A while ago, I wrote a piece titled “Blowing the Whistle on Waxman.”  In case you missed it, I explained that Henry Waxman and I had been friends beginning almost 50 years ago at UCLA.  I also said that we had seen each other infrequently over the intervening years once he went to Sacramento as a state assemblyman and later to Washington as a member of Congress. 

Over the years, I moved politically from left to right, while Henry moved from left to far left to over the edge.  Still, I had a soft spot for him and, as a result, refrained from including his name when I would list the usual suspects, those left-wingers like Pelosi, Reid, Rangel, Boxer and Murtha, who were doing their utmost to destroy America.           

However, once Obama was elected and began pushing his radical agenda, while simultaneously surrounding himself with advisors who should never have been allowed within a mile of the White House, Henry began feeling his oats.  Suddenly, with the Democrats in control of the House, he was no longer a back-bencher.  He even got to have his name on a piece of major legislation, the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill, a singular disaster that would send all of our energy costs soaring while simultaneously providing China and India with a tremendous advantage over what remains of our American industry. 

That was bad enough, but even after those notorious ACORN videos aired on Glenn Beck’s TV show, Waxman and 74 of his left-wing cronies on Capitol Hill voted to continue funding ACORN, and that cut the Gordian knot for me.  At that point, even old school ties weren’t enough to dissuade me, and, in a very sad frame of mind, I wrote the article. 

An hour or so after it was posted, I received an email from Waxman’s office in Washington.  It began: “Dear Burt, I can understand that we have disagreements about politics.  I can see that you have some embarrassment about our past friendship, but you are not responsible for me and I am not (thank G-d) responsible for your views or actions.  But I do resent that whatever I may have said to you in a conversation years ago is now being dredged up (and maybe made up) to make me look bad.  I never thought I had to remember things I may have said to you to be provocative at the time, would be repeated and distorted, as if it were ‘on the record.’” 

(Note:  Just for the record, I made up nothing and I distorted nothing.  What I said he said about the steroid-using baseball players he called before his committee was exactly what he said; namely that he had no idea they were even famous until he saw his fellow congressmen lining up for their autographs; and, in response to a question I posed strictly out of curiosity, replied that he had no idea how long after an athlete stopped using steroids, they would continue to show up in drug tests.  Besides, neither of those statements is particularly provocative.  They merely indicate how unqualified and unaware a congressman can be and still feel himself entitled to sit in judgment of other people.  The other thing I addressed in the article was Henry’s boasting that he and his colleagues were going to investigate Fox for biased news reporting, and my responding that I thought it was a swell idea so long as they then did the same with the NY Times, the three major networks, CNN, MSNBC and the Washington Post.  That time, I even had a totally impartial witness, my wife Yvonne.) 

Responding to his first paragraph, I wrote:  “Dear Henry, I don’t blame you in the least for being angry.  But you can imagine how I felt when I saw your name included with the other 74 Democrats who voted to continue funding an organization as corrupt and vile as ACORN.  For the life of me, I could not think of a single reason why you would wish to align yourself, even for partisan political reasons, with a group that has not only been guilty of election fraud, but, as those now famous videos made clear, have no objection to assisting a pimp to set up a brothel.  And not just any brothel, but one employing abducted 13-year-old girls from Latin America.  Also, I did send you a note some months ago wishing you a speedy recovery when I heard that you had been rushed off to the hospital, so even though you never acknowledged it, it would suggest I’m not entirely heartless.” 

Waxman’s email went on: “As I recall our poker friendship, you used to keep a card with every cent I ever lost to you to be sure you were paid.  When you sent out a letter pleading for your friends to help you out at a difficult financial time in your life, you promised that you would repay every cent.  I sent you $100.  I never asked you for the money, nor have you offered to repay it.  I did not want to embarrass you then or now.  But since you have no hesitation to try to publicly hold me up to scorn, I see no reason not to ask you to repay your debt to me.  I would like to use that money to donate to the ACLU or some other group that will defend your rights, along with everyone else, to free speech and other Constitutional protections.  Sincerely, Henry Waxman.” 

To this, I replied, “The card you mention was not for poker losses.  Those were always minimal because none of us had any money, and were invariably paid off at the end of the game.  The card was to keep track of the money I loaned you, and which you took an extremely long time to repay.  It was to help you continue playing blackjack during one of our occasional trips to Tahoe or Vegas.  I am truly sorry, though, that I did not pay back the $100.  That was an oversight because in moving from one rental to another, as circumstances forced us to do several times once Hollywood ageism made me unemployable, I lost the IOU list.  When, some years later, I was finally able to earn some money, I did pay back those whose names I remembered and those who subsequently reminded me.  I regret that I forgot your generosity.  I will have the check in the mail to you this afternoon.  You are free, of course, to donate it to the ACLU, to ACORN or even to help pay for Nancy Pelosi’s next facelift.  It’s your money, after all, unlike the money that Waxman-Markey will cost American taxpayers and American businesses.  Regards, Burt.”) 

Do I regret that Henry Waxman is one of 250-odd Democrats who are only too happy to rubberstamp every piece of legislative lunacy concocted by Obama, Axelrod, Emanuel, Jarrett, Holdren, Jennings, Sunstein and Jeff Jones?  Of course.  Do I regret that Henry Waxman has so totally lost his moral compass that even when 172 of his fellow liberals  voted to stop funding ACORN, he stood steadfast with the sleazebags?  You bet.           

Worst of all, he probably sees it as being politically courageous.  On the other hand, normal human beings, who haven’t spent most of their adult lives feeding at the public trough, recognize it as aiding and abetting.

I knew from personal experience that Henry was a fish when it came to poker, but it was some time later that I found out how truly awful he was.  Before being elected to Congress, he had gone to Sacramento as a state assemblyman.  Wherever politicians congregate, you will find two things — poker games and lobbyists.  As you can imagine, lobbyists are not there to win money from those they spend their lives trying to influence.  But it seems that Henry was so inept that, in spite of their best efforts, they kept beating him.  This so embarrassed the lobbyists that they finally banished him from the game. 

Naturally, once Mr. Waxman went to Washington, I saw him less and less frequently.  Periodically, he would return to L.A., but that was in order to spend time  meeting with constituents and holding political fund-raisers.

Over the years, Henry continued to be a liberal.  He continued to think FDR was a combination of Moses and Santa Claus.  I, on the other hand, who had been raised in a similar middle-class Jewish home, spent the intervening years wising up.

So it was that while attending a party a while back, a celebration of Henry’s 30th year in the House, I asked him what he was up to.  When he said that one of his committees was preparing to investigate Fox News for biased reporting, I couldn’t keep my yap shut and maintain my status as a polite guest.  Instead, after telling him that I thought it was a swell idea, I went on to suggest that when he and his colleagues finished investigating Fox, I trusted they would turn their eagle eyes on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post and our own Pravda wannabe, the L.A. Times.

Henry simply gawked at me.  He looked even more than usual like a fish out of water.  It was as if he thought his old school chum had been replaced during the dead of night by a space pod.

I assume he had heard from mutual acquaintances that I was no longer a Democrat, but he was so obviously unprepared for my transformation into a conservative that I almost felt sorry for him.  There was a moment of shocked silence, almost as if he was hoping I was going to laugh and admit I was just pulling his leg.  Then the moment passed, and he moved off to be among those who thought three decades of Waxman in the U.S. Congress was something worth celebrating.

For old times sake, I have generally left Waxman out of my attacks on liberals in the House.  After all, with the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, John Murtha, Barbara Lee, Linda Sanchez, Bernard Sanders and Barney Frank, taking up space, I didn’t think it was necessary to focus on my old college buddy.

But things have changed.  First there was the totally irresponsible Waxman-Markey cap & trade bill, which would destroy America’s industrial capacity and send energy costs soaring for every American household, while simultaneously providing our competitors in China and India with every possible advantage.

But, for me, the final straw was Waxman’s voting along with 74 other House Democrats to continue funding ACORN with our tax dollars.  Just as there’s no need to catalogue all of ACORN’s crimes and sins at this time, there’s no reason to bother trying to find a good excuse for Waxman’s defending this gang of creeps and thugs.

At this late date, I am not easily shocked, but I was so shocked and disgusted to find Waxman siding with ACORN that I decided I was going to share a piece of information that should add a measure of embarrassment to his well-deserved shame.

A few years ago, Henry garnered a great deal of publicity when he chaired a committee investigating the use of illegal substances in major league baseball.  I suspect there were a lot of people who had never even heard of Waxman prior to the hearings.  For my part, being a lifelong baseball fan, I was glad to see Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro, sweating on the hot seat.

Those punks had done everything in their power to destroy the national pastime by cheating, thereby erasing such honorable names as Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Roger Maris, from the record book.

Shortly after the hearings, I had lunch with Henry.  He confessed that he knew so little about baseball, he had no real idea who the players were, and that he was amazed to discover they were so famous that members of Congress and their staffs actually crowded into the hallways to collect autographs.

That was bad enough.  But I then asked him, “If a minor leaguer uses steroids or human growth hormones in order to reach the majors, but stops once he gets there, how long will he continue to test positive?”

Henry admitted he had no idea.

So here was a congressman investigating baseball who not only had no idea who its most famous players were, but no pertinent information about the substances they were being condemned for using.

Now, seriously, do you really think that he knows any more about energy than he does about baseball or poker?

NEA’s Yosi Sergant

Monday, we have the NEA under the microscope.  The Obama Administration was caught red-handed (is that “racist”?) funneling tax payer dollars into an official propaganda department.  I can’t wait to see what the excuse will be this time.

These people have mastered the art of defending the indefensible.

Let’s set aside the stupidity of this move.  Anyone familiar with the NEA knows that it pretty much exists to fund leftist propaganda disguised as art.  Officially coordinating it is a bit redundant.

Let’s also set aside the brazen arrogance.  Despite rejecting and dismissing charges that this administration is attempting to turn the United States into a South American Banana Republic, these folks keep doing things that make Hugo Chavez envious.  State run propaganda through the NEA, silencing critics with the stigma of “racism,” setting up official channels to rat out your neighbors for “thought crimes” with flag@whitehouse.gov, and restructuring our economy with wealth redistribution schemes like socialized medicine and cap and trade are just a few of their moves right from the Trotsky play book.  And they do it all with righteous indignation.  They claim that we students of history are too ignorant, too blinded by our prejudices, to really see what’s going on.

No, let’s focus on the inevitable excuses that will flow from the mouths of the White House spin doctors and the true believers that make up the mainstream media.  If I, from the outside, can predict their next moves, it’s pretty obvious that their excuses aren’t genuine.

They are just another act in this grand play of leftist tomfoolery.

Phase one will be complete silence.  The story won’t be picked up by the state run media.  Crickets.  Crickets.  After about a week of red faced Glenn Beck monologues, daily Rush Limbaugh pontifications (thanks, by the way, for the shout-out last week El Rushbo, the family was very impressed), Sarah Palin facebook posts, and Andrew Breitbart expertly rolling out more information, they will be forced to respond.

Phase two will be what I like to call “The Oz Effect.”  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  What’s the big deal, after all?  The President, through the positively Grima Wormtongue-like Robert Gibbs, will “not really be aware of it.”  There are bigger issues after all.  Americans are concerned about the greedy insurance companies and the doctors trying to amputate their feet for some extra scratch, not about what happens at the NEA.  David Shuster, the poor man’s Keith Olbermann, will point out that the people involved have already been reassigned.  Isn’t this just another Republican shot in the dark?  Don’t these people have any real ideas?  Aren’t the conservatives in disarray?  Who is their leader anyway?

Phase three will be the “offense-defense.”  David Frum will talk about the risks that conservatives run by offending artists.  Going after the NEA will just prove that we don’t like creative things.  CNN will air segments featuring inner-city kids finger painting, explaining that the NEA’s $50 million cut of the stimulus money paid for those paints.  You don’t want to take away finger paints. do you?  Evil conservatives.  The President will tout the importance of the arts in our community, the hope and joy it brings to so many.  Sure, there were some bad apples, but they were just cowboys acting without official orders.  We need the NEA.  Just like we need ACORN, socialized medicine, and cap and trade.

Phase four will be justice.  Riding high on the conservative smack down, bills will come forward in the House and Senate to freeze the NEA’s budget or defund it all together.  A few lone whack jobs will vote against it, but it will pass with a fat majority.

Breitbart and company can claim another scalp.  And to quote Aldo Raine, “I want my scalps!”

At no point will any member of the administration step forward and admit that it was wrong, un-American, or dangerous for democracy.  The mainstream media will never pile onto the story and dig deeper.

These lame excuses and political posturings come with a high cost.  Each time we do something like this, and they respond as outlined above, their credibility drops a few points.  Every time this sort of thing happens, another person on the fence looks at the evidence and joins the right team.

There is a reason why conservative blogs are full of charts, facts, figures and quotes from history, while liberal blogs ramble on about conspiracies and charges of racism.  There is a reason why conservatives use their understanding of economics to build companies and empires, while the left has to resort to trickery and emotional arguments to fund their pointless projects.

It’s because we “get it.”  They don’t.  Their edge has always been their stranglehold on the media; but that is slipping away like star systems through Grand Moff Tarkin’s fingers.  Conservatives, being the smart entrepreneurs that we are, created our own parallel media.  We have filled this new media with facts, intelligence and passion.  The response from the opposition has been demagoguery, excuses, and misdirection.  Bad form.  Bad form indeed.

So good luck digging your way out of this one, hippies.  2010 and 2012 can’t come soon enough.  Leftists, you are on notice.  Your orgy of power and stupidity will be brief and soon you will be gone.

Oh, and on your way out, take the mainstream media with you.  You are both useless.

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: Health Care Legislation, Ted Kennedy, President Obama, Cap and Trade, Fairness Doctrine, Douglas Brinkley, Obama Summer Vacation, David Letterman, Town Hall Protestors, Chelsea Handler, and KFC.

It is chilling to witness, in the United States of America of all places. Civil political discourse is a thing of the past. You cannot oppose ObamaCare without being a swastika-waving corporate Nazi stooge. Never mind the fact that no one will tell us exactly where all the hospitals, doctors, and nurses to treat 50 million new patients will magically materialize from, or how it will all be paid for.

Likewise, you cannot oppose the draconian Cap-and-Tax bill without being a Global Warming heretic on the order of a Holocaust denier. Never mind the frost and record summer lows in my home state of New Hampshire or record cold temperatures worldwide. And you can’t oppose any of President Obama’s policies without being a racist. In short, every political issue these days is being taken far too personally by the petty tyrants of the Left, and made into ideological battlefields against any and all American citizens who stand in the way.

Also greatly disturbing are statements from our new FCC ‘Diversity’ Chief Mark Lloyd, a black radical Communist who has been caught on film praising Hugo Chavez’ stifling clampdown on Venezuela TV and radio stations as effective government media regulation policy. Mr. Lloyd also seeks to fine broadcasters 100% of their operating budget if they don’t meet certain “diversity” criteria, in effect instantly bankrupting them. One way of putting conservative talk radio out of business, I guess.

Worst of all is the double standard on Brownshirt-like violence and intimidation. You could start with the vague Republican platform-covering DHS report of April 14th (just in time for the Teabagger Parties), which even DHS civil liberties lawyers opposed. You could then move on to the three racist Black Panther Party poll watcher thugs in Philly who committed what Bartle Bull, a Jim Crow South poll observer, called in his affidavit “the worst voter intimidation I’ve ever seen” receive Get-Out-of Terrorizing-White-Voters-Free cards, courtesy of Obama’s and Eric Holder’s Injustice Department.

Then you could wrap it all up with the racial slandering and beating of Kenneth Gladney, which the SEIU thugs who beat him and their bosses tried to turn around and blame on him, despite damning video of the event. For the icing on the ideological cake, a young Democratic activist smashes up the windows of a Democratic Party office in Denver to the tune of $11,000.00, yet that damage is still being blamed by Democrats on ObamaCare protesters despite the facts even they know to be true.

I am a service veteran of the Cold War. I remember very distinctly what it was we were fighting vis-a-vis the Soviets: a power-mad totalitarian state based on a rigid ideology that crushed its own people underfoot, branded any and all dissenters as counter-revolutionaries, and used the propaganda machinery of PRAVDA and TASS to make sure the enemies of the state knew exactly who they were. As I’m sure many CIA career employees are feeling right now, given the Left’s and the Injustice Department’s political persecution of them of late. I guess ACLU papparazzi outing agents to Gitmo terrorists ain’t no big deal like Valerie Plame, huh? Since their cause is so just?

When a Lefty pundit like Chris Matthews talks about using sodium pentothal to get to the truth on an ideological matter from Obama’s political opponents, I’d normally consider that pure Lefty insanity. But given all the other factors in play, I have to wonder: just how serious is he being? Then there’s the President’s plan to created a new civilian national defense army as powerful as our military. For what purpose? Who will lead that army? The New Black Panther Party, given the bangup job they did at the polls in Philly last year? And for which they’ve been cleared to provide “security” for again? Or the SEIU Purpleshirts, who have already proven they can handle reprobate ObamaCare protesters?

Scary stuff, people. Lefties may have howled during the Bushitler years, but never did the Bush government, or any other for that matter, take such an active role in demonizing the minority party, or actively work to suppress freedom of speech and expression through intimidation as ours is today. Michael Moore and Al Franken were free to rant to the skies. Randy Rhodes of Air America even simulated Bush’s assassination on the air. Yet Rush Limbaugh says he wants Obama’s policies to fail, and liberal Democrats in Congress start a petition against him.

Even worse, Obama himself establishes a political campaign against Rush, a private citizen, from within the Oval Office itself, with the full resources, power and authority of the White House. Lastly, you have Patrick Courrielche informing us of the NEA co-opting artists to promote controversial Obama legislation and policies through the arts, courtesy of we taxpayers who fund NEA. Had Mr. Courrielche not blown the whistle on that situation here at Big Hollywood, who would know about it? It begs the question: What else don’t we know about that’s going on behind our backs?

Given all that has transpired since President Obama’s and the Left’s ascendancy to supreme power in America, I’ll dare say it. I’m with Rush. If these are all what Obama’s policies are, I want them to fail, too. Miserably. I also have a name for what the Left is doing in all the above: un-American. I don’t know about you people, but I’m going to keep my eyes wide open for as long as the Left is running the show. Goes back to that eternal vigilance being the price of liberty thing.

As I stood on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Midway twenty-five years ago, I was fully aware of the enemy we had been confronting since the end of WWII. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be fighting a Cold War at home a quarter-century later, and against that very same rigid Marxist ideology. But that is where we find ourselves today. And our Cold War at home must be fought as the old one was: tooth and nail. Go to your town halls and Tea Parties in force. Sign petitions. Speak out when you see something amiss. Evil flourishes when good men do nothing. And I see far too many evils flourishing today to sit silently on the sidelines.

Our very democracy and way of life is at stake here. Is there any greater battle worth fighting?

What struck me from a few hours of watching leftist television and reading leftist gobbledygook is how far detached from reality these people are. It’s not a simple case of them having a few points wrong, or looking at things from a bizarrely biased perspective; they truly make statements and cling to ideas that have no basis in reality. As conservatives struggle to find apt metaphors to explain their opponent’s mindsets and delusions, I think I may have figured it out.

The left in our country is high.  Completely stoned out of their minds.

Living and working in L.A., one encounters more stoners on the average day than they do illegal immigrants. I’ve worked with stoners. I’ve dated stoners.  I’ve lived with stoners. I know stoners inside and out and I can tell you, without a doubt, that the Democrat Party is completely crunked.

Stoners always think that they are smarter than they really are. Copious amounts of THC trick the brain into thinking that the most banal thought is somehow a stroke of genius. Just watch a bunch of stoners debate philosophy and metaphysics. The most ridiculous comments take on the gravitas of a Stephen Hawking thesis. Morons think that they are Michio Kaku after a towering bong hit.

Stoners live for the moment. They are all about feelings, not facts. They possess a detached sense of cause and effect. I recall one specific episode when I came home and tore into my stoner roommate for not having his share of the rent. His solution to his lack of rent was simple. See, the real problem wasn’t his lack of money, but my reaction to it. I was far too stressed about the situation. What we should do, to solve the rent problem, was grab a couple of drinks at the Cafe Formosa on Santa Monica and then head over to Crazy Girls, a local gentleman’s club. After that excursion, I would calm down and stop harshing his gig over the unpaid rent.

Six Coronas and two lap dances later, I wasn’t as furious. We both felt better. To the stoner, everything was fixed. Problem solved! Unfortunately, the rent was still unpaid. My loser roommate still didn’t have a job

Stoners never emerge from  their stupor. Part of being a true “wake and bake” stoner is the ability to remain faded. True stoners never snap out of it. I’ve dealt with coke heads and alcoholics, but stoners are a different breed. The alkie and the base head will go on their binge, then apologize profusely for their conduct; until, of course, the next time they go on a bender. The pot head always exists in a dream like world of cannabis induced euphoria. They do not see their drug addiction as a problem, but instead, as a heightened sense of being and awareness.

Lastly, stoners never have their own money. Remember those Chili’s leftovers you were planning on eating? How about those delicious Red Baron frozen pizzas? Chances are good that your stoner roommate ate your food while you were at work. Sure, they promise to “hook you up” as soon as they get a chance to go to Ralph’s, but it never happens. Stoners have a bizarre, communal logic that dictates that everything exists for the collective. Your pizza, your stash, your girlfriend all exist for the greater stoner good. To demand private ownership of anything is an offense to the “stoner code.”

With this in mind, how can one not see the recent doings in Washington as anything but massive cannabis abuse?  Cash for clunkers? Stoner logic. Stimulus package? Stoner logic. Government run health care?  Stoner logic. Cap and trade? Stoner logic.

I can picture Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer lying on a bean bag, listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and watching The Little Mermaid, dreaming up domestic and foreign policy. ”You know who those town hall protesters remind me of?  Nazis, man. They’re freakin Nazis.”  (Cough.  Cough.  Giggle. Giggle).  “What if we give money to people to buy new cars and we smash their old cars?” ”Dude, that’s totally awesome, because we just watched Dude, Where’s My Car?”

You’d be hard pressed to find any other rational explanation for a large group of people who discard decades of historical evidence, common sense, and basic moral decency other than massive amounts of reefer.

I think the whole Socialist, Communist, Nazi analogy is stretching it a bit. Michael Moore wishes he had the self discipline of a Joseph Goebbels. Nancy Pelosi wishes that she was as dynamic as a Heinrich Himmler. Barack Obama would love to have the focus of a Kim Jong Il, but man, it’s tough to stay on track when the Discovery Channel is running Shark Week and Doritos just unleashed that new buffalo wing sauce flavored tortilla chip. Have you guys tried those yet? They’re the bomb.

Conservatives are gearing up to do battle with an army of statist fascists, but we are really up against Cheech and Chong. 

Obama is no Stalin, or even FDR. Face it, he’s Jeff Spicoli.

“It’s our time, Mr. Hand.” Hey, wasn’t that one of his campaign slogans?

Sadly for us, we live in a world where stoner nonsense is taken as gospel by the media and a large segment of the population.  I think it’s fair to say that Obama captured the stoner vote in 2008, but few of us expected him to govern from inside a giant ganja cloud.

The best way to deal with stoners is to simply let them go about their business, but don’t trust them with anything important.  Ever.  My stoner roommate was a source of endless entertainment, but we were smart enough to never trust him to pay the cable bill.  We need to get these Crunkensteins out of power as quickly as possible.

If we don’t, everything goes up in smoke.

Events lead Kowalski to resist a local takeover by a Hmong youth gang. The Hmong are an ethnic Southeast Asian people, primarily from Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. In real life Michigan, they are among the fastest growing immigrants. Many Hmong people emigrated from South Vietnam after Democrats shamelessly withdrew monetary support from South Vietnam in 1974. The Paris Peace Agreements thus became toothless and North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam. “Boat people” fled Vietnam and the insane, murderous Pol Pot created the Cambodian Killing Fields.

Gran Torino can be viewed as metaphorical microcosm of the Vietnamese conflict with an alternate ending. Eastwood, the quintessential symbol of American independence and strength, helps defend a group of Asian Americans against a gangster group of other Asian Americans. Kowalski’s courage and independence led to his death and the defeat of the gang members. The image of protagonist Thao Vang Lor (Bee Vang) driving in Kowalski’s Gran Torino, left to Thao in his will, cements the “good Hmongs” victory, and ultimate commitment to America. The juxtaposition of this scene, versus Kowalski’s children trying to unload him in an old age home is striking.

Another morality play is occurring today in the real Michigan. Michigan has a 15% unemployment rate. Detroit’s auto industry, which made the 1972 Ford Gran Torino, has been decimated in large part by federal regulations. In classic “anti-comparative advantage” style, a sclerotic EPA required individual auto companies to meet mandated “CAFE” standards. Even if one wanted the nation’s entire car fleet to meet CAFE requirements on average, the EPA implemented it in the most inefficient way possible.

US automakers’ comparative advantage was in SUVs and small trucks. To keep their fleet within mandated averages, they were forced to build unprofitable, uncompetitive small cars. If the Feds just let comparative advantage work, the US auto fleet would have likely met federal CAFE standards without each company being compelled to build every type of car. But Government does not know economics. They simply know better.

Obama’s “new environmental energy plan,” the Waxman-Markey “Cap and Trade” bill, is a ruse. It is not an energy bill, but a regressive consumption tax in disguise. It is favored by Wall Street, George Soros, Al Gore, GE and other corporatists looking for subsidies paid for by the tax payer. Cap and Trade is the ultimate economic destruction machine. The bill passed the House of Representatives this summer by six votes, 219-213. Forty-four Democrats voted against it. The Senate has not yet voted.

Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, a real life political “Kowalski” and GOP Policy Committee Chair, opposed this monstrosity. He is among a group of opponents being targeted for attack in the next few weeks. Others include House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and Missouri’s Roy Blount. The campaigns are funded by Soros’ groups MoveOn.Org and Americans United for Change. The attack is preposterous, as this video shows (Groups target GOP on cap-and-trade). What is the goal of the bill?

The goal of the bill is to replace cheap energy with expensive energy. This is called “saving the environment.” This is accomplished by requiring consumers to purchase more expensive electricity, biomass power for example, while also paying taxes to subsidize these enterprises. As we consume more expensive energy, the same amount of labor and capital creates less output. Even if one believed the ridiculous 1.7 million “green job” increase advertised, it doesn’t factor the lost jobs from lower productivity and higher energy costs. The manufacturing heavy states and big users of energy, like Michigan, are clearly poised to be the big losers in such legislation. They are already seeking “exemptions” from regulations because of the bill’s potential economic devastation (Michigan Economic Impact on the State from the Waxman-Markey Bill).

Meanwhile, Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs, and self important financial traders like George Soros, strongly support this legislation because they get to buy and sell “CO2 credits.” The rationale is this legislation will combat “global warming.” Climatologist Chip Knappenberger estimates the best case impact of the bill would be to lower global temperature by “0.1″ degree centigrade in the year 2100. This bill does not address global warming. The bill’s costs exceed its “benefits” by a factor of at least ten, using the UN’s officially approved climate models. This means lost jobs and/or lost real income. This is also why Greenpeace joined with pro-growth conservatives and opposed it. The whole thing is a sham.

So why do Democrats want this bill? They want to raise your taxes under the cover of “climate change” reform. It also gives Government the power to decide which industries get benefited more heavily than others. It is part of the transformation from a free society to a government controlled society. This is yet another highway toward the ultimate c goal of centralized government planning.

McCotter understands, like Walter Kowalski, what it means to be an American. A great American can be a first generation “Hmong” from Vietnam, like Gran Torino’s Thao Vang Lor. Conversely, a treasonous American can be born in Chicago to great advantage, like Weatherman terrorist and Obama supporter Bill Ayers. This speech by Congressman McCotter provides a very clear vision of what America is and should be about. Let’s not permit anti-American fakes, like George Soros, sacrifice McCotter’s (or Cantor’s or Blount’s) “political life” by trying to pull the wool over our eyes. “Green jobs” are a wolf’s tax in sheep’s clothing.

For instance, I understand why liberals opposed invading Iraq.  It was because George W. Bush instigated it.  They voiced no objections when Bill Clinton took us into Somalia and Kosovo, and now that Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, you don’t hear them whining that it’s a quagmire, that the Afghanis had nothing to do with 9/11 or demanding that Obama spell out his exit strategy and specify the date of withdrawal.  But, given all that, I would have thought that at least the tree-huggers would have campaigned for regime change in Iraq, based not on Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds and his history of torture and rape, God forbid, but for having set fire to the oil fields of Kuwait in 1991, probably the worst man-made ecological disaster in history. 

It is beginning to look as if the various fascists, racists and astroturfers who have been showing up at town halls may have stopped Obama from taking his next step in  destroying America.  But Obama and his cronies are like those creatures in scary movies; just when you think they’re dead and buried, they reach a hand up from the grave and grab someone’s ankle. 

Somebody summed up ObamaCare very neatly.  In an e-mail that was forwarded to me, it said: “Let me get this straight.  We’re going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head said he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but exempts them from abiding by it, signed by a President who smokes and is also exempted, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that’s nearly broke.  What could possibly go wrong?” 

Of course we keep hearing the left-wing lunkheads tell us how glorious single payer health care is, pointing to Canada and England as sterling examples of medical Nirvana.  Yet the BBC reported that there is a five month wait to have surgery for a slipped disc or to have a hernia repaired, eight months for cataract surgery, 11 months for a hip replacement and an entire year if you need to have your knee worked on.  So I guess the best thing an Englishman can do is claim he needs to have surgery for a hernia and when, after five months, they wheel him into the operating room, break the news that it’s really his damn knee that’s been acting up. 

One thing that’s been made clear is that whether it’s last year’s amnesty bill or this Frankensteinian health care monstrosity, the people still retain some clout when they stand up and start acting like Americans and not like a herd of sheep waiting to be shorn by the likes of Henry Waxman, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi.  As someone once observed, in order to make politicians see the light, they first need to feel the heat.  Or as Ronald Reagan put it so eloquently:  “Government isn’t the solution.  Government is the problem.” 

If there’s one thing you have to say about liberal politicians, it’s that they regard consistency pretty much the way they regard their constituents; namely with arrogant contempt.  It’s liberals, after all, who are constantly telling us that women have absolute autonomy over their own bodies, so long as the topic under discussion happens to be abortions.  But when it comes to everything else, they are quite content to leave all medical decisions in the hands of the federal government, up to and including the rationing of health care to babies and the elderly.  Gee, and we all thought the Nazis were bad! 

Because I live in California, I occasionally am lucky enough to receive an e-mail from Barbara Boxer.  The other day, she let me know that she’s hard at work on a Bill of Rights for Passengers.  The rest of us are concerned about Iran and North Korea building a nuclear bomb and about Obama sovietizing the United States, but Boxer is worried about disgruntled airline passengers. 

I sent her ladyship the following message:  “President Obama is trying to morph America into a socialist tyranny, complete with commissars and armed thugs, and you’re worrying about airliners sitting on the tarmac?  Most Americans do not support the pork-stuffed stimulus bill, cap & trade, the pandering to the UAW and the CEIU, the financing of ACORN or the abomination known as ObamaCare, and you’re busy pushing legislation so that airline passengers won’t occasionally suffer some minor discomfort?  Just for the record, we’d all gladly just settle for a little more legroom.  Are you trying to give new meaning to “inconsequential,” ma’am?” 

Finally, lest someone gets the idea that I only pick on liberals, I have a bone to pick with Sean Hannity.  I recently heard him give absolution to Michael Vick.  He was ready to forgive Vick his trespasses because, after all, Vick had served 18 months in jail and he had apologized.  The problem is, one, Vick should have been sentenced to at least 10 years; two, inasmuch as Hannity wasn’t one of Vick’s victims, he’s not entitled to accept his apology; and, three, the time for remorse and possibly redemption, it seems to me, is before you’re arrested.  After that, it’s only defense strategy — whether what’s at stake is a more severe sentence or trying to salvage a multi-million dollar NFL career. 

This is a guy, after all, who beat, drowned, hanged and electrocuted dogs for no other reason than that they lost fights to other dogs, and because, sadist that he is, he could.  Imagine if quarterbacks who lost games were treated like that. 

All I can say is, defensive linemen of the NFL — have at him!

Sometime between when I finished the critique and when it went live online, I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to take part in a conference call that invited a group of rising artist and art community luminaries “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.” 

Now admittedly, I’m a skeptic of BIG government. In my view, power tends to overreach whenever given the opportunity. It’s a law of human nature that has very few exceptions. That said, it felt to me that by providing issues as a cynosure for inspiration to a handpicked arts group – a group that played a key role in the President’s election as mentioned throughout the conference call – the National Endowment for the Arts was steering the art community toward creating art on the very issues that are currently under contentious national debate; those being health care reform and cap-and-trade legislation. Could the National Endowment for the Arts be looking to the art community to create an environment amenable to the administration’s positions? 

Before arguing why I see this as a gross overreach of the National Endowment for the Arts and its mission, a brief background on the conference call is needed. 

On Thursday August 6th, I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts to attend a conference call scheduled for Monday August 10th hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. The call would include “a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!” 

I learned after the conference call that there were approximately 75 people participating, including many well respected street-artists, filmmakers, art galleries, music venues, musicians and music producers, writers, poets, actors, independent media outlets, marketers, and various other professionals from the creative community. I suppose I was invited because of my work in creating arts initiatives, but being a former employer of the NEA’s Director of Communications was probably a factor as well. 

Backed by the full weight of President Barack Obama’s call to service and the institutional weight of the NEA, the conference call was billed as an opportunity for those in the art community to inspire service in four key categories, and at the top of the list were “health care” and “energy and environment.” The service was to be attached to the President’s United We Serve campaign, a nationwide federal initiative to make service a way of life for all Americans. 

It sounded, how should I phrase it…unusual, that the NEA would invite the art community to a meeting to discuss issues currently under vehement national debate. I decided to call in, and what I heard concerned me. 

The people running the conference call and rallying the group to get active on these issues were Yosi Sergant, the Director of Communications for the National Endowment for the Arts; Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement; Nell Abernathy, Director of Outreach for United We Serve; Thomas Bates, Vice President of Civic Engagement for Rock the Vote; and Michael Skolnik, Political Director for Russell Simmons. 

We were encouraged to bring the same sense of enthusiasm to these “focus areas” as we had brought to Obama’s presidential campaign, and we were encouraged to create art and art initiatives that brought awareness to these issues. Throughout the conversation, we were reminded of our ability as artists and art professionals to “shape the lives” of those around us. The now famous Obama “Hope” poster, created by artist Shepard Fairey and promoted by many of those on the phone call, and will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” song and music video were presented as shining examples of our group’s clear role in the election. 

Obama has a strong arts agenda, we were told, and has been very supportive of both using and supporting the arts in creative ways to talk about the issues facing the country. We were “selected for a reason,” they told us. We had played a key role in the election and now Obama was putting out the call of service to help create change. We knew “how to make a stink,” and were encouraged to do so. 

Throughout the conversation my inner dialogue was firing away questions so fast that the NRA would’ve been envious. Is this truly the role of the NEA? Is building a message distribution network, for matters other than increasing access to the arts and arts education, the role of the National Endowment for the Arts? Is providing the art community issues to address, especially those that are currently being vehemently debated nationally, a legitimate role for the NEA? I found it highly unlikely that this was in their original charter, so I checked. 

The NEA published a book entitled National Endowment for the Arts: A History 1965-2008 early this year. Combing through the 40+ year history of the NEA, I could not find a single instance of the agency creating or supporting a national initiative that encouraged the art community to address current issues under contentious debate. 

The NEA was created by the Congress of the United States and President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 as “a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education.”  The issue of health care is curiously absent from this description on their website. 

So I’d like to start a little debate and ask you, the reader, the same question. Do you think it is the place of the NEA to encourage the art community to address issues currently under legislative consideration? 

And before answering, let me give you my take. 

The NEA is the nation’s largest annual funder of the arts. That is right, the largest funder of the arts in the nation – a fact that I’m sure was not lost on those that were on the call, including myself. One of the NEA’s major functions is providing grants to artists and arts organizations. The NEA has also historically shown the ability to attract “matching funds” for the art projects and foundations that they select. So we have the nation’s largest arts funder, which is a federal agency staffed by the administration, with those that they potentially fund together on a conference call discussing taking action on issues under vigorous national debate. Does there appear to be any potential for conflict here?   

Discussed throughout the conference call was a hope that this group would be one that would carry on past the United We Serve campaign to support the President’s initiatives and those issues for which the group was passionate. The making of a machine appeared to be in its infancy, initiated by the NEA, to corral artists to address specific issues. This function was not the original intention for creating the National Endowment for the Arts. 

A machine that the NEA helped to create could potentially be wielded by the state to push policy. Through providing guidelines to the art community on what topics to discuss and providing them a step-by-step instruction to apply their art form to these issues, the “nation’s largest annual funder of the arts” is attempting to direct imagery, songs, films, and literature that could create the illusion of a national consensus. This is what Noam Chomsky calls “manufacturing consent.” 

Now, if you are for the issues being pursued by the current administration, you may be inclined to think favorably of what I am labeling “overreach.” What a powerful weapon to fight those that are opposed to our ideas, you may think. For those in this camp I ask you this – will you feel the same when the opposition has access to the same machine? If history is any indication, the pendulum swings both ways. Is persuasion what the originators envisioned when they brought the legislation that created the NEA to the floor of Congress? 

As a member of the art community for the past 14 years, I raise these questions only after careful consideration. Many of those on the call are from my hometown. My position here should not be construed as a personal attack on the call participants. Many of those on the call worked tirelessly on the Obama campaign and are proud of their victory. They look at this as an opportunity to be involved directly with the White House, which is an exciting prospect to many in the art world whose experience with the government may be limited to paying taxes and voting. 

But the art community must put this excitement aside and ask itself about the proper role of government agencies created to promote the arts.  And if put in the wrong hands, could a message machine built by the NEA be used in a nefarious manner not currently foreseeable? 

In an attempt to recapture the excitement and enthusiasm of the campaign the organizers of this conference call have entered murky waters, a strait that the NEA cannot afford to swim. Previously shackled with the controversy over the Serrano and Mapplethorpe images of 1989 that escalated to a debate over its very existence, the NEA needs to stay far away from any questions of impropriety. 

There is no shortage of problems within the art community that the NEA could tackle. Museums across the country have been hit hard by the financial crisis. Their trusts and portfolios have seen massive declines. Donations, attendance, and memberships are down. Many have had to reduce exhibition hours due to staffing and budget reductions. And countless art galleries, the lifeblood and revenue stream for many artists, have closed or are on the brink of closure.  Rallying the art community around these issues seems a more appropriate use of its resources. 

I’m not a “right-wing nut job.” It just goes against my core beliefs to sit quietly while the art community is used by the NEA and the administration to push an agenda other than the one for which it was created. It is not within the National Endowment for the Arts’ original charter to initiate, organize, and tap into the art community to help bring awareness to health care, or energy & environmental issues for that matter; and especially not at a time when it is being vehemently debated. Artists shouldn’t be used as tools of the state to help create a climate amenable to their positions, which is what appears to be happening in this instance. If the art community wants to tackle those issues on its own then fine. But tackling them shouldn’t come as an encouragement from the NEA to those they potentially fund at this coincidental time. 

And if you think that my fear regarding the arts becoming a tool of the state is still unfounded, I leave you with a few statements made by the NEA to the art community participants on the conference call. “This is just the beginning. This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally?…bare with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely… “ 

Is the hair on your arms standing up yet?

In this episode, “NewsBusted” covers: President Obama, the Federal Deficit, Nancy Snyderman, ObamaCare, NASA, Cap and Trade, Global Warming, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Billie Jean King, and North Korea.