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I was walking through Lowe’s yesterday to buy a hammer and I saw a tool kit belt that wraps around the waist. I laughed fondly as I remembered that during rehearsals, to “get into character,” I wore one of those tool belts filled with tools. Maggie could fix anything: planes, toilets, dinner – with meat hunted by her own hand.

During the filming and post-production of that episode I was unhappy with the producers, Josh Brand and John Falsey. I had to re-record the dialogue for the scene where Rick’s coffin was revealed and they continuously cut away from my face. The satellite had fused to Rick’s body, so the coffin had pieces of metal coming out of it. I wanted to show some emotion revealing that Maggie was sad that Rick had died. Thus, I had a few tears, conjured by “method acting.” (My favorite actors were all “method actors” – Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Jessica Lange, even Marilyn Monroe.) John and Josh were desperately trying to keep the show in the Monday night “comedy” line-up so my performance had to be restructured via sound booths and editing rooms to be “funny.” Of course, I believed that “the self same well that holds our laughter also holds our tears,” to loosely quote Khalil Gibran but.. so goes the tango and artistry of teamwork.

I remember John Falsey called me after the filming of that episode and said, “We are a comedy! Write it down!” So, “dramedy” we were – part drama, part comedy. It was tough to win in a drama acting category because I was always “funny,” through the tears, (tears that I could slip in), while other “drama” actresses were having genuine meltdowns. Throughout the years, as I watched the clips of my fellow nominees sobbing, I knew I’d never win. Their characters were having huge, dramatic, emotional breakdowns. I didn’t care. I loved the show. I loved my character. I loved the cast. I loved the creators – Josh Brand and John Falsey. Josh and John believed in me and I will always treasure them, those years, and my groundbreaking character, Maggie O’Connell.

Now it is 2011, and there seems to be a correlation between the present descending satellite and the potential descent of America. I love America and all the promise for which she stands. I want her to survive. My friend, Brent Cooper, and I were recalling the Northern Exposure satellite episode today. He said, “You’ve gone from actress to activist.” I laughed, but it is true.

I am now an activist and I have never felt more urgent sense of passion and purpose. As the satellite is making a beeline for Earth it reminds me a bit of our situation in America. We feel the impending doom: faltering economy, strangling debt, high unemployment, disenchantment, terrorism beckoning on our doorstep and a president who has blinders on and only sees 2012. Satellite? What Satellite? Ignorance is not bliss.

We are at a huge crossroads in our country. As Jackie Gingrich Cushman says in her new book, The Essential American, “It’s the desire for liberty and freedom above security and safety,” that best represents the American spirit.

Ironically, the “entitlement Americans” who claim “security and safety” is their “right” are incapable of seeing the satellite that is going to crash and burn upon their indignation. The anomaly looming in the horizon is the collapse of our society as a whole when America can no longer pay her debts.

One thing our founding fathers knew was history, a subject that is considered irrelevant in our schools today. History, both in centuries past and decades past, proves that bad economies, high taxes, record breaking unemployment and incomprehensible debt lead to despotism and demise. Americans want both “liberty and freedom” and “security and safety.” Instead of Patrick Henry’s call, “Give me liberty or give me death!” the call of the “entitlement Americans” today is “Give me liberty and give me, give me!”

We can not have both. Our founding fathers wrote the words, ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” with no guarantee of happiness only the pursuit of happiness. They also made it very clear that God gave us these rights and not government. Government can simply not withstand the demand of being “sugar daddy” to everyone. Liberty cannot withstand that demand.

So, as the satellite comes tumbling toward Earth, we are all on alert. We know that it is coming. Should it not be the same with our impending doom regarding our Republic? I remember reading, The Mandarines by Simone de Beauvoir. In the book there is a passage, when after World War I a French diplomat appeals to a French leader to reach out and help another country. The French leader looked at the diplomat and said, “Don’t you understand …we can’t even help ourselves.”

I read this over 20 years ago but it is a passage that has always stuck with me. If our country falters and tumbles from the weight of debt, how can she possibly help even her own people? This is so elementary that I cannot believe that the liberal elite and the “entitlement” contingency do not see this – the implosion of a force that is heading our way.

Claire Belinsky writes in her book, There Is No Alternative, Why Margaret Thatcher Matters, about leaders who can shape destiny based upon history, “Those who matter are able to master these historical forces..they are able to shift the forces into a different outcome.” Our forefather, Patrick Henry was one of these men. His biographer, William Wirt, describes Henry as, “a spirit fitted to raise the whirlwind, as well as to ride in it.”

Henry questions the colonists’ hesitancy to take on the British for fear of Britain’s strength and the enormity of the task, “Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our back, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope.” The enormity of our task today: to bring back America to her basic thesis, to curb big government and entitlement mentalities, to educate her citizens, young and old, about the duties that imbue liberty, to demand an accountability regarding spending in Washington – to basically save America – is as daunting today as it was for the colonists to take on the biggest, most powerful country in the world, Britain. However, we must. We cannot continue to hug the “delusive phantom of hope.”

Who will accomplish this, if not the people? We must reclaim America’s promise, which is liberty, which is freedom from government and thus, the ability to pursue happiness – all on our own.

Actress tuned activists. I see the falling weight of misguided leadership. I recognize the impending doom. I want to be a woman of action, a patriot of action. I believe in Patrick Henry’s words, “Should he keep back his opinions, at a such a time, for fear of giving offense, he should consider himself guilty of treason towards his country..”

Join me in my quest. Visit my foundation, “Constituting America’s” website and get involved http://www.constitutingamerica.org/. Listen to and/or watch my radio show, The Janine Turner Radio Show, on Saturday nights on 570 KLIF or http://www.klif.com/AND starting Monday, September 26th, listen to my daily radio show on my website. Call in and let’s chat about Satellites, Northern Exposure and America’s Future.

Before you go to sleep, however, or bump up another article, stay with me and this article’s title.

The cited video is Michael Tilson Thomas’ exceptional and exceptionally moving tribute to the soul of Dimitri Shostakovich and the hidden meanings within his Fifth Symphony that has profound relevance to the direction we are headed into with the Progressive New World Order.

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The Tilson Thomas complete video is an intensely condensed portrait of Stalin’s Russia. I consider the Tilson Thomas lecture/documentary a “must-see” for anyone viewing America primarily through the eyes of Hollywood and the performing arts.

The Soviet Union ravenously fed on the terror we can find breathing beneath the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony. The nightmare is only there, however, and can only be perceived if we begin to understand the musical code with which Shostakovich is constructing an obligatory deception.

Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony is a lie?

How do you appease a terrorist, the homicidal Communist Joseph Stalin, while, at the same time being true to yourself and your calling as an artist?

With that challenge in mind, why would I ever come up with the title, Bringing America Home Again?

The history of Stalin’s Russia is vitally important as a measure of how far the Progressive New World Order has dragged America and Americans away from their original faith in individual freedom and individual responsibility.

The last four Presidents have steadily transformed a Democracy into a Progressive New World Order Oligarchy and from there into an increasingly centralized, world power not within Washington, D. C but woven and strengthened daily out of the United Nations. That international body’s increasingly bloated animosity toward the three thousand year old Judeo-Christian civilization, the culture out of which most of America’s fundamental values have evolved, is a matter of historical record.

However, President Obama is determined to question America’s self-image with his “fundamental transformation”:

We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.

–President Barack Obama

Quite frankly, we are being dragged by this imperial vision of a New World Order into the undeniably Marxist vision of man as a manageable herd as versus a humanity with Judeo-Christian faith in the sacredness of the individual human being.

I now feel obliged to remind my readers of the obvious: Karl Marx and his writings are a great deal closer to both Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong than they are to the Holy Bible. With President Obama as a self-admitted Marxist and an avowed “secularist” when it comes to defining the soul of America, the Holy Bible and the entire Judeo-Christian Civilization appear increasingly irrelevant to the Obama Nation of America.

I recently examined my old hometown of New York City and its recent 9/11 Memorial Ceremony.

Clergy had been summarily excluded by Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama from an American memorial ceremony?

Are clergy somehow un-American?

From the President’s words cited above, one might certainly think so.

Clergy are “un-Progressive”!

A devout Marxist believes that religious faith is an “opiate” that the human race must replace with increasing dependence upon the opiate of centralized government and the spin-doctoring of Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama.

Is the President of the United States to be the only major spiritual leader we can depend on for guidance? He seemed to be the only one to quote scripture or invoke God’s name at the ceremony.

Yet some Americans, like former Ambassador John Bolton, seem to think that President Obama has neither a clear nor consistent vision. In the former Ambassador’s eyes, the President is “naïve”. Though Obama is clearly the fourth, Presidential nail in the prophecy of George H. W. Bush’s New World Order, the Ambassador doesn’t see a connection.

Ambassador Bolton’s appears totally out of touch with George H. W. Bush’s Progressive New World Order and its innermost circles, including the increasingly suspect, New World Order efforts of John Bolton’s onetime boss, George Jr.

Does the White House regularly lie to its United Nations’ Ambassador?

Misinform him so often that he’s made a regular arm of mainstream misinformation?

Particularly at this moment in American history?

Ambassador Bolton claims that President Obama has no coherent plan or strategy that supports both his domestic and foreign policies.

Really?!

Wiping his own mind clean of even its own intelligence, John Bolton writes this breathtaking sentence about the Obama administration’s conduct:

“But it is folly to look for rhyme and reason

(in it)

when there is neither.”

The President’s belief that America has no specific religious tradition and his dismissal of clergy at the 9/11 Ceremony show a pattern of considerable rhyme and reason.

The Marxist/Islamic alliances, which Ambassador Bolton refuses to recognize within the Obama Nation’s “Progressive” strategies, reveal a clear and calculated connection between President Obama’s Arab Spring and his Marxist economic policies being thrust on the United States.

Beginning the second segment of Maestro Thomas’ exegesis of the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony are a few but powerfully familiar measures from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Beethoven, until the moment Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself an “Emperor”, had been a Bonapartiste, a devoted disciple of Napoleon’s dream of uniting Europe.

Shostakovich, particularly in his second and third symphonies, had shown himself a devoted child of the Communist Dream. When the Revolution began in 1917, Dimitri was only 11 years old.

How had Shostakovich put himself into such disgrace with the “authorities” that he feared for his life?

Stalin had attended a performance of the Shostakovich opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

The dictator leader of the Soviets had walked out of the theater after the first act.

Then a second and literally life-and-death evaluation of that opera appeared in the official Communist newspaper, Pravda. It was a scathing indictment of both Shostakovich and his music.

Many said and many still say that it was Joseph Stalin himself who wrote the condemnation.

The Message had been sent!

Shostakovich had been thrown into such terror that he sometimes waited on the stairs of his apartment building for the KGB to show up for him. He didn’t want his loved ones to see him taken away.

The composer had cancelled his own Fourth Symphony shortly before its premiere performance for fear that what he had written was exactly what Stalin had criticized about Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.

This is when the export of Soviet propaganda and Stalin’s propagandists to the United States and the infiltration of the American performing arts began.

Stalin’s theory was: if you control a nation’s arts, you control the soul of that nation.

For the over eighty years that have passed since Stalin began his indoctrination of the Free World, the performing arts in America have been the main target of both Stalin’s policies and those of his still-devoted disciples.

Ever since then, the films and television series of Hollywood have been decidedly fed a Marxist and, in some cases, an actually Soviet bill of fare.

Tragically Hollywood has made the Far Left view of America its own perspective and the films arising from its studios and independent filmmakers mock, criticize and humiliate traditional American values.

No, America is not the Soviet Union yet and the Progressive New World Order isn’t undiluted Communism.

However, Barack Hussein Obama’s “fundamental transformation of the United States” and his Obama Nation has no other visible destination than a Marxist New World Order.

In my next segment of this series, Bringing America Back Home, I will be recalling our last and longest contact with a leader of the Soviet Union: Ronald Reagan’s efforts to come to some peaceful solutions with Mikhail Gorbachev. 

With the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony as our emotional guide, we can see with increasing depth the massively homicidal inevitabilities in an increasingly centralized governing system with worldwide ambitions. A creation such as the Progressive New World Order and its increasingly empowered, increasingly selective oligarchy.

What will be the fanfare to the Progressive and Increasingly Tyrannical New World Order?

The very riots predicted by Progressive Mayor, Michael Bloomberg of New York and actually promoted by the deliberately failing prescriptions of Bloomberg’s fellow provocateur, President Obama.

What is the “fundamental transformation of the United States”?

Martial law.

With that as the objective of the entire Obama Nation, everything Obama has done makes perfect sense.

The top finishers in the Power Line Prize competition are being posted around the web. Number seven, called “Fiscal Child Abuse,” is a video submitted by the Independence Institute in Colorado. It features three young girls who want to start a lawsuit; it is funny, and is one of my favorites in the competition. Roger Simon of Pajamas Media has posted the video. …

Number five was submitted by the Young Cons, two rappers (and basketball players) from Dartmouth. Their video features lots of quick cuts as they interview students and a soldier. The cons themselves take the stage at the end. It is an impressive piece of work that rivets your attention even though it was one of the longer videos in the competition.

And here is number five:

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Visit our friends at Power Line for links to more runner ups and the upcoming announcement of the $100k grand prize winner.

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Where is reason?

But the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory to all.

George Washington, in his Farewell Address, speaks to us about the obligation we have, as citizens, to the United States Constitution. Obligation. Americans, we the people, who live in America, we the people, who reap from her spirit, her resources, her goodness, her history of independence and equality, should be obliged to live by and honor our Constitution.

But do we? How can we, if we do not know it?

Americans love football. How would we ever expect a football player to play the game, if he did not know the rules? Similarly, how do we expect to maintain our republic if we do not know the rules, the laws, of our intended government?

Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty.

George Washington states that we should respect the Constitution’s authority, comply with its laws, acquiesce to its measures.

How can America’s citizens sacredly oblige, respect, comply and acquiesce to the measures in the Constitution, if we do not know it? How can we sustain our Republic, a form of government where the people rule through their representatives by electing leaders, congressmen and women and selecting judges to protect our liberties, if we know not from where these liberties are borne and maintained?

Is this not reasonable? Where is reason?

Reason, a caveat in all things brilliant and everlasting, a mental attribute our founding fathers understood, leads us to a fundamental conclusion.

Is it not reasonable, that we as adults fully comprehend the foundation of our government? Is it not reasonable that we dedicate as much time educating our children about the founding principles of our country as we do taking them to soccer practice and ballet school, the science fair and math labs?

But, where is reason in America?

I will never forget a recent experience I had when I was a guest on someone’s radio show. As we were discussing the importance of the Constitution, he said, “I don’t agree with it.” I was awestruck. He didn’t “agree with it?” What was his reasoning for such a blatantly, broad and ignorant statement?”

It reminded me of the great line in the movie Amadeus. After a beautiful, sumptuous Opera, the king walks up to Mozart and comments, prompted by his faction, that there were “Simply, too many notes.” A flabbergasted Mozart asked the king to describe to him exactly which notes. The king was at a loss for words.

The same applies to a broad comment regarding the Constitution such as, “I don’t agree with it.” I wondered to myself, which part? Reason led me to question whether this person had ever read the Constitution or studied it. If he didn’t agree with it, which implies the whole of it, then was I to suppose that he didn’t agree with the separation of powers, the checks and balances, the genius of Articles 1, 2 and 3?

Did he not agree with the bicameral Congress – one for the people, one for the states? Did he not agree that the President’s Cabinet has to be approved by the Senate? Did he not agree that the President is prohibited from declaring war without the consent of the Congress? Did he not agree that the House of Representatives, the people’s house, holds the purse strings for the war thus empowering the people, through their vote, to end the war at any time? Did he not agree that the President cannot appoint a Supreme Court Justice but can only nominate one, and that the nominee has to be confirmed by the Senate? Did he not agree that a bill vetoed by the President can be overridden by a two thirds majority of the Congress?

Did he not agree with the 13th Amendment, that gave slaves freedom, the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote, or the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments, which includes freedom of speech – the freedom of speech which gave him his right to voice his blasphemous opinion – that he didn’t agree with the Constitution?

Where is reason?

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachments tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.

Is this not happening today? The executive branch is encroaching on the legislative branch by appointing unelected officials and Czars thus blatantly disregarding the Constitution. This encroachment has a residual effect on the liberties of the people, the resiliency of industry and the inspiration of free enterprise. This can only happen if we the people are ignorant to the proceedings, the true intent of our government.
Thus, the bias against the Constitution and against the people who revere it, propels the purpose of the perpetrator – to intimidate the desire of a civic yearning and learning which thus allows the government to insidiously overstep its bounds.

All obstructions to the executions of the laws are ….. of fatal tendency.

Where is Reason?

Well, I reasoned, if this gentleman didn’t agree with the Constitution of the United States, then he could move to another country, a, or b, if he could ever define the part with which he didn’t agree, he could start a movement for an amendment.

If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it corrected by an amendment in the way the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation… it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.

Broad and unsubstantiated statements such as, “ I don’t agree with it” are by products of the proponents of faction. Faction is like a wildfire that rips through an innocent land. It breeds contempt, discord, division distrust and eventually the demise of our Republic, but more on faction next week.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetuated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. …sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of liberty.

Part one can be read here.

Mayor Cedric Glover may be a Democrat, but he is a great conservative when it comes to business.  He helped us in many ways when we were building the studio including helping us in the land acquisition and facilitating a loan from the city when the economy collapsed and we needed a little extra cash to make sure the project did not fall apart.

This whole project started as an idea when I was in Shreveport shooting “Mad Money” in the Spring of 2007.   During that time I became acquainted with Cedric Glover and his city council.  My colleague and I, Michael Flannigan, spent a good deal of time working with the city during the production of “Mad Money” and Mayor Glover started talking about how he wanted to support the film industry and help it grow in Shreveport.  At that time, Louisiana had a 40% entertainment industry infrastructure tax credit in place.  We decided that if the City had land that was not being used, maybe we could lease it and take advantage of the tax credit to develop and build a movie studio.

Michael and I discussed this idea with the owners of Millennium Films, and with the encouragement of all three of them, especially Avi Lerner, we proceeded to identify some land that the city had available.  Michael and I then filed the application for the State Infrastructure Tax Credit and it was approved.  We then proceeded to negotiate a lease with the City for the aforementioned land along with the help of our Shreveport Attorney Dannye Malone.

Now, it was time to finance the construction.  Unfortunately, the Stock Market collapsed in September, 2008 and the financing became impossible.  No bank would even consider a real estate development deal in late 2008, let alone a movie studio.  This is when we saw the true power and dedication of, not only Mayor Glover, but the entire municipal government in Shreveport.  They, along with Avi Lerner, would not let the project die.

After exhausting what we thought were all possibilities, a financing package came together, which included a partial loan from the City of Shreveport.  Construction began in late 2009.  And, yesterday, we had the grand opening of the first phase of the studio which is now fully operational.  When all of the phases are complete, the Shreveport facility will be a 20 acre studio with a complete back lot that will include various facades representing exteriors in different parts of the world.

Right now, in the initial phase, we have two fully soundproofed stages, production offices for two films, an integrated CGI visual EFX house, storage, commissary and a screening room.  Phase two includes the building of some storage warehouses and, as mentioned earlier, some facades.

This studio represents an example of what government can do when it’s pro-business and really wants to create jobs.  Between the State of Louisiana Department of Economic Development, through its representative, Chris Stelly and the City of Shreveport, this package came together with a relatively small investment in taxpayer dollars.  Already, it has created more than 80 full time jobs in Shreveport and approximately 150 part time or seasonal jobs.  The area of the city where the studio was built is now going through gentrification and will become an active and productive part of the city.  It will no longer be a blight on the city where drug dealers and prostitutes sold there wares.

The economic benefit to the city and the State is already being seen.  The jobs created will bring more tax revenue in the form of income taxes from the already employed.  In addition, the area will attract other businesses which will generate more tax revenues.  This is real stimulus.   It is government aid in the creation of job in the private sector, not the public sector.  This represents an actual example of Republican theory at work.

It is not the stimulus the Obama Administration gave us in 2009 which included longer unemployment benefits, the creation of temporary jobs, the creation of public sector jobs which will require constant tax dollars to maintain, and massive union payoffs, etc.  And, the cost of the Millennium Studios project was born at the state level, not federal.  It is small government doing what it does best.  Not the gigantic federal monster which the Obama Administration would like to have take over the economy.  It is proof that Federalism works.

If only the Obama Administration would realize this and keep out of the economy.  Had the stimulus and bailouts not gone forward, the country would be completely out of recession at this point.  The economy would have taken care of itself.  Now, instead, our children are burdened with another four trillion dollars of debt.  The still-in-power Democratic Senate refuses to listen to the Republican House on ways to curtail the ridiculous Federal spending.

In the meantime, congratulations to Millennium Studios and to my colleagues, Avi Lerner, Trevor Short and Danny Dimbort.  And, one more time, thank you to the City of Shreveport, its Mayor, Cedrick Glover and the State of Louisiana for backing and supporting business and industry in the private sector.

What, then, is the public to assume when, in spite of the best efforts of our most brilliant thinkers and politicians, freedoms erode, prosperity decreases, and for a great many, justice seems elusive? Surely, sinister forces must be at work.

Let us take for an example the nation’s system of public education. For years, American taxpayers have been sold on a triad of public policy fixes for public education. In order to improve student performance, state and federal governments must dedicate a greater portion of their budgetary dollars to education; class sizes must be reduced, and there must be greater oversight by the federal government. So fervent is the belief in this holy trinity of education, that to even ponder the efficacy of the federal Department of Education is seen as heresy. Any politician who attempts to curb the unrestricted flow of tax dollars to public schools is accused of not wanting to “invest in education.”

And yet, increases in spending have not resulted in a corresponding increase in student achievement. Studies have shown that over the last 50 years, student proficiency in math and English has shown little improvement even as spending and federal government oversight has increased and class size has decreased. Given the brilliance and dedication of our public servants, the failure of significant academic gains to materialize, in spite of billions spent on education, can only be the devil’s work.

And if you are a black man, the devil must, indeed, be working overtime.

Information recently culled from the National Assessment for Educational Progress, based on national math and reading tests given to students in the fourth and eighth grades, revealed some rather disheartening results. According to the New York Times, the report paints a picture for black males that is, “even bleaker than generally known.”

In 2009, math scores for black boys lagged behind those of both Hispanic boys and girls, and black males fell behind white boys by an average of 30 points, which is interpreted as three academic grades. Black males drop out of high school at a rate twice as high as white males and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower. In short, the report shows that black males fall behind academically early on and never regain ground.

These are not students failing because they do not have access to the internet or don’t have Olympic sized swimming pools. The sad fact is that the report demonstrates that middle-class black boys are scoring about as well as poor white boys. These are students who are not proficient in the basics of math and English.

The social cost of this failure is not to be underestimated.

Half of these students will drop out of high school; lacking a high school diploma and being functionally illiterate will qualify them for manual labor, which is steadily in the decline. They will join the ranks of the chronically unemployed; many of these men will make a life hustling on the streets and eventually become involved in the criminal justice system. Criminal records will make these men more unemployable, which will make it even more unlikely that they will have the financial means to support the children they father. It is a hellish cycle that will repeat generation after generation.

Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, says, “There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten.” Ferguson gives voice to something that many of us have long suspected: how well children perform in school depends, to a great extent, on the kind of training they receive in the home.

Battling the dark forces aligned against our children may necessitate the asking of some uncomfortable questions. For instance, is the continued academic under-performance of black boys the result of a failure of the educational system? Or, is the issue rooted in black culture?

Of course, we can always avoid the discomfort of those questions and continue to rely on the original thinking of our best and brightest. In response to the chilling figures presented in the report, the authors have come up with the original idea of urging Congress to “appropriate more money for schools.”

Two examples:

In 1978, a young director named Michael Cimino ascended to the very tippity-top of Tinseltown adulation with his sophomore directing effort “The Deer Hunter,” which triumphed at the box office and that year’s Oscars. Subsequently, everyone in Hollywood wanted to be like Mike. And yet, a mere two years after his out-of-nowhere rise to the top and flushed with the power of his own invincibility, Cimono went on a then-unprecedented spending spree to produce the ill-conceived “Heaven’s Gate” which would not only become the biggest financial debacle in all of Hollywood history, but effectively destroy an entire studio, United Artists. 

And thus ended Hollywood’s love affair with Michael Cimino. Oh, he would go on to make a few more films but by most definitions, the toast of Hollywood’s career was all but dead and he would never truly receive a second chance.

Fast-forward to 2008 when a young Senator named Barack Obama ascended to the very tippity-top of Hollywood adulation and won the highest office in the land. Everyone in left-wing Hollywood wanted to be like Barack. And then, right after his out-of-nowhere rise to the top, while still flushed with the power of his own invincibility, President Obama went on an unprecedented spending spree to produce the ill-conceived Heaven’s Gate of economic plans which would become the biggest financial debacle in generations and the Waterworld of health care plans which would prove to be more unpopular than some diseases. Overnight, the net result of both would all but destroy the hard-earned gains of the Democrat Party in a single midterm election.

And thus ended Hollywood’s love affair with Barack Obama.

It’s been almost a week since the election, the President is obviously licking his wounds over the “shellacking” he took, and where are all his Hollywood pals? Where’s the public Hollywood support, especially when the President needs it most…?

Where’s the “We’re Still With You!” Will.I’Am video?

Where’s Ashton Kutcher’s “We Still Post-Midterm Pledge Our Allegiance to Barack Obama” Celeb-u-Tard-YouTube-a-thon? 

When will those creepy Venice, California neighbors Mao their kids together again to buck up the Precious One?

“Funny or Die” can’t produce one quick, painfully self-conscious unfunny ”Die” to buck their guy up some?

While I’m sure his ego appreciated it, Obama certainly didn’t need a bunch of shallow preeners attaching their little pinko wagons to his star while he was on the rise and especially after he had reached the top. Now is when he could use some public support, but thus far Hollywood’s nowhere to be found. Unfortunately for the President, he’s no longer boffo at the box office– in fact, he’s box office poison — and standing by the Chief Executive of Epic Failure is not a Hollywood resume enhancer.

Most confusing for Obama must be the fact that he did absolutely everything Hollywood asked him to when it came to exponentially expanding the size of the federal government and socializing our health care system. But doing what Hollywood expects of you is not enough. Failure will still strip you of your mojo and the result is always the same: the left-wing celeb community flees from you like a Brownie Troop from Roman Polanski … which is far from a perfect analogy. After all, even though he’s a child rapist, Polanski still enjoys plenty of Hollywood public support because he’s successful — successful at getting films made and winning his actors awards.

Poor Barack, in Hollywood today he doesn’t even rate above a child rapist.

It is not a political party.  Tea Parties are political gatherings in which concerned and outraged American citizens express their outrage at government spending and crippling legislation and reaffirm collectively their devotion to American Constitutional values.

But there is no Tea Party, there is no Conservative Party, and there is no Liberal Party.  We have basically a two-party political system, the Democrats and the Republicans.  All other ‘parties’ act as spoilers in political elections.  Third party candidates end up swaying election results as to hurt the very people they were hoping to help: themselves.  They split the vote.  Witness two past presidential election votes in which Ross Perot split the Republican vote, awarding both elections to the Democrat, Bill Clinton.  Ralph Nader has been a thorn in the Democrats’ side with his Green Party…or is it the Peace & Freedom Party…or was it the Nutjobs & Pudwhacks for Mindless Change Party, I don’t remember.  Anyway… There is no Tea ‘Party’.

But there is a Libertarian Party.

So it’s funny how a cheery promise to a friend to speak at some dinner made six months ago swings around annoyingly to be suddenly at hand…and I have to scramble to throw together some semi-cogent phrases on paper.   Add to this that I found out, pretty much at the last second that the audience consisted mainly of ‘hard-core Libertarians’… Oh great, I thought.  Spoilers.

I have many core agreements with Libertarians…but as I am a Conservative, I don’t see the efficacy of forming the Conservative Party.  That would be a lunacy guaranteeing Democrat domination for endless dark years to come.  Are you listening, Libertarian Party and all other disgruntled arrogant spoiler parties?   (As a friend quipped, “Oh yeah, libertarians – basically atheist conservatives!”

Maybe not a bulls eye, but not far off.

Yep – some members of the Libertarian Party asked me to be a speaker at an awards dinner last weekend.   I stood and delivered, and I hope that most found my remarks at least semi-cogent and that I at least semi-rocked.  I heard no Boo’s and no food or flatware was hurled, which is always a good thing.  And so here it is then, for your dining and dancing pleasure…

—–

Good evening.  My friend asked me to get up and say a few words about a no less weighty topic as HOW FILM IN HOLLYWOOD CHANGED THE WORLD.   And I agreed to that.  And so I’m up here speaking before you.  But as someone who has worked in Hollywood thirty-some-odd years, I’ll let you in on a secret of the craft:  Once you’ve got the gig, you do whatever the hell you want. So I’m not gonna talk about HOW FILM IN HOLLYWOOD CHANGED THE WORLD.  I’ll leave that to some boring pontificating film historian who’s spent a lifetime in academia, never made a movie, never been on a film set and wouldn’t know the difference between the global historical impact of Hollywood and their rectal orifice.

No, what I’d like to talk about is the following topic:  HOW THE WORLD GOT SO DAMN SCREWED UP AND WHAT WE IN THE FILM BUSINESS CAN DO TO HELP UNSCREW IT.

And speaking of the internet (?)…I found this –

The economy is so bad that…

I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

I was at McDonald’s the other day and I ordered the Quarter-Ouncer with cheese.  The kid behind the counter asked, “Can you afford fries with that?”

CEO’s are now playing miniature golf.

If the bank returns your check marked “Insufficient Funds,” you call them and ask if they meant you or them.

Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children’s names.

A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico.

Motel Six won’t leave the light on anymore.

The Mafia is laying off judges.

And, finally…

I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc.., I called the Suicide Lifeline. I got a call center in Pakistan, and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.

But I digress…  The world’s pretty screwed up and I don’t think I need to list the evidentiary bullet points of the world’s screwed-up-ness.  We all read the papers, we watch the news, and it’s all over the Internet.  With today’s technology and the phenomenal micro rates of news dissemination, and the incredibly varied and diverse news outlet resources… man, if you don’t know what’s going on, within a few hours, or even moments of its happening… hey, you’re just asleep.  This brings me to my Three Basic Types of People.  The first type ignore what’s going on around them, cuz the party’s always raging and they say “What’s happening!”  The second type of person is engaged and intrigued by current events and asks questions, combs news outlet resources and seeks diligently to find out what’s happening in the world.  The Third Type of person is blissfully and intentionally ignorant of world events, cause/effect relationships, economic systems and patterns… and when their bliss ends suddenly and dramatically as world events steam roll over them, they shake their dazed heads and cry, “What happened??”

I believe I’m addressing a roomful of the Second Type.  You folks are involved – intellectually, passionately, and spiritually.  In this world…and the way things shake out…you are involved.  You love your families…you love your communities…you love your country.  And let me go further…I believe you love your world.  We are all similar, we humans.  We basically want the same things – travel the world, check it out, people are all basically the same.  When you get past the idiocies of some of the governments.  And even some of the religions.  We’re the same – we’re joined at the species.

Which is all the more frustrating for those of us who see our leaders, rather than trumpet America’s success and hold our system of freedom and self-rule out to the world, not as an unattainable trophy demonstrating out superiority…but merely as a gift.  A gift, offered with open hand…that whoever wants our sort of peace and strength and prosperity…and freedom… all they have to do is accept it.  You want our kind of success – adopt our kind of system.  Freedom…capitalism…responsibility… Liberty.

America, even with all her faults…a comparatively short list which, though the current bunch in D.C. scamper like rodents to shove through more horrid freedom-squelching legislation,  grows longer as I speak…even with all our faults… America is still that ‘shining city on a hill’…beckoning to all… that brave and enduring torch of liberty.  And the promise – that if a man or woman is willing and honest and works hard, that his success is limited only by the grit of his aspiration and the sweat of his brow.

So…given how our great nation was started… how the hell did we get to where we are now?   Well it started with a single lie.  One lie, probably floated as a trial balloon by some lazy, dishonest dickwad who thought he’d run a scam up a flagpole, see if anyone saluted.  He thought he’d see if he could get something for nothing.  He thought he’d see if he could get away with not working…while convincing those around him that even though he didn’t work for something, he deserved it nonetheless.  Because you see…that thing he wanted…he didn’t just want it…he needed it.  It was a ‘need’.

And…no doubt the people around him promptly kicked the livin’ crap out of him.  But when he healed, he moved on.  He found a new group to listen to his idea.  That he had needs…and they probably had needs to.  And it’s just not right…that some people have things they don’t.  It’s not right.  Because those people who have things that they don’t, those rich people… why, they probably got those things by cheating.  By cheating good needy folks like themselves.  And now I know that ain’t right!

It’s just not fair.

So these people who needed things… they got a few spokesmen.  Some fast-talking, smooth salesmen.  Some ‘community organizers’.   And they started floating the notion that people who work and risk and persevere in life…really are just takin’ advantage of the ‘lesser among us’.  They were personally profiting from the American capitalistic system, so obviously they were evil ‘greedy fat cats’.  Never mind the amazing prosperity, community development, and standard of living upgrades these entrepreneurs and industrialists were providing the communities…  no.  They were “getting rich off the back of the poor”.

Goebbels had it right – “If you repeat a lie often enough, it will be taken for the truth.”

Well… this lie grew and grew.  Because more and more community organizers ran for and got elected to public office.  And getting elected became easier and easier.  All you had to do was promise people goodies.  And the goodies were paid for by the Booty.  The Booty, better known as the federal budget was money that was taken from the people who earned it, better known as taxes.  Nobody liked to write a big check to the government to pay their taxes, so the government figured out a way to ‘assist’ the taxpayer by conveniently removing the tax from the person’s paycheck before they even touched it.  Wasn’t that thoughtful?

Don’t you love how the IRS…has the balls to call it a ‘service’??

I’m just getting’ warmed up.  I could go on all night, but I’m not gonna.  Legalized theft has been the M.O. of the Left in our government for some time.  And as we slowly slide from being a Republic…into something…dark and dank…and well…I don’t want to throw up so, suffice it to say… this great nation has slipped from its moorings.  This great nation has forgotten what it is…because we have forgotten who we are.  People in this country have forgotten what it is to be an American.

America is not a place to sneak in to and break the law – and then be rewarded with taxpayer-provided goodies.  It is not a place that you come to so that you may be taken care of.  America is not this big slush fund, feeding trough for all the little piggies to sidle up to and squirm into getting the biggest mouthful of freebies.

America is none of that!  America is an ideal.  Of freedom.  And responsibility.  And opportunity.  We are…or should I say were…a free people.  And the government works for…or should I say worked for…us.  We the people.  Not the other way around.

But every time I watch a movie depicting American values as simplistic, hedonistic aberrations of the reality I’ve grown up with and lived in my years, I want to grab the closest “progressive” and throttle him.

When the world was in turmoil, and entire continents were in danger of falling to evil tyrants…America tipped the scales for freedom.  When cataclysmic disasters over take a land, America is there with overwhelming support and resource.  And if America is so awful, why to so many people risk their lives to come here?  That must tell the world, and us, something about what America is.

We’re the good guys.

So what do we do?  Well we’re doing it.  We educate ourselves on the issues and we get involved, and get increasingly involved with the process of electing our government.  We get vocal.  We no longer let the Left control the narrative.  We stand up for reason and truth.   And we vote — and encourage others to educate themselves and vote as well.

And more – let’s get creative.  Let’s write books…let’s write scripts…let’s make TV shows, let’s make films, sing songs, put on plays….that remind us and inform the world of the simple fact of who we are.  We’re the good guys.

We’re America, damn it!

I’m remembering his 2008 campaign litany “Y’all fired up? Ready ta go? …Fired up?”

Call and response does energize a crowd.  Obama wasn’t the first to deploy it, only the first to deploy it with such momentous success.  In the unknown future of our constitutional republic, call n’ response is as here to stay as rock n’ roll.  Crowds still matter, even in the cyberspace age.  Acting together physically is still how the homo sapiens do it, and any ruling class of the species still takes heed.

The method of call and response and of group chanting or singing may be powerful, even dignified, as in “We Shall Overcome.”  Or may be lame, even embarrassing, as in “Whadya want?”… “When d’ya want it?” and the like.  People participating in call and response or in sing-along reveal things about their character:  Faith?  Anxiousness?  Selfishness?  Opportunism?

What did you experience in the character of the last throng you got next to?  Mine would have sneered back at Obama’s call “Fired Up?” with the response “Hell, yeah!!”  And yet there was gloom.  Not always competing well against the gloom were joy, faith, or any of the quite rational exuberance or lightness of being with a just cause. 

C’mon!  The issues may be solemn, but that’s not what we’re entitled to be.  For your consideration, for your next throng—a little lightness for your jumbo-tron! 

—–

This was supposed to speak for itself.  I told any who learned of it that they were to keep my secret, please; it’s “the teaching, not the teacher” and all that; and in times like these, any known individuals identified with it would make it possibly the less universal and certainly the less valuable.  All were agreed until breakdowns within my contracted one-man cartoon shop kept delaying the “May 28th” release date until last Friday’s humble YouTube debut.  Cost over-runs, uncontrollable delays, mega-budget or shoestring—“That’s   showbiz,” I guess. 

No time for “word of mouth” now, they’re telling me.  Be done with anonymity and take a less dignified route, lest this thing go un-noticed!  (*sigh*)

The “Fired Up Fifer” in the cartoon is a little crazed, definitely a little disturbed out of his premises, just as we are.  Our sing-alongs ought to reveal our joy that, out on the streets and malls, we’ve found one another—willing.  The song is one you’ve known before, in a manner of speaking.  So, all together now, on the chorus: 

They promised guns and butter. They promised endless fun

Expand that social contract –  Provide for everyone

Which brings me to the chore of unmasking myself… and the bewildering discovery that certain of my dearest friends took one look at this cartoon and got in my face (a very approachable doofus, I) dismayed that I’ve gone over to the dark side!  I’m generally a lover of political arguments, so with luck they keep ‘em coming… especially if it keeps our friendships alive.  And, I’m obliged to tell them why I oppose government providing for everyone!

“Don’t suffer fools,” you say?  (A different friend told me he no longer cared to keep his own leftie friends…)  Well—whoa, a short minute—where do we cross the line?  Where do we cross from the duty to be involved in how to “keep our women and children” best…  and over to the entitlement not to be disturbed? 

I find it effeminate (in the worst sense of the word, if you’ll pardon my choice of it) if a buddy tells me “we can’t be friends if” I really do favor the wrong public leader or policy alternative.  Dude!  Deciding about policy alternatives is our job.  If I haven’t persuaded you at the end of the day, what’s our alternative?  Are we ready to go for our muskets?  No, today’s alternative is tomorrow.  The consent of the governed is a description, not just an ideal.  Short of gunfire, nothing instituted cannot be disinvested, otherwise terminated… or nullified by civil disobedience or sheer disregard, for that matter.  The order of our world is always fragile; better for us if our friendships are not.

Yet, even our delicate old friends sometimes must be confronted:  Identifying what’s in the hearts of “those people,” so surely that you can dismiss the arguments on their lips, displays overconfidence in your own refinement, not to mention your own intuition! 

The refined Mr. Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Brahmin who spake of a crisis never being allowed to go to waste, reminded us free range folk that for us it’s the teachable moment that must never be allowed go to waste.  In this teachable pre-dawn darkness (already feeling something more like a long night in our national life) with Marxian intellectual hangovers on full display, we can still challenge his side to an historic argument instead of allowing an historic spasm or brawl. 

Let’s line up ours and have them line up theirs.  Time to do the work.  Read a lot.  Compare the historical arguments and counter-arguments.  Is it James Madison over Karl Marx, or visa versa?  John Maynard Keynes, or Milton Friedman?  Liberty above equality, or equality above liberty?  Bring it on.  

The historical truths are on our side.  So, like the cartoon citizens alongside Fired Up Fifer, we ought to dance!  And maybe, like them (Was my one-man cartoon shop a leftie who couldn’t resist the chance to ridicule?) we ought to smile more! 

It really is okay to be enjoying all this.

I admit to feeling weird about pumping this song parody before people even hear it.  That’s not the way it was supposed to be, in any of my lifelong dreams of ever having a hit record.  “Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years,” quoth the rap now-oldie!  Pat Boone, who’s been here for years longer, performs in the soundtrack, along with me (of ShaNaNa, the rest of whom ain’t all gonna be “down with” this) and Jordan Cole, of the 1960s mega-hit makers The Association. 

With apologies to vast numbers of my un-reconstructed fellow sojourners of Woodstock Nation, I’m out of the closet and into the fired up.  “Ready to go” indeed.  Hasn’t it ever dawned on you that our “peace” and Yasgur’s Farm demonstration of the viability of socialism were dependent on a life-support umbilical cord from the Nixon era capitalist grown-ups?  

Didn’t you ever come to notice how robust creation of wealth must be assured before any conversation about its redistribution can even be useful?

To those of my Woodstock cohort who are now aghast at the “tea party” (which more assuredly has “changed the world” than it’s said our misadventure at Yasgur’s farm did) I return that stunned glare, then the sputter:  “But…  I thought you were smart.  I thought you were a nice person!”  Being a nice person aligns with being in the fight for the nicest societal arrangement, among all of human history’s rarest gems:  Limited government. 

Like, dig it, man.  Some of today’s tea partiers are grown up flower children.  Imagine there’s no statism.  It’s easy if you try.  They may say you’re a dreamer.  But you’re not the only one.

A little marching song could have the power to help us remember.  Our side has never had its “Give Peace a Chance” or the like.  So I submit this easy rockin’ parody without asking a penny for its download.  I hope its singing on the streets comes naturally.

I am Victoria’s ukulele and I am in this fight for freedom too.

She takes me to all the rallies and I purposefully sit right in front of the podium so that everyone will notice me. I attended the Beverly Hills Tea Party. All the cameras saw my bumper sticker shouting, “I SUPPORT ARIZONA!!” Can you believe the President of the United States would sue a state?! Man, these are crazy times! All AZ did was ask him to protect them from illegal aliens and criminals. I guess the President doesn’t want to protect them and he is really mad about it. Mad enough to sue.

Suing is a big problem in America. Suing and lawyers. Tort Reform. The President is a lawyer, right? Lawyer sounds like Liar.

You don’t think he has ulterior motives…like, if he kisses butt to millions of illegals and gives them amnesty, they’ll all vote for him? Nah! That’s too nefarious.

Although, I did hear a rumor recently involving that Sherrod lady and “reparations” being paid to black farmers in the south. Many of the “farmers” receiving government money were not even farmers. A lot of things happen below the radar, with our tax money. Things we did not vote for…like abortions. And speaking of nefarious, what’s happening with the offshore oil drilling moratorium? Seems a bit odd how it’s not in the news. And, why would the President want to limit the USA from using its natural resources, while allowing other countries to use them? Um, maybe he wants to make the USA a third world country. But, what do I know? I’m a Ukulele!!

I’m not always negative. Usually Vicki holds me, strums me and sings ditties for itty bitty kiddies. But, we are in a war right now and I am needed on the battlefront.

I will be shuffled to the AZ Freedom Rally II on October 16 in lovely Prescott Valley, AZ. Vicki will be strumming me while she sings, “There’s a Communist Living in the White House” … again. I suggested a new song, perhaps, “Hey, Michelle, The Deficit is Fat,” or “De-de-flate the De-de- Deficit,” or “Puncture Pelosi Power.” Vicki kind of liked “Reid Reeks” and “Bewitching Chris O’Donnell Slaughters Commie Chris Coons,” but, she thinks that her Communist song covers it all. I guess we did a good job at the AZ Freedom Rally I because we were invited back!

Yesterday, while I was lounging on the bed, learning about Fabian Socialism from the Glenn Beck show, I thought up a new song idea;

I like The Star Spangled Banner
I like The Sharron Angle smile
I like the Red, White and Blue
I like the Sharron Angle view and style
I like Sharron Angle’s ethics
I like Sharron Angle’s guts and brawn
But most of all these things, I like the way she sings
The Star Spangled Banner… by the flagpole …at dawn ….oh, nevermind…I was trying to rhyme with brawn and…

Vicki didn’t think my song was good enough for Sharron Angle. She LOVES that lady. Hmmph. Just between you and me, I think Vicki only knows three chords.

I was trapped in the trunk of her car while she and Wilson, Basil and JJ walked the precinct for her beloved conservative JOHN COLBERT. Man, it was hot. My wood warped. That was the record setting 113 degree Los Angeles weekend. Two of my strings went out of tune. When she finally remembered me and put me in the air conditioned back seat, I heard her grumbling, “I can’t believe that out of twenty homes, there is only one couple with a brain! And, they are afraid to donate because they’ll get fired! They’re in show biz.” She said that many of the households did not speak English, one was a drug dealer who didn’t know what “vote” meant, and two were angry Liberals who shouted, “Tea Baggers are the Scum of the Earth!” Maybe I’m glad I was trapped in the sweaty trunk!

While I was sweating there in the dark I started thinking. Congress is corrupt. We should have Term Limits. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. There should be no tenure. No pension. And, Congress should abide by all of the laws they impose on the people, including Health Care. All contracts with Congress should be pronounced null and void as of 1/1/11. Hmmph. That’s what I think. Hey, I should run for office. I’d be the first Ukulele Congressm..,person…thing.

Vicki did not use me when she sang her trio with Von Tress and her sweet, candidate friend, Stephen Smith. So I just sat nearby on the table for a few hours. And, I started thinking… that the way the air feels right now in America is exactly the feeling in The Sound of Music, when the Captain kept making resentful faces at his neighbors who out of fear were giving in to the pressure of the Nazi’s…taking down their Austrian flags, and taking up the Heil Hitler behavior…ever so gradually and then BOOM!….Maria, the Captain and the kids are running through graveyards and mountains to escape the Dictator. It’s just like now! I gotta tell Vicki this. It’s her favorite movie.

Vicki knows I’m special. That’s why she takes me everywhere. The other bumper stickers on my case say, “I Did Not Vote for this Obamanation,” and “If You Don’t Like the Way I’m Thinking Report Me to flag@whitehouse.gov.” There is also a “California” sticker from Joe and two from the Tea Party Express III Tour. I have been everywhere with Vicki and I know a lot of things. We’re pals. That’s why she wrote a song about me. It’s called, “A Nice Ukulele.” Wanna hear it?

—–

Vicki took me to the Marco Rubio rally, but she did not sing her Commie Song. She doesn’t know it in Spanish and most of the people in West Miami prefer Spanish. Ahem. See me in the grass listening to Marco?
Hablo espanol solo poquito.

—–

So, the next time you are at a Tea Party, be sure and look for me. I’m usually in front of the podium, but on the ground. I don’t want to detract from the speakers.