I’ve written several articles skewering HBO for producing political projects destined to air immediately prior to the 2012 election, where the vast majority of the cast and crew are passionate Barack Obama supporters, and where the content is aimed at the Democrat’s two favorite Republican villains: Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney. So, when I sat down to watch HBO’s Too Big to Fail, I prepared myself for the worst. What I didn’t expect was the big surprise awaiting me.

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. (more…)

So a government shutdown was narrowly averted, and the world breathed a sigh of relief.

Well, not really.

And I’ll tell you why.

Normal people hate government.

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To me, it’s like women’s basketball. If it’s the only thing on, maybe I’ll watch it. But if I don’t have to, I won’t. So imagine network execs fighting over whether or not to air more women’s basketball – that’s how I feel about government.

So, Rejoicing that we’re now “open for business,” is like being happy your free-loading uncle is staying over, another month.

One EXCEPTION: i’m glad the military families are okay… but their paychecks should never have been in play.

The Dems could have separated that from this other budget crap – but I guess you-know-who didn’t want to.

And so we were able to shave 39 billion off a 3.6 trillion dollar budget.

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Great filmmaker but just a wee bit out of touch…

Left-wing Politico:

[T]he Civil War wasn’t the only thing on Burns’s mind as he visited Washington. As the budget battle continues in Congress, many lawmakers have discussed cutting off funding for public broadcasting, which has been Burns’s bread and butter for decades. …

“This is a completely foolhardy, unnecessarily partisan attempt at social engineering, of picking on something that they can score points with the base and it doesn’t make any sense and it will come back to hurt people. It won’t be a political hurt immediately, but what we’re talking about is whether we will retain our superiority as a country. That is the question. … If you’re serious about balancing the budget, then go and talk about much more significant parts of it, not a fraction of 1 percent of the whole budget. … People can make arguments about the marketplace, but if your house is on fire at 3 a.m., you don’t call the marketplace. When your road needs plowing, you don’t call the marketplace. The marketplace doesn’t have boots on the ground in Afghanistan. And while I would never suggest that public broadcasting has to do the defense of our country, it actually makes it worth defending.” 

As for the notion that the reporting of such public broadcasting outlets as PBS and NPR skew liberal, Burns says that’s nonsense. 

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Nothing like gajillionaires Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey demanding the working class fund their pet projects. How is this different than if the dreaded Koch Bros. asked the government to subsidize polo lessons? Well, what’s different is that the media would rightfully laugh the Koch Bros. off the stage even as they take Spacey’s nonsense seriously:

The Wrap:

Kevin Spacey credited federally funded arts programs for his successful career and called for the federal government to continue its support for public arts programs.

The Academy Award-winning actor made his remarks Monday at the 24th annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Spacey delivered the speech to a coalition of organizations who are in the to the nation’s capitol this week to participate in Arts Advocacy Day.

He related his own story of growing up as a child from South Orange, New Jersey, from a modest background with a lack of self-confidence. He got a major boost at age 13 when he was asked to perform a scene in a play and actor Jack Lemmon praised his performance and encouraged young Spacey to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.

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I have never heard Tom Petty talk politics. When it comes to performers, that generally is a good thing.

Last week my wife and I took our kids, 13 and 11, to see Petty and the Heartbreakers. Having seen them a few times before, they put on a predictably tremendous show, (though doing “Jammin’ Me” and “Change of Heart” would have been great). Mike Campbell, Petty, and crew belted out raw, old fashion rock and direct, soulful, no nonsense lyrics. Awesome.

As the band played “Refugee” I couldn’t help but focus on the audience, including my children, singing in unison “everybody’s got to fight to be free.” Like many Petty lyrics, its a simple, direct, powerful line; easily repeated but probably rarely internalized.

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We, as Americans, do have to fight to be free.

The upcoming generations need to understand that. Our grandparents had to fight to be free of Nazism. Our parents and my generation (though we can discuss The Who at another time) fought to be free of Soviet style communism.

But for this generation and the at least the next, not only do we have to fight to be free of radical Islam but more insidiously we have to fight to be free from the tyranny of our own federal and even local governments’ designs on our liberty. We, who are parents, have a responsibility to educate our children. Our freedoms are threatened by those within and without. (more…)

So every other year or so a documentary bubbles up, focusing on racist groups around the world – usually skinhead types in derby jackets, Doc Martens and tight, rolled-up jeans. Essentially they look like roadies for Erasure. That’s because when it comes to neo-Nazi villains, they only come in one flavor: vanilla. Without question, Jew haters are always white, pathetic, despicable losers with tiny penises.

However most – if not all – of them – are powerless. They don’t run governments. They’re lucky if they run laundromats.

But in Iran, you’ve got a full-blown neo-Nazi running the government. You’ve got a modern day Hitler boasting about nuclear capability. He shares so much in common with Adolf it’s eerie – his envy-driven hatred, horrible hair and an irrational love for animals. All that’s missing is the funny mustache. (more…)

The whole “Robin Hood theory” argument has been used by radical leftists (most commonly referred to as “college professors”) for decades across our great country. “Steal from the rich and give to the poor” is the rhetoric they’ll always undoubtedly regurgitate. There’s only one problem… It’s wrong. Dead wrong.
Every time I hear some dumb college know-it-all or stupid self-righteous celebrity use the story of Robin Hood as an argument for socialism, I want to punch them right in their perfectly zoom-whitened teeth. The truth, is that Robin Hood was the quintessential ANTI-Government revolutionary. He’d have more in common with our Founding Fathers or Ronald Reagan than the likes of Stalin, Marx, or Sean Penn.

See the one point that liberals miss when they read the story of Robin Hood was that the man never stole from “the rich.” Leftists like to vilify the wealthy, but the tale of Robin Hood vilifies a corrupt government. Robin Hood was stealing from an oppressive monarchy/administration and giving the wealth back to its rightful owners. He was essentially re-distributing wealth by removing it from the initial re-distributors. Confused? Let’s break down the story of Robin Hood for a second: (more…)

I am always troubled by those in government claiming they have a moral imperative to enact this or that policy. A little digging often reveals that their motives are more self serving than moral. I am doubly troubled when those raising the moral banner tend to reject the very idea of an objective morality applicable to all men at all times.

Such is the case with liberal Democrats and their insistence that the moral laws of the universe – laws that have been with us since God breathed life into man (or as some would have it when we rose from the primordial soup) – command Government to supply every citizen (and many that aren’t) with health insurance.

But as is generally the case all we need do is scratch the surface and the truth reveals itself.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, John Cassidy of the New Yorker lets the cat out of the bag when he writes on The New Yorker website that we must be clear about what the reform amounts to. “The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment,” Cassidy writes. “The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind.” And why are they doing it? Again the WSJ quotes Cassidy: Because “ObamaCare serves the twin goals of making the United States a more equitable country” and furthering the Democrats’ “political calculus.” In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.” (more…)

FoxNews.com reports:

New Political Blog BigGovernment.com to Launch Thursday

A conservative blogger and publisher who took on Hollywood earlier this year is setting his sights on the nation’s political establishment.

BigGovernment.com will launch Thursday as a “one-stop shop” for commentary and other political information, according to Andrew Breitbart, the site’s founder.

“This is speaking to the zeitgeist of the blogosphere that every story has an underlying relationship to what’s going on in the Obama administration and how the Republican Party is going to regroup as it relates to issues of the expansion of government powers,” Breitbart told Foxnews.com. “We are just now starting to vet the president and the people he’s put into power.” (more…)

I went to the doctor the other day and received some terrible news.  It came as quite a shock because, while I had not been feeling great — I was running a slight fever and I had the sniffles — I felt pretty good for a guy my age.  So to hear my doctor tell me that I needed immediate and radical surgery I was sent for a bit of a loop.

I asked him what the surgery entailed and he told me he didn’t know as he’d never read about it.  I sarcastically asked if he intended to read about it before he cut me open and performed this radical surgery on me and he told me he wouldn’t bother because it would be too complicated for him to understand, anyway.  I asked him what was wrong with me and he told me I had the sniffles and a slight temperature.   I asked him what massive radical surgery would do to help cure my cold and he said, “well, doing nothing isn’t going to cure it.” (more…)

In the movie “Live Free or Die Hard” villain Thomas Gabriel justifies his plan to take down the American economy by saying to John McClane (Bruce Willis), “You think I’m the bad guy. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m the good guy here. I told them this could happen if they didn’t listen. Did I get a ‘Thank you?’ No, I got a ‘F–k you.’ But they wouldn’t listen….That’s right. I am doing the country a favor.”

Thomas Gabriel’s plot was to take over a data center in Maryland and siphon off billions of dollars.  It’s frightening when life imitates fiction but a Gabriel-like plot may very well happen unless citizens speak up and demand more accountability with a contract that the Social Security Administration (SSA) intends to award that allows you to check your social security funds online. (more…)

The American Revolution was fired up in earnest with the Tax Stamp Act, imposed by the British Parliament on the American Colonies. This Act required that a Stamp be affixed to any paper or document such as bills, newspapers, correspondence, leases, bills of sale, etc. It was invasive, arbitrary and onerous.

The Federal and State governments are continuing this tradition of oppression with Stimulus Bills which our representatives neither understand nor read. Yet these bills are passed without any mind to the financial indentured servitude for future generations. I believe that this debt will be a ‘fiscal press gang’ against generations’ optimism, opportunity and Freedom. (more…)

Americans beware. You are not free. Worse, you are being made more and more a slave each day by the very people who tell you incessantly that you are. In fact, the very word itself, FREEDOM, has become your enemy, as it is bandied about proudly and loudly, and distracting you from the encroaching tyranny all around. The word freedom has replaced the substance of freedom that was your birthright, and that is no more.

Of course, Americans were never completely free, which is expressly why freedom was so long sustained on these shores. Our founders knew what freedom is: The natural, God-created state of man, completely unrestrained by the conventions of other men. They also knew that such pure freedom was never practically experienced, and that if it was, it could never be sustained, because it would naturally and instantly consume itself as the powerful and strong exercise of their will without restraint upon the weak. Pure freedom replaces itself with tyranny, rapidly and violently in a shockingly Darwinian fashion. From the chaos of pure freedom rise despots and kings. (more…)

When I first met Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) in February of this year (full disclosure: we have the same publisher, Fidelis Books) I heard him say something that resonated…”We’ve been duped into believing government alone can solve our country’s problems. I believe often the government is the problem. America’s greatness is found in its people and its values not in its government…with every round of new regulation and increased spending our country slides further away from liberty and closer to socialism. ” He had my attention. 

Apparently I wasn’t the only one recognizing his efforts to put his beliefs into action. The National Journal named him the Senate’s most conservative member and the National Taxpayer Union ranked him the number one senator for responsible tax and spending policies.  (more…)

I have been a proud conservative Republican my entire life. My father and Jimmy Carter saw to that. My first vote ever was for Ronald Reagan in 1980, and I have never voted for a Democrat. Ever. Even today, the reasons for my being so have not changed, despite the media’s and liberal Democrats’ tireless efforts to discredit my belief system. Though the times may change, core principles never do. I have also served this nation proudly in uniform for six years, and don’t regret a minute of it.

In the early 1980s, my military service brought me to some of the darker corners of the world. I spent time in South Korea and Marcos’ Philippines when both countries were under martial law. Knowing I could be shot just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time really woke me up to what exactly it is we have here in America. Seeing a thousand Vietnamese Boat People pulled out of the South China Sea in one day only reinforced my belief in America, Sweet Land of Liberty.

Today, the Party of Lincoln and Reagan appears to be in political disarray, which is why I am writing this OpEd now. Yet many promising developments, along with some huge mistakes by Congress and the Obama Administration, have opened many new doors for us. If only we will enter. (more…)

I was back in junior high when my dad used this unforgettable analogy: “The role of the government is similar to that of a hockey referee. His job is to keep the players safe and keep the pace of the game. No more, no less.”

Granted, my dad was really just trying to simplify an explanation for me amidst a time in my life where I’d rather be lighting my own flatulence than engaging in true political discourse, but looking back… I realize that my father is a genius! Step aside Thomas Edison and Guy-who-invented-PopTarts, there’s a new sheriff in town.

The simple, yet brilliant description should be one of the “go to” weapons in any conservative’s quiver when it comes to debating the left. See, liberals hate it when you have a firm grasp on the role of government and more importantly, the founding fathers original intent. It makes their run-around, situational ethics a lot harder to peddle. Now of course using the “hockey referee” analogy may be blatantly Canadian of me, so for all you Southerners just replace “hockey” with “football”, and if you’re gay…. “Soccer.” (more…)