Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5453180/video_paul_mccartney_bashes_bush_at.html?cat=9
Paul McCartney received the Library of Congress Gershwin Award for Popular Music at the White House today. During his acceptance speech, he managed to bash former president George W. Bush. "After the last eight years, it's great to have a president who knows what a library is," said Sir Paul. I'm a huge fan of Paul McCartney; I used to have posters of him plastered on my bedroom walls when I was a kid. But his remark was way out of line; you just don't insult a former president when you're being honored at the White House. Not cool, Paul. You can see the Paul McCartney Bashing George Bush video below.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Paul McCartney Bashes Bush at White House By Hartley Engel
Friday, June 04, 2010
How Illegal Immigration Is Tearing Apart the Very Fabric of the United States By Benyamin Korn
Source: http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/21276/
June 03, 2010
Can American Jews, who have always embraced ethnic diversity and generous immigration policies, support legislation to curb illegal immigration? Yes, we can -- and we should.
Traditional Jewish support for a liberal U.S. immigration policy has been rooted in two concepts: one practical, one idealistic. The practical is the need to shelter refugees from persecution; the idealistic is our vision of a pluralistic, multiethnic society.
The recent law passed in Arizona, and a similar bill that was proposed in the Pennsylvania House (HB 2479), may not be perfect, but they are broadly consistent with both of these goals.
America -- today a home to all peoples -- opened its doors to successive waves of Jewish immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. German Jews came in the mid-1800s, working their way up from pushcart peddling to creating the likes of Macy's and Bloomingdale's. Russian Jews came in the early 1900s, fleeing tsarist pogroms. The American Jewish community owes its very existence to America's open doors.
The closing of those doors spelled doom for millions. Despite U.S. Jewry's fervent support for President Franklin Roosevelt, it was his administration that refused to admit all but a handful of European Jews fleeing persecution in the 1930s and '40s.
The longest-serving Jewish member of Congress, Emanuel Celler, who fought unsuccessfully to pry open America's doors during the Holocaust, was the one who eventually brought about the abolition, in 1965, of the old "national origins" immigration quotas, which had kept out people whose countries of origin were considered less desirable (i.e., East European Jews and Italian Catholics).
It's vital to keep in mind, however, that what American Jews like Celler were fighting for was legal immigration. They were seeking flexibility within the existing immigration law, and at least temporary shelter for those fleeing persecution.
American law today provides for both. "The U.S. has the highest legal immigration in the world," former New York City Mayor Ed Koch pointed out in a recent column. "Every year, we allow 750,000 immigrants to enter the country legally and make them eligible for citizenship within five years."
As for emergency shelter, any refugee who can demonstrate a "well-founded fear of persecution" in his or her native land qualifies for asylum and eventual U.S. citizenship. Each year, the president sets the maximum number of refugees who can be granted asylum; for 2010, President Barack Obama has set it at 80,000.
Of course, welcoming strangers from around the globe fosters the kind of diverse, multiethnic society that Jews have long advocated. But there has to be limits.
Recent history provides us with a bitter example of what happens otherwise. In 1980, Fidel Castro decided to empty Cuba's prisons and mental-health facilities. An estimated 125,000 Cubans boarded ships in the Mariel Harbor and headed for Florida. President Jimmy Carter let them in. The problem was not that they were Hispanic; the problem was that so many of them were criminals.
Everyone has the right to expect the U.S. government to enforce federal laws against illegal immigration. Only when the federal government proved lax in its administration of existing laws were individual states compelled to act.
Opponents of the Arizona law and the proposed Pennsylvania measure, recalling the racism and anti-Semitism that sometimes marred American society in the past, understandably fear that action against illegal immigration could lead to oppressive racial profiling.
Arizona has already acted to address those fears with a second measure, requiring police to request proof of citizenship only when they are stopping someone suspected of another crime.
Likewise Pennsylvania's HB 2479 states clearly that a police officer can check a suspect's immigration status only if he has arrested him after determining that there is "probable cause" that the person committed a crime. In law, the suspect's race or ethnicity is irrelevant. It is actions that count.
Benyamin Korn, former executive editor of the Jewish Exponent, is director of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin and JewsforSarah.com.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
2010 Top Ten Anti-Israel Lies
Source: http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=5958687
LIE #1
Israel was created by European guilt over the Nazi Holocaust. Why should Palestinians pay the price?
Three thousand years before the Holocaust, before there was a Roman Empire, Israel’s kings and prophets walked the streets of Jerusalem. The whole world knows that Isaiah did not speak his prophesies from Portugal, nor Jeremiah his lamentations from France. Revered by its people, Jerusalem is mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures 600 times - but not once in the Koran. Throughout its 2,000-year exile there was continuous Jewish presence in the Holy Land, with the modern rebirth of Israel beginning in the 1800s. Reclamation of the largely vacant land by pioneering Zionists blossomed into a Jewish majority long before the onset of Nazism.
After the Holocaust, nearly 200,000 Shoah survivors found haven in the Jewish State, created by a two-thirds vote of the UN in 1947. Soon 800,000 Jews fleeing persecution in Arab countries arrived. In ensuing decades, Israel absorbed a million immigrants from the Soviet Union and thousands of Ethiopian Jews. Today, far from being a vestige of European guilt or colonialism, Israel is a diverse, cosmopolitan society, fulfilling the age-old dream of a people’s journey and ‘Return to Zion’- their ancient homeland.
LIE #2
Had Israel withdrawn to its June 1967 borders, peace would have come long ago.
Since 1967, Israel has repeatedly conceded, “land for peace.” Following Egyptian President Sadat’s historic 1977 visit to Jerusalem and the Camp David Peace Accords, Israel withdrew from the vast Sinai Peninsula and has been at peace with Egypt ever since.
In 1995, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel but neither the Palestinians nor 21 other Arab states have done so. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo Accords ceding administrative control of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority(formerly the PLO). The PA never fulfilled its promise to end propaganda attacks and drop the Palestinian National Charter’s call for Israel’s destruction.
In 2000, Prime Minister Barak offered Yasser Arafat full sovereignty over 97% of the West Bank, a corridor to Gaza, and a capitol in the Arab section of Jerusalem. Arafat said NO. In 2008, PA President Abbas nixed virtually the same offer from Prime Minister Olmert. In 2005, Prime Minister Sharon unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. Taken over by terrorist Hamas, they turned dismantled Jewish communities into launching sites for suicide bombers and 8,000+ rockets into Israel proper. In 2010, Prime Minister Netanyahu renewed offers of unconditional negotiations leading to a Palestinian State, but Palestinians refused, demanding more unilateral Israeli concessions, including a total freeze of all Israeli construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
LIE #3
Israel is the main stumbling block to achieving a Two-State solution.
The Palestinians themselves are the only stumbling block to achieving a Two-State solution. With whom should Israel negotiate? With President Abbas, who, for four years, has been barred by Hamas from visiting 1.5 million constituents in Gaza? With his Palestinian Authority, which continues to glorify terrorists and preaches hate in its educational system and the media? With Hamas, whose Iranianbacked leaders deny the Holocaust and use fanatical Jihadist rhetoric to call for Israel’s destruction?
Today, it is a simple fact that while the State of Israel is prepared to recognize all Arab States, secular or Muslim, these states adamantly refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish State and demand “the right of return” of five million so-called Palestinian “refugees” – a sure guarantee for Israel’s demise.
LIE#4
Nuclear Israel not Iran is the greatest threat to peace and stability.
Though never acknowledged by Jerusalem, it is generally assumed that Israel has nuclear weapons. But unlike Pakistan, India, and North Korea, Israel never conducted nuclear tests. In 1973, when its very survival was imperiled by the surprise Egyptian-Syrian Yom Kippur attack, many assumed Israel would use nuclear weapons--but it did not. Contrary to public condemnations, many Arab leaders privately express relief that Israeli nuclear deterrence exists. While Israel has never threatened anyone, Tehran’s mullahs daily threaten to “wipe Israel from the map.” The U.S. and Europe can afford to wait to see what the Iranian regime does with its nuclear ambitions. But Israel cannot. She is on the front lines and remembers every day the price the Jewish people paid for not taking Hitler at his word. Israel is not prepared to sacrifice another six million Jews on the altar of the world’s indifference.
LIE #5
Israel is an Apartheid State deserving of International Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns.
On both sides of the Atlantic, church groups, academics and unions are leading deceitful and often anti-Semitic boycott campaigns demonizing what they call the Jewish “apartheid” State.
The truth is that unlike apartheid South Africa, Israel is a democratic state. Its 20% Arab minority enjoys all the political, economic and religious rights and freedoms of citizenship, including electing members of their choice to the Knesset (Parliament). Israeli Arabs and Palestinians have standing before Israel’s Supreme Court. In contrast, no Jew may own property in Jordan, no Christian or Jew can visit Islam’s holiest sites in Saudi Arabia.
LIE #6
Plans to build 1,600 more homes in East Jerusalem prove Israel is ‘Judaizing’ the Holy City.
Enemies of Israel, exploit this phony issue. Jerusalem is holy to three great faiths. Its diverse population includes a Jewish majority with Muslim and Christian minorities. Since 1967, for the first time in history, there is full freedom of religion for all faiths in Jerusalem. Muslim and Christian religious bodies administer their own holy sites. Indeed, the Waqf is allowed to control Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, even though it rests on Solomon’s temple and is holy to BOTH Jews and Muslims.
Meanwhile, Jerusalem’s municipality must meet the needs of a growing modern city. The unfortunately-timed announcement during U.S. Vice President Biden’s visit of 1600 new apartments in Ramat Shlomo, was not about Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, but for a long established, heavily populated Jewish neighborhood in Northern Jerusalem, where 250,000 Jews live (about the same population as Newark, N.J.) -- an area that will never be relinquished by Israel.
LIE #7
Israeli policies endanger U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The charge that Israel endangers U.S. troops in Iraq or the AF-Pak region is an update of the old “stab in the back” lie that Jews always betray their own friends, and the libel spouted by Henry Ford and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that “Jews are the father of all wars.”
U.S. General Petraeus has stated he considers Israel a great strategic asset for the U.S. and that his earlier remarks linking the safety of U.S. troops in the region to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal (which 2/3 of Israelis want) were taken out of context. A resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would benefit everyone, including the U.S. But an imposed return to what Abba Eban called “1967 Auschwitz borders” would endanger Israel’s survival and ultimately be disastrous for American interests and credibility in the world.
LIE #8
Israeli policies are the cause of worldwide anti-Semitism.
From the Inquisition to the pogroms, to the 6,000,000 Jews murdered by the Nazis, history proves that Jew-hatred existed on a global scale before the creation of the State of Israel. In 2010, it would still exist even if Israel had never been created. For example, one poll indicates 40% of Europeans blame the recent global economic crisis on “Jews having too much economic power,” a canard that has nothing to do with Israel.
The unsettled Palestinian-Israeli dispute aggravates Muslim-Jewish tensions, but it is not the root cause. During World War II, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a notorious Jewhater, helped the Nazis organize the 13th SS Division, made up of Muslims. Unfortunately, in addition to respectful references to Jewish patriarchs and prophets, the Koran also contains virulent anti-Semitic stereotypes that are widely invoked by Islamist extremists, including Hezbollah (whose agents blew up the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in 1994), to justify murdering Jews worldwide. The disappearance of Israel would only further embolden violent Jew-haters everywhere.
LIE #9
Israel, not Hamas, is responsible for the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. Goldstone was right when he charged that Israel was guilty of war crimes against civilians.
The Goldstone Report on Israel’s defensive war against Hamas-controlled Gaza, from which 8,000 rockets were fired after Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2005, is a biased product of the UN’s misnamed Human Rights Council. The UNHRC is obsessed with false anti-Israel resolutions. It refuses to address grievous human rights abuses in Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and beyond.
Faced with similar attacks, every UN member-state including the U.S. and Canada would surely have acted more aggressively than the IDF did in Gaza.
Yet, Richard Goldstone, a South African Jewish jurist, signed a document prepared by investigators whose main qualification was rabid anti-Israel bias. He accepted every anonymous libel against the IDF. But he insisted that hearings in Gaza be televised, guaranteeing that fearful Palestinians would never testify about Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields and their hiding of weapons in mosques and hospitals. Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz denounced Goldstone’s Report as a modern “blood libel” accusing Israeli soldiers of crimes they never committed.
LIE #10
The only hope for peace is a single, bi-national state, eliminating the Jewish State of Israel.
The One-State solution, promoted by academics, is a non-starter because it would eliminate the Jewish homeland. However, the current pressures on Israel are equally dangerous. In effect, the world is demanding that Israel, the size of New Jersey, shrink further by accepting a Three-State solution: a PA state on the West Bank and a Hamas terrorist state controlling 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. All this, as Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, stockpiles 50,000 rockets, threatening northern and central Israel’s main population centers.
In 2010, most Middle East experts believe that the only hope for enduring peace is two states with defined final borders. But too many diplomats, pundits, academics and church leaders ignore the fact that current polls show that while most Israelis favor a Two-State solution, most Palestinians continue to oppose it.
It is up to us to help disseminate the facts about Israel -- to our Nation’s leaders, to world governments, to our media outlets, to all who will listen. Please stand up today and do your part.
UNITED STATES
President Barack Obama
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Wednesday, June 02, 2010
As Euro Zone Demonstrates Again, Socialism's Downfall Is Inevitable By Steve McCann
Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/535508/201005261831/As-Euro-Zone-Demonstrates-Again-Socialisms-Downfall-Is-Inevitable.aspx
05/26/2010
Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, and it will continue to do so despite the best efforts of the die-hard true believers in the Obama administration and the rest of the world.
The most recent example of this failure: Euro-socialism is presently bankrupting the countries that embraced it in Europe. This will result not only in more social and economic upheaval, but also the ultimate demise of the ill-conceived European Union.
The original and current proponents of socialism fail to take into account one basic but immutable factor: the fundamental nature of the human race. The most dominant trait mankind has, as do all living creatures, is an innate desire to survive and prosper.
While some may willingly choose to pursue subsistence on their own terms, to the vast majority of the human race, the path of least resistance is the most desired. Thus, mankind is susceptible to financial scams, gambling, crime and resentment or violence toward those who may have more.
But above all, people are very open to the concept of a central authority providing them with the means of livelihood.
A secondary characteristic of human race, again shared by other species, is the need by some within the group to conquer or maintain control over their fellow man. Thanks to modern technology and weaponry, gone are the days when a megalomaniac could by sheer force of determination and arms conquer and impose his will on others.
Faustian Deal
The mid-19th century saw the Industrial Revolution and the rise in living standards and education for the populace in Europe. It was during this same period that the advent of socialist-Marxist theory occurred. Those who considered themselves superior to the masses, and in the past may have achieved ruling status through the power of intimidation over the illiterate and unwashed, now had to look to other means to achieve control of the levers of government.
The easiest course to assume this power was to promise, in return for the support of the people, that the state through a new ruling class would provide the citizenry cradle-to-grave economic security. Thus, a Faustian bargain encompassing the desire by the majority for ease of survival and others for the need to rule would be entered into. The populace, having committed itself to this compact, would expect never-ending freedom from adversity.
However, within this arrangement is the seed of its own destruction. For socialism to succeed, it must have an economic underpinning that can provide the foundation for massive social spending. The Soviet Union, as early as the 1920s and '30s, proved that complete state control of the means of production was a colossal failure, as it could not produce sufficient wealth to support the population.
So only the capitalist system, which is anathema to a powerful central government and its attendant oligarchy, can produce sufficient wealth to underwrite a social safety net for the general public and finance the agenda of the governing class.
Capitalism, reflective of that portion of mankind choosing to seek subsistence on its own terms, does by its nature celebrate the success of the individual, not the collective. Individuals, separately or together, driven by the motive of self-enrichment, produce goods or services desired by others. In the process, jobs and wealth are created, thus benefiting society as a whole.
A massive tension exists between those who adhere to central government control and swear fealty to socialist-Marxist philosophy and those who produce the wealth of a nation. The state inherently has more power than the individual, and once the radical element of the ruling class assumes power, government begins an inexorable process of injecting itself into the affairs of the individual and producer class (which is always a minority in any society).
Those who believe they have a manifest destiny to rule and are faithful to socialist tenets have a predisposition to controlling the populace and economic activity through laws, regulations, taxes and intimidation. Despite the lesson of the Soviet Union and its state control of the economy, every new generation of adherents to socialist ideology believes it can make this fallacious philosophy work and maintain its arrangement with the citizenry.
But the reality is that it cannot, as the economic engine of capitalism will not continue to produce wealth if it is increasingly put under the thumb of bureaucrats and central planners inevitably attempting to not only institute state control of the economy, but to also regulate the day-to-day lives of all citizens. The motivation of the producer class will be stifled and members will either drop out, join the dependent class or simply move on to more hospitable countries.
Governments will, as history has shown (most recently in Europe), turn to excessive and unsustainable borrowings and inflation to finance their societal obligations. The contract between the statists and the citizens who were promised cradle-to-grave security cannot be maintained, as the economic underpinning of this arrangement will quickly erode.
Rocky Path
Social and economic chaos resulting in a dramatically lower standard of living must inevitably ensue, and in some cases these conditions will lead to violence or revolution. No amount of promises, demonization of capitalism and seizure of the means of production, confiscatory taxes or printing of money will reinstitute prosperity or security for the populace.
This is the path on which President Obama and his fellow travelers have set the United States.
The Founding Fathers of the United States, one of the greatest confluences of brilliant minds in the history of mankind, understood the basic nature of human beings. They accordingly set forth a form of government and a written Constitution to greatly limit those who seek hegemony over the people, especially those seeking unlimited security from a central government. They recognized that only the individual free to pursue economic happiness would result in a society wherein all would benefit on a sustained basis.
American voters made a grave error in judgment in 2008. But unlike in many other countries in Europe and elsewhere, this mistake can be reversed, as the citizens of the United States do have the governmental structure to allow the country to step back from the precipice that this nation and many others are presently staring into.
But will the general public understand that the socialist path the nation is on is preordained to fail? Will the citizenry change the government before it is too late?
• McCann is a regular contributor to the American Thinker, the electronic magazine where this article first appeared.
Who Is Really To Blame For This Blowout? By Charles Krauthammer
Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/535634/201005271815/Who-Is-Really-To-Blame-For-This-Blowout-.aspx
05/27/2010
Here's my question: Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place? Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there.
As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama's tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.)
And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we've had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
So we go deep, ultradeep — to such a technological frontier that no precedent exists for the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
There will always be catastrophic oil spills. You make them as rare as humanly possible, but where would you rather have one: in the Gulf of Mexico, upon which thousands depend for their livelihood, or in the Arctic, where there are practically no people?
All spills seriously damage wildlife. That's a given. But why have we pushed the drilling from the barren to the populated, from the remote wilderness to a center of fishing, shipping, tourism and recreation?
Not that the environmentalists are the only ones to blame. Not by far. But it is odd that they've escaped any mention at all.
The other culprits are pretty obvious.
It starts with BP, which seems not only to have had an amazing string of perfect-storm engineering lapses but no contingencies to deal with a catastrophic system failure.
However, the railing against BP for its performance since the accident is harder to understand. I attribute no virtue to BP, just self-interest. What possible interest can it have to do anything but cap the well as quickly as possible? Every day that oil is spilled means millions more in losses, cleanup and restitution.
Federal officials who rage against BP would like to deflect attention from their own role in this disaster. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose department's laxity in environmental permitting and safety oversight renders it among the many bearing responsibility, expresses outrage at BP's inability to stop the leak, and even threatens to "push them out of the way."
"To replace them with what?" asked the estimable, admirably candid Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander.
No one has the assets and expertise of BP.
Government Impotence
The federal government can fight wars, conduct a census and hand out billions in earmarks, but it has not a clue how to cap a one-mile-deep out-of-control oil well.
Obama didn't help much with his finger-pointing Rose Garden speech in which he denounced finger-pointing, then proceeded to blame everyone but himself.
Even the grace note of admitting some federal responsibility turned sour when he reflexively added that these problems have been going on "for a decade or more" — translation: Bush did it — while, in contrast, his own interior secretary had worked diligently to solve the problem "from the day he took office."
Really? Why hadn't we heard a thing about this? What about the September 2009 letter from Obama's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration accusing Interior's Minerals Management Service of understating the "risk and impacts" of a major oil spill?
When you get a blowout 15 months into your administration, and your own Interior Department had given BP a "categorical" environmental exemption in April 2009, the buck stops.
In the end, speeches will make no difference. If BP can cap the well in time to prevent an absolute calamity in the Gulf, the president will escape politically.
If it doesn't — if the gusher isn't stopped before the relief wells are completed in August — it will become Obama's Katrina.
That will be unfair, because Obama is no more responsible for the damage caused by this than Bush was for the damage caused by Katrina.
But that's the nature of American politics and its presidential cult of personality: We expect our presidents to play Superman. Helplessness, however undeniable, is no defense.
Moreover, Obama has never been overly modest about his own powers.
Two years ago next week, he declared that history will mark his ascent to the presidency as the moment when "our planet began to heal" and "the rise of the oceans began to slow."
Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute, you mustn't be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Nancy Glass, Ray Murray crank out reality shows By David Hiltbrand
Ray Murray & Nancy Glass
KYW-TV
1984
May. 20, 2010
Nancy Glass and Ray Murray, the tent-poles of Philadelphia's thriving reality-show production industry, are competitors. But many people in this region will always remember them as partners, breezy coanchors of KYW's Evening Magazine in the '80s.
That was fluff. Now they're rooted in reality.
"Over time, we've done more than 1,000 hours of programming," says Glass, 54, at her bustling facility in Bala Cynwyd, where she employs 60 people.
"Right now we have eight titles either on the air or in production," she says. "Two shows on A&E, one on TLC, two on DIY, one on HG, one for Nat Geo Wild, and one on Animal Planet. And we're about to make an announcement on a show for Oxygen."
Nancy Glass Productions has concentrated on home improvement premises such as Save My Bath and Rip & Renew. But everything is fair game, including Extreme Poodles, about outlandish grooming competitions, and the self-explanatory My Dog Ate What?
Basing the business locally presents no logistical problems.
"The only negative," she says, "is when you go out to L.A. and New York and they say, 'Philadelphia? What time zone is that?' "
Ray Murray and his partners in Banyan Productions started in 1992, shifting to reality after early success in crafting infomercials.
The company enjoyed extensive runs with Home Matters on Discovery and Trading Spaces on TLC. It currently has eight shows in various stages of production at its facility in King of Prussia with its staff of 19.
A few years ago, putting together a show was easier.
"When we were doing A Wedding Story [on TLC] we would go two days before the ceremony, interview the couple, follow the rehearsal dinner, watch them get married, see a little of the reception, and we were done," he says.
"That's not enough anymore. The biggest change is producer manipulation of reality. Today you would have to introduce elements and situations into the production that would guarantee a certain amount of conflict or drama or excitement. I'm not saying that's bad, but it's different."
Pitching a show is more complicated now, too. You need to have your concept already cast.
"Today, it's all about the characters," Murray, 55, says. "You can say, 'I'm going to go out and do a show about cakes,' but if you don't have the right character to build it around, it's not going to work.
"You can go into a lot of rooms right now and pitch a show and everybody will look at you and say, 'Who is my Snooki?' "
Contact staff writer David Hiltbrand at 215-854-4552 or dhiltbrand@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/ daveondemand.
Friday, May 21, 2010
The Green Jobs Myth
Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/534696/201005201839/The-Green-Jobs-Myth.aspx
05/20/2010
Jobs: A Spanish economics professor said attempts by his country to create a green economy would fail. Now a Spanish government report confirms his findings, blunting claims that the professor's report was biased.
The professor, Gabriel Calzada Alvarez of Juan Carlos University in Madrid, produced a 41-page study last year on the European experiment of going full bore on the conservation front. He found that "the Spanish/EU-style 'green jobs' agenda now being promoted in the U.S. in fact destroys jobs."
For every green job created by the Spanish government, Alvarez found that 2.2 jobs were destroyed elsewhere in the economy because resources were directed politically and not rationally, as in a market economy.
"The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices," the professor told the press.
Alvarez's findings, of course, were rejected by the environmental left, which tried to smear him as a stooge of the oil industry.
But inconveniently for the eco-conscious, his results have been backed up by Carlo Stagnaro and Luciano Lavecchia, a couple of researchers from the Italian think tank Istituto Bruno Leoni.
They found that in Italy, the losses were worse than they were in Spain: Each green job cost 6.9 jobs in the industrial sector and 4.8 jobs across the entire economy.
"Green investments are an ineffective policy for job creation," they say in their report. Despite the other merits of investments in new energy, "to the extent that the 'green deal' is aimed at creating employment or purported as anti-crisis or stimulus policy, it is a wrong policy choice."
Even more inconvenient for the environmental left is a study by the Spanish government. This leaked document supports the Alvarez report. The green lobby can't claim bias in this analysis because the Zapatero administration that compiled it is a socialist government that sees windmills when more rational people see dragons.
According to Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who has seen a copy of the report, the "Spanish government now acknowledges the ruinous effects of green economic policy."
Horner wrote this week on Pajamas Media, "This internal assessment preceded the Zapatero administration's recent acknowledgment that the 'green economy' stunt must be abandoned, lest the experiment risk Spain becoming Greece."
Horner wrote that while the government report "does not expressly confirm" the Alvarez findings, "the figures published in the government document indicate they arrived at a job-loss number even worse than the 2.2 figure from the independent study."
As Spain tries to keep its economy from going Greek, the government is lopping off the fat. This means it will have to cut back on subsidies for its alternative-energy initiatives, if not abandon them altogether, as Horner mentioned.
Miguel Sebastian, Spain's trade minister, has said funds for authorized projects won't be reduced. He also has reportedly indicated that new subsidies for wind and solar projects aren't likely to be as generous. It would be no surprise if he backtracked and said all renewable subsidies will be cut.
The findings from Europe contradict President Obama's claim in his State of the Union address that "the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy." Before he took office, he warned that the U.S. was falling behind nations that are "making real investments in renewable energy."
Now it looks like the U.S. is lucky to be lagging in alternative-energy investment. The Alvarez study says that following the Spanish model, held up by Obama as a standard the U.S. should follow, is likely to cause 6.6 million to 11 million job losses "as a direct consequence were it to actually create 3 to 5 million 'green jobs.' "
Renewable energy is trendy and for many offers political gain. But Washington should shut down the green economy nonsense before too much of other people's money is spent on projects that do more harm than good.
Hypocrisy On ICE
Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/534695/201005201855/Hypocrisy-On-ICE.aspx
05/20/2010
Border Security: As the administration condemns Arizona for cracking down on illegals, it's training Arizona to do just that. It's called the ICE 287(g) Program.
Homeland Security runs the federal program, which trains state and local police to identify and process criminal aliens for removal from the country. The ACLU gripes the program is "terrorizing immigrant communities," and has urged the administration to abandon it.
But the administration isn't listening. It's signing up several more local law enforcement agencies for the program, which it touts as a success story. As a recent Homeland Security report gushed:
"The 287(g) Program has emerged as one of the agency's most successful and popular partnership initiatives as more state and local leaders have come to understand how a shared approach to immigration enforcement can benefit their communities."
Under the 2006 program, more than 1,100 cops with 71 state and local agencies have helped the feds round up more than 110,000 illegals, the report says. Nine Arizona law enforcement agencies have taken advantage of it. In fact, all of the agreements were inked while Janet Napolitano was Arizona governor.
This is the same Napolitano, who despite running the federal program now as Homeland Security chief, is slamming Arizona's tough new immigration code as "bad law enforcement law."
"That's not the kind of law I would have signed," she asserted, explaining that she dealt with "laws of that ilk" in Arizona before and that most police outfits were opposed to them.
In fact, most Arizona cops strongly support the new law — probably because, after training with border agents, they see it works.
By partnering with Homeland Security, cops across the country have helped shrink for the first time the backlog of criminal aliens by 37,000 to 560,000. Yet only half of states — mostly conservative states with illegal immigration problems — have signed up.
Imagine how much safer we'd all be if liberal states also helped the feds round up these foreign outlaws — some of whom pose a terrorist threat — instead of boycotting Arizona for doing what the feds are doing right now, even under Obama.
Instead of snubbing Arizona, California should follow its lead in partnering with the federal government in this successful program to enforce immigration laws. The Golden State has the largest illegal alien population, yet has just one local entity in the program — San Bernardino County.
California agrees with Obama that Arizona's law is potentially "discriminatory." Funny, that's what the ACLU says about Obama's own program to train Arizona and other state cops to crack down on illegals — arguing it promotes an "anti-immigrant agenda" and encourages "racial profiling and civil-rights abuses."
But, shhh! This is the dirty little secret of Arizona's critics inside the Beltway.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Alinsky's Star Pupil Uses 'Rules' As A Manual For 'Social Surgery' By Paul Sperry
Source: http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=534171
05/14/2010
President Obama is fond of using ridicule to frustrate critics. He recently mocked Republicans for predicting "Armageddon" if health care reform passed. After signing the bill, he cracked that he looked around to "see if there were any asteroids falling," only to discover a nice day with "birds chirping."
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Obama has also used the tactic to dismiss charges that he's pushing a "socialist" agenda, arguing that critics will next accuse him of "being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten."
But the former community organizer also knows that ridiculing the opposition is an effective tactic taught by the father of community organizing, Saul D. Alinsky — a socialist agitator from Chicago whose influence on Obama is deeper than commonly known.
In fact, the tactic is ripped right from the pages of "Rules for Radicals" (Vintage Books, New York, 1971), a how-to manual Alinsky wrote for coat-and-tie revolutionaries.
"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon," reads Rule No. 5. "It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."
It's just one of 13 rules Alinsky coached his acolytes to follow to "take power away from the Haves." The Haves, represented foremost by corporate America, are "the enemy." They must be identified, singled out and targeted for attack — and the more personal the better, Alinsky advised, putting a special bull's-eye on banks.
His 13th rule — "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it" — is not lost on Obama, who has targeted "fat cat" bankers, "predatory" lenders, "greedy" insurers and industrial "polluters" as enemies of the people.
"Obama learned his lesson well," said David Alinsky, son of the late socialist. "I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing."
Obama first learned Alinsky's rules in the 1980s, when Alinskyite radicals with the Chicago-based Alinsky group Gamaliel Foundation recruited, hired, trained and paid him as a community organizer in South Side Chicago.
They also helped him get into Harvard Law School to "learn power's currency in all its intricacy and detail," as Obama put it in his memoir. A Gamaliel board member even wrote a letter of recommendation for him.
Obama took a break from his Harvard studies to travel to Los Angeles for eight days of intense training at Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, a station of the cross for acolytes. In turn, he trained other community organizers in Alinsky agitation tactics. In 1988, he even wrote a chapter for the book "After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois," in which he lamented organizers' "lack of power" in implementing change.
Decades later, power would no longer be an issue, as Obama infiltrated the highest echelons of the political establishment, thus fulfilling Alinsky's vision of a new "vanguard" of coat-and-tie radicals sneaking behind enemy lines. He preached that changing the system "means working in the system" — while not acting or looking radical. "Start them easy," he said in his book, "don't scare them off."
It worked like a charm for Obama. And during the presidential campaign, he hired one of his Gamaliel mentors, Mike Kruglik, to train young campaign workers in Alinsky tactics at "Camp Obama," a school set up at Obama headquarters in Chicago. The tactics helped Obama capture the youth vote like no other president before him.
After the election, his other Gamaliel mentor, Jerry Kellman (who actually hired him and whose identity Obama disguised in his memoir), helped the Obama administration establish Organizing for America, which mobilizes young supporters to agitate for Obama's legislative agenda using "Rules for Radicals" — which Alinsky dedicated to "Lucifer, the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom."
In fact, the 1971 book, now selling well on Amazon, is required reading for students applying for the program.
"Rules" is more than a manual. It's a diary of Alinsky's worldview, a dark, anti-capitalist one made all the more disturbing knowing that his protege sits in the Oval Office, where he's systematically reorganizing our economy, one industry at a time.
A careful reading of Alinsky's 200-page book leaves you queasy. Even before you get to his rules, which start on Page 126, you realize he hates everything dear to Americans while respecting nothing sacred about America — even its founding. He ridicules our most basic morality. He mocks our founders, finding the worst even in Jefferson, a classical liberal.
Alinsky, who died of a heart attack at 63, valued democracy merely as a "means" toward achieving "economic justice." He laughed at "middle-class moral hygiene." He even rebuked activists burdened by decency and troubled by the ethics of his tactics, sneering that they would rather go home with their "ethical hymen intact" than win a battle at any cost.
Alinsky was more than a socialist. He was a moral anarchist. Listen to these perverse proverbs:
• "Ethical standards must be elastic."
• "In war the end justifies almost any means."
• "In a fight almost anything goes."
• "It is a world not of angels but of angles."
• "The real arena is corrupt."
• " 'Reconciliation' means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it, then we have reconciliation." (GOP lawmakers take note.)
• "All values are relative."
Bitterly contemptuous of American materialism and individualism, Alinsky was a big fan of Lenin, whom he called a "pragmatist." He claimed that his own philosophy was anchored in "hope" for a more just world.
But this privileged son was simply bored with the status quo and sought to smash it just to see it smashed, while masquerading his unprincipled pique as an altruistic crusade for the downtrodden.
"Agitate," he egged on fellow radicals, "create disenchantment and discontent with the current values," even if none exist.
His story is similar to that of unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, the rebellious son of a successful Chicago businessman. Alinsky's father owned his own business in the city and put his son through the University of Chicago studying archeology.
Alinsky comes across loud and clear in the narrative of "Rules for Radicals" as a bitter, vulgar Hobbesian cynic. He advocates "fart-ins" and "sh**-ins" to offend the establishment, explaining that the "one thing" that inner-city organizers want to do to whites is "sh** on them." Nothing is off limits. The only thing he truly romanticizes is "ego."
"The ego of the organizer is stronger and more monumental than the ego of the leader," he wrote. "The organizer is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which man can reach ... to play God." He added: "Ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious."
Page 23 of "Rules" is chilling: The American individualist — the industrialist, the entrepreneur, the wealth creator — "is beginning to learn that he will either share part of his material wealth or lose all of it; that he will respect and learn to live with other political ideologies" — that is, neo-Marxism — "if he wants civilization to go on."
"If he does not share his bread, he dare not sleep, for his neighbor will kill him," Alinsky warned. In other words, sacrifice and pay your fair share for "social justice" (code for socialism) or face mass unrest and the anger of the mob. Anarchy. Chaos. Blood in the streets.
Alinsky describes "the Haves" of American society as having fallen "asleep" — ripe for slaughter. "It is as though the great law of change had prepared the anesthetization of the victim prior to the social surgery to come."
Is Obama acting as Alinsky's star social surgeon, the first to possess the necessary power to carve up the American economy for mass redistribution? If so, "Rules for Radicals" may be his operating manual. More of us should read it.
• Sperry, formerly IBD's Washington bureau chief, is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author.
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