Bestselling horror novelist Stephen King recently helped out his fellow Mainers by holding a contest through his Bangor-based radio station: however much money listeners donated, King would match. The money would then be donated to lower-income Mainers to help pay for heat this winter.

King raised $242,370. Not too shabby. Clearly, this is a commendable and gracious effort on the part of King. It says a lot about his character. But when you bring it into context with past King quotes and his overall liberalism, it brings up an interesting hypocrisy in what famous liberals and 1 percent types do and say.

In the past, King has stated that he thinks people who make as much as he does should be taxed as much as 50 percent. Why? Has King fully thought about a world where 50 percent of his money is taken by Big Government and then they decide where it goes? Just because it goes to the government with the “best intentions” does not mean it will help heat fellow Mainers’ homes. Yet liberal entertainers like King continue to beg Obama to tax them more when they are fully capable as individuals who have found financial success to use their disposable income anyway they see fit, including helping those they see as needy.

How Stephen King has not connected his actions with his beliefs is really quite amazing.

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All these millionaire celebrities running around begging to have their taxes raised are nothing more than hypocritical posers. How many pursue write-offs every year? How many donate the amount of money they say they want to pay in taxes to the Treasury — which is a very, very easy thing  to do.

Whatever happened to live the change you want?

Newsbusters:

As FNC’s Geraldo Rivera appeared in New York City for his Geraldo at Large show on Sunday night to give attention to the Occupy Wall Street protests, participant and music mogul Russell Simmons sparred with FBN’s Charles Payne after Simmons complained that his taxes were too low and claimed that his employees pay more taxes then he does.

When Payne jumped in to suggest, “you could have written an extra check,” Simmons shot back: “Why am I gonna write a, that’s a dumb thing.”

Payne mocked Simmons’s refusal by cracking, “Because you feel patriotic.”

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This series was inspired by the a six part, video examination of Dimitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.

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.

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Yet another hypocritical left-wing gazillionaire mouthing off about his desire to pay more in taxes…

Harvey Weinstein was on [Piers Morgan] last night, talking about his support for President Obama and the fund-raiser he held for him at his home last week. Weinstein echoed Warren Buffett’s call for the wealthy in the country to be taxed more — and said that he considers it an investment in the country, not an unfair burden.

We’re here to help you lead by example in two easy steps, Harvey:

1. Immediately stop with any deductions on your quarterly/annual taxes.

2. Go here and put your money where your child rapist-supporting mouth is.

You’re welcome.

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The Irish gentlemen, Jonathan Swift, once penned a scathing pamphlet in reaction to political and economical conditions in Ireland due to English policies. His satirical essay, “A Modest Proposal” reached outlandish proportions when he recommended that society make use of beggar and bastard children by eating them. It was a political and economical “solution.” Mothers would have incentive to care for their children and take a pass on abortions because of economic gain their children’s flesh would bring. Crime would go down because unwanted children would no longer roam the streets. Instead, they would be put to use by feeding the rich. Lastly, society as a whole would benefit from the emerging market.

The absurdity of his proposal was the point: “For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public as a part of the Martel-Harper Challenge.”

In Swift’s time, the average person in Ireland was poor and destitute, children were unwanted and a lot of pregnancies ended in barbaric abortions. Petty crime and thievery and moral decay was rampant due to the existing circumstances that forced children and adolescents to fend for themselves. The wealthy nobility languished over the sorry state of affairs, but only offered criticism and scorn for the savages instead of reform to help aid their condition.

[I]t is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for [the mothers] in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, [the children] shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands. … I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

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Looks as though someone got the DNC memo:

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Man oh man, Jon Stewart has the left-wing spin and talking points down cold, doesn’t he? No one with even a smidgen of intellectual honesty uses the term “revenues increases,” and to blame the Bush tax cuts (or any tax cuts) on the deficit — especially after Obama’s unprecedented spending orgy — is nothing more than pure propaganda.

Do Tea Partiers want government gone? No.

Do Tea Partiers want to pay zero dollars in taxes? No.

But if you got your news from Jon Stewart, you wouldn’t know that. And God help us all, people do get their news from Jon Stewart.

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Ed. Note: Please make Amelia feel welcome so she comes back! –JN

My hometown of Traverse City, Michigan has also been home to the Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF) since Michael Moore established it in 2005. When Moore announced this new venture, some were excited, some were wary, and many were eager to see exactly what he would do. He assured the public that the festival was just about bringing great films to Traverse City (along with seminars, panels, and other opportunities) and that it would be completely non-partisan. For the first five years, he did a great job.

There were those (myself included) who weren’t crazy about our town being associated with Michael Moore, but it was hard to deny the good that the TCFF was great for us in many ways. The historic State Theatre downtown was donated to the TCFF and restored to its former glory, and the event brought in a nice influx of tourist dollars. For a resort town, that is always welcome.

After five successful film festivals, with few partisan slips, Moore has decided to switch things up.  This year, he is openly bringing progressive rhetoric to the forefront. In an interview with local website The Ticker, he told the public what to expect from the 2011 TCFF. When asked what the biggest news would be from this year’s festival, his response was:

We’ll be doing a major salute to labor, working people, and unions. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the ‘Great Flint Sit-Down,’ a labor event that really helped create the middle class in this country. We’ll have a number of films and events surrounding this that deal with class, labor and working people. And, we’ll honor through the arts those people who are public employees and thank them for all they do.

 A salute to labor. Hooray! I had never heard of the “Great Flint Sit-Down,” but it doesn’t sound like a very tough stance (if you’ll pardon the wordplay) to take. However, this was the action which turned the United Automobile Workers (UAW) into the major labor union that we see today, by going after General Motors in Flint.

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Via Power Line:

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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So this debt ceiling thing is confusing the hell out of me.

For one, every President seems to really like it.

Case in point – Bush wanted it raised too.

But do you know who was against it then? Obama.

Because, he wasn’t President yet.

Now he is.

Suddenly raising the debt ceiling is paramount.

So to me, the President is like your wife, and the debt ceiling is a credit card. You can’t blame her for loving it.

But it’s time to cut that card in half. We need to say, “Honey, I love you – but hand it over. We’ll live.”

The point is, raising the debt ceiling is easy, because it’s easy!

In the past five years I put on the weight of your average sized child, because I kept raising my “weight ceiling.”

I didn’t die or anything, although over time, my wife found me repulsive.

Still does, actually.

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“Kate, California is going down! Pack up the kids now!

It’s not just California. It’s the whole goddamned world that gone to shit.” (John Cusack, 2012)

It’s surprising to me how often it seems like Sacramento wrote the plot of its own disaster movie and is now acting the part it has written for itself of panicking, incompetent government.

John Nolte, editor of Big Hollywood, has joined that great mass of reverse Joads (of Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath), in search of a better life anywhere but California. I imagine him, with his affects, trucking across the Mojave Desert in search of the better life that eluded him in California.

“The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California,” Steinbeck wrote in Travels with Charley in Search of America. Now the desert, notwithstanding the government-induced drought in the Central Valley, is more metaphorical and all around us. There are no jobs but government jobs or the jobs the government has yet to destroy.

“You know what’s remarkable? Is how much England looks in no way like Southern California,” Austin Powers once said. But he was wrong. We are England, circa 1970. We’re still looking for our Thatcher. We hope if New Jersey can get Christie, maybe this state can come back, even if our last Republican governor merely played the part of a conservative. Indeed, the fattest governor in America could have taught the body builder a thing or two about trimming the fat. (more…)

It should be no surprise. People who actually want to help others don’t put on tight leather pants and play guitars for screaming women. They usually go into quieter professions like medicine, social work, or ministry. So when a Rockstar actually claims that he wants to be an altruist, his motivations are usually as phoney as his hair plugs.

I understand where it comes from. Musicians usually become Rockstars by appealing to the common man. When they become rich and famous, they have to find ways to appeal to the demographic they abandoned. So they take up causes. Sheryl Crow feigns concern about the environment, for example, even though the energy required for just one tour could satisfy the energy needs of a small American city.

When Bruce Springsteen started singing about blue-collar teenage angst, he was an angry blue-collar guy, barely out of his teens. His jeans would fade from hauling amps, just like any other working stiff. A billion dollars later, he has to work hard to remember the old days; and like most Grammy winning musicians, has a Guatemalan sweatshop put holes in his jeans.

Unlike the other European Rockstars of the eighties (who are forgotten, but for their haircuts), U2 frontman Bono has been able to keep himself relevant for a generation with his Saint Bono routine. He is not just a champion of the working class, he is the superhero for the impoverished and oppressed peoples of the world. He has met with presidents and dictators, leaders of every political and religious stripe, and set up programs where you can still be a commercialist with a conscience by buying a Red™ iPod. He successfully petitioned 23 nations to forgive Third World debt; debt that will eventually have to be picked up by the taxpayers of those 23 nations. (more…)

We’ve already taken a look at the content of this month’s big bestseller, but digital sales of Lady Gaga’s Born this Way have illuminated an important caveat about new music distribution technologies. In an attempt to harness demand for Lady Gaga’s Born This Way and drive more and more customers to adopt their Cloud Drive Player, Amazon overloaded their server capacity and could not deliver the full album to thousands of customers for much of the day. Digital copies of the album sold for just 99 cents on its release date, but since Amazon has made it so mp3s can only be downloaded once they load into users’ Cloud (web-based storage) Drives, incomplete and delayed downloads turned many off from the service.

British singer Adele has sparked debate about British’s public services in an interview with Q magazine, covered brilliantly by James Delingpole. The singer said of her taxes, “I’m mortified to have to pay 50 per cent! [While] I use the NHS, I can’t use public transport any more. Trains are always late, most state schools are ––––, and I’ve gotta give you, like, four million quid – are you having a laugh? When I got my tax bill in from [her album] 19, I was ready to go and buy a gun and randomly open fire.”

In other news, Adele’s albums are currently available wherever music is sold.

Hipster music journalists have fallen head over heels for a shock-mongering rap group known as Odd Future, led by “Tyler, the Creator,” whose first label-released album Goblin has earned accolades hand-in-hand with feeble excuses for its deeply nihilistic, violently misogynistic lyrics. Canadian singer Sara Quin of the indie band Tegan & Sara published an open letter on her blog pushing back against justifications of Tyler’s indefensible bile. Quin cut right to the heart of the issue– fear of the race card:

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Nothing is free.  You pay a price for everything.  Anything of value is worth working for.

These are the values my father tried to beat into my thick skull…with varying degrees of success.   Once, still in high school, I approached him on a Saturday night and in my nicest tone, asked for some spending money to go to a concert with my buds.  As he pulled a twenty from his wallet he gave me a wry smile.  “I’m not sure I’m doing you any favors handing you this.”

It was years later that those words settled upon me with their full import.   What was my motivation to work if I had somebody who would hand it to me for free?  By my not planning ahead…and earning the money myself, even before I needed it…I was retarding my independence, my self-respect, and my development as a man.

When I became a man, I put away childish things. 

And childish notions.  Our nation, under the direction of a Leftist administration and abetted by a ‘progressive’ media, is awash in entitlement philosophy.  More and more Americans are looking for their ‘benefits’.   More and more feel entitled to what others earn.  More and more seem happy to sit in the wagon and complain to those who aren’t pulling it fast enough.

For some time now I’ve made a decent living in front of a camera; delivering lines others wrote, hitting my marks without bumping into the furniture or drooling on my shoes.  It’s not rocket science, but still, it’s not that easy, either.  (The drooling part, not the rest.)  Many of us in Hollywood feel that since they pay us so well to do something so relatively easy, that we owe it to ourselves, and to the world, to ‘give back’.  Many of us, with that artificial sense of self-importance that comes with being in the movies or on television, feel we are poised and even obligated to ‘weigh in’ on important issues of national or geo-political nature.

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What happened to our leaders?

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

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

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

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

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About three miles south of Beverly Hills in the upper-middle class neighborhood of Beverlywood is Hamilton High School.  An otherwise ordinary Los Angeles Unified School District-sponsored juvenile detention center, Hamilton is home to a couple of well regarded magnet programs, particularly the Academy of Music Magnet.  The Music Magnet is the old stomping grounds of pop stars, Broadway talent, and even Hollywood A-listers who were drawn to a public school program that has a focus on the arts.  Yet, even this rare LAUSD high school that students actually want to attend has become a casualty of the horrendous budget crises in the state of California.

Reporter Steve Lopez was dispatched to the scene to write up the various cutbacks for the Los Angeles Times.  Lopez is known for being the journalist whose articles on a schizophrenic musician inspired the Robert Downey Jr./Jaime Foxx film The Soloist.  Then all of a sudden, what had the makings of a compelling human interest piece on one of the handful of quintessentially Hollywood high schools quickly devolved into a sob story about how these poor teachers and students have been victimized by the dastardly Republicans and their resistance to tax hikes.

How did he do this?

First, Lopez paints a rosy picture of the school by glowingly describing a performance by the jazz band and cherry-picking quotes raving about teachers; his portrayal of Hamilton is a lot like Sean Penn’s depiction of Iraq in Team America:

As it happens, Hamilton is my local high school and I have family and friends who have graduated from the Music Magnet in recent years.  To put it bluntly, many of their experiences didn’t resemble the mythical land of incredible teachers and students anxious to learn that Lopez describes.  An anonymous Hamilton graduate told me she recalls students doing cocaine in the state-of the art auditorium (which was overhauled with a lavish grant to the Music Magnet)—in fact, the source recalled students showing up to class on an assortment of drugs.  Faculty members were seen “celebrating” with students at cast parties after plays.

And I thought programs like these were meant to keep kids off drugs. (more…)

Stacy Drake at Conservatives for Palin:

Jim Geraghty has penned an article criticizing Governor Palin for a law she signed in 2008 that offers tax breaks to film companies who do business in Alaska. Geraghty states that the production company for “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” took part in the program and that it might be “problematic” for the governor “on the campaign trail.”

He writes:

It isn’t too hard to imagine this becoming problematic for Sarah Palin on the campaign trail, as noted by the Tax Foundation:

In case you missed it, small government crusader and Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin’s TLC reality show “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” received a $1.2 million subsidy from the state of Alaska. The show spent $3.6 million on production in the state, meaning that Alaskan taxpayers covered a third of the cost of the show. The show will apparently not have a second season.

Everything Palin has done has been perfectly legal, but it looks problematic for a crusader for small government to end up collecting a seven-figure paycheck from an endeavor that received a seven-figure subsidy, all set up by a program she signed into law. Of course, Palin set up the subsidy in 2008, and the TLC series wasn’t filmed until the summer of 2010, after Palin resigned as governor.

Which begs the question…. What’s the problem?

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And on the way down here I drove and I heard about this guy in Wisconsin, his name was Walker and apparently he wanted to stop collective bargaining. That’s supposed to balance the budget. That’s the magic bullet. So you’ve got [Republican Governor] LePage in Maine, Walker in Wisconsin, you got [Republican Governor] Scott in Florida. It’s Larry, Curly and Moe. That’s what we got right here.

Now you might say, what are you doing up there? Aren’t you rich? The answer is: thank God, yes. Because I grew up poor. I lived in a family where my mother asked donated commodities from a Republican administration and got turned down. That’s where I came from. And you know what, as a rich person I pay 28% tax. What I want to ask you is why am I not paying fifty? Why isn’t anybody in my bracket paying fifty? …

Because [politicians opposed to raising taxes] come from the party of Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, who one year put down on his taxes that he gave $10,000 to charity. Well, my wife and I … we try to make up the difference, the shortfall, that 22% we don’t pay, by giving it away. But you know what, I haven’t seen a lot of that going around.

Doesn’t Stephen King kind of answer his own question here? Yes, his elitist, holier-than-thou and arrogantly mistaken belief that a whole lot of people in the most charitable country in the world aren’t as charitable as he is, is off-putting in the extreme. But that he’s able to give that 22% of his income not swallowed up by the blackhole of the government directly to the causes he believes in is a beautiful thing. This is exactly why raising taxes is a terrible idea. Regardless of what people do with their money, whatever they do with it is better for this economy than what the government does with it. Obama’s failed stimulus settled that argument, especially when you compare the results of that to the roaring economy that resulted from Reagan’s huge tax cuts.

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We at Big Hollywood find it impossible to believe that strident tax-raising advocate Alec Baldwin would even consider fibbing on his own taxes in order to play less than his fair share. Furthermore, we look forward to reporting the news as soon as his name has been cleared of this outrage.’

Did that sound at all sincere…? Because I was really trying.

NY Daily News:

Actor Alec Baldwin has joined a list of elite New Yorkers targeted by tax collectors who think they’re fibbing about where they really live to dodge New York City income taxes.

In recent years, auditors have confronted hundreds of super-wealthy New Yorkers over the residency rules – including star Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter.

Facing shrinking revenues, the state has ramped up its pursuit of suspected tax dodgers, hiring 189 new auditors and – for the first time – making filers swear under oath on tax forms as to how many days they “spend in New York City.”

If it’s more than 183 days and the filer has a residence in the city, the tax bill goes up.

Baldwin, star of NBC’s “30 Rock,” owns a three-bedroom co-op on Central Park West, a house in the Hamptons and a pad near his daughter in Los Angeles.

He spends lots of time in the city doing the show, but claims the Hamptons as home base. That made him one of hundreds of people slapped with an audit in 2009.

“The moment you start working regularly [in the city], the city finance people come after you,” Baldwin recently told an audience at City College. (more…)

I doubt Tuesday night’s PBS show on the Kennedys said anything about their father’s alleged bootlegging, anti-Semitism, or pro-Nazi defeatism early in World War II. I tuned in too late to see the beginning of “The Kennedy’s: America’s Emerald Kings.” But what I saw lived up to the title. It was an idolizing, worshipping white-wash befitting PBS’s bias towards the Left.

Brothers John, Robert and Teddy, the most prominent Kennedy’s of recent generations, are presented as stars of virtue, wisdom and social justice. There was no mention of their collective philandering, JFK’s duplicitous withholding of air cover for the Bay of Pigs invaders dooming them; John and Robert’s involvement in CIA attempts to assassinate Castro which may have factored into JFK’s Dallas murder, or Teddy’s scandalous and cowardly leaving of Mary Jo Kopechne to die in his car after he’d crashed it into a waterway off Chappaquiddick Island.

And there are other skeletons in the closet left out of this documentary like suspicions that Robert may have had something to do with Marilyn Monroe’s murder. The famous Hollywood star had had affairs with both John and Robert.

I’m not saying the Kennedy’s are guilty as charged in each of these accusations. But there is evidence and to leave these controversies out of any program about this important clan gives a distorted picture to viewers, like the young, who have little to no knowledge of the Kennedy’s and therefore get a wrong view of history. And we all know what that means: Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.

The two hour “documentary” was made by Robert Kline, a Hollywood producer and writer, from Thomas Maier’s book of the same name. I don’t know either’s politics. But the presentation was the kind of propaganda that perpetuates myth. The film of the brothers is wonderful. They are handsome and vibrant, articulate and cool. They play touch football on the grounds of their mansions. John suffers the heartbreak of losing a child. But does that make him a good statesman or have much to anything to do with morality or judgement? (more…)

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Tonight’s Guests:

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