendants can be questioned, but that’s very different from even the milder forms of CIA interrogation. …

 If Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Seymour Hersh, and Stephen Colbert had gotten their way over the last ten years, Osama bin Laden would still be alive.  The intelligence leading to his location would not have been fully developed.  The commando team that took him down would not have existed.

Did these liberals hold their views entirely out of political expediency, slamming and indicting Bush and Cheney for programs and policies they would have quietly tolerated from Gore or Kerry?  What difference does it make?  They were dead wrong, and it doesn’t matter why.  They’ll be dead wrong again under the next Republican president.

More here.

[Kathryn] Bigelow and Mark Boal, her collaborator on The Hurt Locker, have been mobilizing their film to go into production as their follow-up to that Best Picture Academy Award winner. Their movie as planned was based on an earlier unsuccessful mission to try to kill the Al Qaeda leader responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attack on America as he hid in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But now they’ve certainly got a celebratory ending to that dramatic story with tonight’s announcement that the U.S. conducted a military operation that killed Bin Laden. …

[B]ack in 2006, Paramount Pictures optioned Jawbreaker, a book by U.S. intelligence operative Gary Berntsen about the December 2001 American-led military mission to hunt and kill Bin Laden right during the opening stages of the 9/11-prompted invasion of Afghanistan that the author as the CIA pointman had helped coordinate with Special Operations Forces. The heavily vetted book detailed how close those forces came to finding and executing Bin Laden in the rugged mountains of Tora Bora until they were pulled back after a decision was made to let Pakistan tribal leaders lead the search — a decision experts felt helped Bin Laden get away. The studio hired The Path To 9/11 scribe Cyrus Nowrasteh to rewrite a first draft by Berntsen’s co-author Ralph Pezzullo, and Oliver Stone had eyed it as a follow-up to his film World Trade Center. But the project stalled.

Much more here.

So many are surprised that President Obama would bomb Libya.

And now, he’s authorized covert operations.

How odd!

How Bush!

Wasn’t O the anti-war, “we’re sorry for everything” President, the man who condemned any kind of American military intervention?

Well, here’s how it all changed.

A couple of years ago Obama said that he believed in American exceptionalism, just as the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism, and the British believe in British exceptionalism.

In other words, he didn’t believe it. That’s when it all fell apart.

Soon, Obama started repeating, “the world is watching,” whenever bad crap started happening. Like in Iran.

He was right. The world watched.

And did nothing.

He then discovered that the world is just like the perverted priest in “Crimes of Passion:” all it does IS watch.

So Obama learned that exceptionalism is real: the world goes limp without America at the lead. To reject this is like being a star player who prefers to ride the bench, texting his bracket picks.

See, “the world is watching,” means nothing if “America ain’t doing.” And “doing” often means “bombing.” The “kinetic action” in Libya reminds the world that Americans can do this stuff. When the world forgets that, bad stuff happens.

Which means, sadly, we are the world’s policeman, because we are exceptional, we are the best.

So why not embrace this notion, instead of fighting it?

The world may hate us, but that’s because, we’re beautiful.

Or at least I am.

And if you disagree with me. you’re a racist homophobe.

Tonight’s guests - another awesome lineup!

Dean Cain! yes!

Patti Anne Browne!

Dana Vachon!

I feel really good about this one.