My Beauty Best Teacher

In a Reuters report Katrina Manson contrasts the viability of rough and ready Nollywood fare with the art house but utterly dependent-on-subsidies 'FESPACO movies':

In the time it takes for a lovingly crafted art house movie to emerge as winner of the top prize at Burkina Faso's pan-African FESPACO cinema festival, Nigeria's prolific producers will already have churned out another 50 films.
They might be tales of cannibalism, sorcery and jealous girlfriends who shrink their errant boyfriends into bottles, but Nigeria's $450 million home video industry is the third biggest in the world, after America's Hollywood and India's Bollywood.
By contrast, FESPACO's filmmakers -- considered the best on the continent -- rely on dwindling donations, and scrabble for private financing and poor distribution deals amid a spate of cinema closures...[continue reading]

Related articles by Zemanta

• Lola Olley: Hollywood, Bollywood and now Nollywood (huffingtonpost.com)
• Ethiopia takes Africa film honour (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Nigeria "Most Prolific Filmmaker" (timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com)

This post was halfway written last week before I got bored with it and moved on... but it appears that my point was very relevant. My original point was that Ed Schultz, a liberal and a Democrat who supports Barack Obama, as a small man who wants to use the power of the government to control your life, liberty, and property, and demonstrates his smallness in his thoughts and actions, which are thuggish, racist, and sexist.

Last week, Ed Schultz heard the word 'food stamps,' and immediately pictured a black guy! Schultz, like many liberals and demonstrates, screams racism at everyone because in their hearts, people are divided by color and you can stereotype their personalities based on their color and (to him) the job of government is to protect the weaker/poorer/lesser people in society which (to him) are always people of color. No need for Thuggie Eddie to actually get to know people and judge them based on the quality of their character- nope, instead he sees a black guy and thinks 'food stamps', and vice-versa, whenever he hears 'food stamps' he thinks 'this is code for black people 'cause all black people are the kind of people who are all on food stamps and white people are too good for food stamps so food stamps must mean black people.' Ed Schultz is a racist.

Today I heard that Ed Schultz called a woman radio host a 'slut'. Laura Ingraham, a popular conservative radio host and author, criticized President Barack Obama for taking a trip to Ireland and enjoying a Guinness and taking in the sights and going to fancy parties while the Midwestern United States was being hit by severe weather. She felt that this was yet more evidence that Obama was out of touch with the common man.

Soon after, on his radio program (which I sometimes listen to on 1310AM when I want to hear what bizzaro world sounds like), Ed Schultz said

And what do the Republicans thinking about? They’re not thinking about their next-door neighbor. They’re just thinking about how much this is going to cost. President Obama is going to be visiting Joplin, Mo., on Sunday but you know what they’re talking about, like this right-wing slut, what’s her name?, Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut. You see, she was, back in the day, praising President Reagan when he was drinking a beer overseas. But now that Obama’s doing it, they’re working him over.

Ed is a great example of liberalism- not even pretending to understand the other side, personally attacking the other side, using offensive language that puts down minorities and women and Jews and anyone outside of the ruling elite white class that he wants to empower, getting everything wrong (Ingraham wasn't even on the radio when Reagan was President), and never even failing to address Ingraham's whole point (that Obama is out of touch with the common man).

Ed Schultz is a liberal and a Democrat and supports Barack Obama and is employed by MSNBC and frequently is invited as a guest to speak at liberal events, and demonstrates through his actions just exactly what a liberal Democrat really is- people who want to use the power of the government to control your life, liberty, and property, and aggressively attack with personal and vulgar actions anyone who does not bow to their thuggish, racist, sexist, anti-Semitic demands. It isn't your father's Democratic party anymore.

Laura's books can be found here- check out The Obama Diaries or Shut Up & Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America.

Time travel back to 5 short years ago. The Democratic Party was frantically doing everything possible to pull our troops out of Iraq. Leaders in the party demanded an immediate withdrawal from the unwinnable war. Political lines in the sand were drawn, reputations were staked, bitter battles were fought, all by Democrats who were all against the War in Iraq. Our President, supported by angry demonstrators, regularly shouted about how bad the War in Iraq was. So what happened?

This question has importance, and is not asked simply to dwell on the past. It speaks to the credibility, the experience, the ability to accurately judge and predict events, of our current leadership. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Peters- they all had the same position on Iraq, and time has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that on that very very important issue, they were very very wrong.

Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote a great article called So What Happened to Iraq? that analyzed this very question:

Six years ago, the conventional wisdom was that Ayad Allawi, then prime minister of the appointed Iraqi Interim Government, was a puppet of the United States. Last month, though, the Allawi-led Iraqiya alliance won, by a narrow margin, more parliamentary seats than any other coalition in national elections -- and he may become the country's next prime minister.

The secular Allawi successfully campaigned on the message of curbing religious interference in government -- countering the often-argued charge that the U.S. has created a radical Islamic republic in Iraq.

Indeed, as we look back at our years in Iraq, almost all of what once passed for conventional wisdom has been proven wrong.

Yes, there is still terrorist violence in Iraq -- especially recently as the leadership of the country's next government remains in doubt. And, yes, there are still around 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq. But in the first three months of 2010, the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq was about equal to those murdered in Fresno, Calif.

Meanwhile, Iraq's democracy has for some time now proven itself independent from the U.S. -- and that old anti-war accusations that we entered the war to control Iraqi oil were false. Last June, the representative Iraqi government held its first oil auction -- featuring transparent negotiations in which no American oil company was awarded an oil concession.

Instead, Chinese, Russian, British, French and other national oil consortia were given the awards. These were legitimate contracts, too -- not the sweetheart deals Saddam Hussein used to make with other governments in exchange for international political cover.

After the U.S. removed the monstrous Saddam, many argued that we were only empowering neighboring Iran -- and thus that the U.S. and the region were better off when he was in power. Putting aside the morality of playing one dictatorship off against another, has theocratic Iran really benefited from the emergence of a constitutional democracy in Iraq?

Currently, the Iranian theocracy is far more unpopular among Iranians than the Iraqi democracy is among Iraqis. Ending Saddam Hussein's reign in the short-term might have been welcome to the ruling Iranian mullahs, but a nearby functioning secular constitutional state -- with a Shiite majority -- is becoming its worst nightmare. Millions of restless Iranians must now wonder, "If Iraqi Shiites can talk freely on television, why can't we?"

Given Iraq's progress these last years, it's hard to find anyone who still argues -- as the current troika now directing U.S. foreign policy, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, once did -- that President Bush's 2007 troop surge was a mistake.

To a then-Sen. Clinton, the surge's purported success required a "suspension of disbelief." But, as we now know, the surge saved Iraq and provided a blueprint of sorts for operations in Afghanistan.

Finally, there was the assertion that anti-war protests were all genuinely based on opposition to the American presence in Iraq rather than fueled, in large part, by partisan politics. But since January 2009, when Obama was sworn into office, there have been almost no anti-war demonstrations against the still-sizable American presence there. Popular demonstrations in the U.S. now oppose excessive government, not the war.

And Hollywood has ceased making its usual, unpopular anti-war movies like "In the Valley of Elah," "Redacted," "The Kingdom," "Rendition," "Lions for Lambs" and "Home of the Brave."

Many on the left no longer oppose the Bush-Petraeus plan of slow, graduated withdrawal from Iraq, as this strategy is now sanctioned by President Obama. In the words of Vice President Biden, Iraq may well become one of the Obama administration's "greatest achievements."

It's true that many original supporters of the three-week removal of Saddam Hussein underestimated the ordeal of establishing a constitutional state in his absence. But it's also evident that many who damned the war did so mainly to embarrass then-President George Bush.

We see all of this mostly in hindsight. Dire assertions about Iraq did not come to pass. Anti-war passion cooled once war-critic Barack Obama was no longer a presidential candidate but became president -- and commander-in-chief. And, most importantly, a successful democracy finally did arise after the fall of Saddam.

Jennifer Brea writes:

Many of Africa's best and brightest become bureaucrats or NGO workers when they should be scientists or entrepreneurs...We let a well-intentioned Irish rock star, a Jewish-American economist, and their Hollywood cohort become the voice and face of Africa

Carina Ray writes:

We can't afford to turn a blind eye to the challenges facing Africans, and equally we can't continue to brand Africa, as The Economist infamously did in 2000, as "the hopeless continent." Rather, we need to begin highlighting the significant contributions Africans make everyday to shaping their own destinies for the better. Give serious airtime to the thousands of Sudanese human rights activists and aid workers in Darfur, rather than just the handful of foreigners among them. Instead of solely featuring Hollywood celebrities in the next (RED) advertising campaign, also include the heroes and heroines of Africa who work tirelessly and often at great cost to themselves to improve conditions in every corner of the continent.

A lot of people are talking about the recent cover story (not opinion piece) in Newsweek (that is supposed to cover the news), which was a one-sided all out endorsement of gay marriage called "Our Mutal Joy." This article claims that what the Bible teaches about love argues for gay marriages, not against them.

Gay marriage is an interesting topic. When I was wandering around the internet, I came across this blog, which seems to describe a good position to take on it:

As a libertarian, I was unfamiliar with why people thought the state should define marriage, much less why it should be defined in such a way as to limit it to a certain number or sex of people. And what I found is that there is an unbelievable wealth of argument in favor of traditional marriage. And most of it is based (no, not in the fevered imaginations of what Hollywood and the media elite think religious conservatives believe) but in Natural Law. In this way of thinking, society defines marriage as a sexual union between a husband and wife, based around the ideas that babies are created via intercourse, that procreation is necessary for the survival of society and that babies need fathers as well as mothers.

As the years have gone on, I've also decided that the Bible might just have some good ideas in it after all, and here is a passage from the Bible that is of interest here, found in the Gospel of Matthew:

And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

It appears to me that there are valid and honest positions expressed here- positions that many people agree with and which must be treated with respect, not mocked, as the Newsweek cover story does:

Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?

Let's try for a minute to take liberal positions at their word, and think about the kind of respect that they have for people who share different opinions. Is it any wonder that According to a story in Folio yesterday, Newsweek is considering slashing up its rate of publication from 2.6 million to 1.0 million, because people don't want to read liberal attacks in a general news magazine? Take a look here for more analysis on this. Just something for you to think about.

What is the purpose of art? I'm not an art history or philosophy major, so I don't really know the answer to that, if there is truly one answer, but I can tell you this- I don't think the purpose of art is to promote the state's interests.

At one time, this was believed to be the purpose of art. Many regimes around the world felt that literature should serve the national interest or it had no inherent right to exist (source). These regimes felt that art should be used by a regime to promote their beliefs. In particular, these regimes felt that posters especially could be used as a way to blatantly present the beliefs of their political party party. These people felt that art should be used to convince the people of the beliefs of the state. The posters this regime wanted created were usually simple and got to the point, and it was intended to target the emotions of the people that looked at it (source).

Enough history. Today, Barack Obama is attempting to promote art that does the same thing. Recently a blogger writing at Big Hollywood was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to take part in a conference call that invited a group of rising artist and art community luminaries “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda - health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal.”

The call was hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. The call would include “a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!” There were approximately 75 people participating, including many well respected street-artists, filmmakers, art galleries, music venues, musicians and music producers, writers, poets, actors, independent media outlets, marketers, and various other professionals from the creative community.

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

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

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

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

So, to summarize, our President, through a group called United We Stand, is organizing artists and giving them guidelines on what sort of art to produce. The art will promote the interests of the Democrats and try to persuade voters to support their views. This is propaganda, and as the group was informed, Obama regarded propaganda as very important, perhaps even calling it "a weapon of the first order".

This website has some good ideas on the sort of posters that Obama would like created. Check it out to get a taste of what is to come under an Obama administration. Oh, and if you haven't guessed it yet, you'll have to click on the links to find out what sort of regimes of the past saw art the same way that Obama does.

G. Pascal Zachary writes:

"Saving" Africans is all the rage among celebrities. Hollywood is releasing a string of African morality tales, from "The Last King of Scotland," about Idi Amin's capricious rule, to "Blood Diamonds," the story of a white smuggler in West Africa who has pangs of regret over his misdeeds....By reducing Africans to the status of props in an American morality play, Africans are themselves robbed of some measure of their dignity, which is why a number of Malawians are upset by Madonna's fast-track adoption.

Via Big Hollywood, I saw a really great post called The Top 10 Conservative Lessons of ‘Rocky IV’. It's funny, but also really gets to the heart of what it means to be a conservative. Check out the whole thing, but here are my favorite parts of the post:

To be fair, “Rocky IV” is not an overly political film, nor was it intended to be. But it nonetheless encapsulates several key conservative points, so much so that it was, and still is, slammed by leftist critics as right-wing propaganda. Behold, the top 10 conservative lessons of “Rocky IV”:

1) Communism… (let me be succinct and find the right word here…) sucks.... It allows no hint of individualism. Not only is Drago forbidden from speaking and behaves as a robot but, in a moment of raw honesty during the final fight, fed up with the commands of his superiors, he finally breaks free emotionally, looks up at the Politburo in attendance, and shouts: “I fight for me! For ME!!!” (which, based on my repeated viewings, I can tell you sounds like “Ya-te-beeah!” in Russian, without evening cueing the DVD)...

...4) Patriotism. Three words: APOLLO ’effing CREED. One of cinematic history’s greatest characters, period. Apollo’s unbridled enthusiasm for his country never gets old, no matter how many times I watch this masterpiece, and it’s particularly touching that the fiercely patriotic, no-apologies-for-American-exceptionalism-found-here / “if you’re looking for someone to put this country down, look elsewhere” character … is a black male. What’s not to love? He-llo, the man is wearing an Abe-Lincoln-style red-white-and-blue hat and matching boxing trunks. Liberals recoil in horror. And James Brown’s “Living in America”? Goosebumps. Best of all, we get to watch the Godfather of Soul himself (who, incidentally, was an outspoken conservative!) perform it, with American flags waving all around....

...10) If you apply yourself and work hard, success is attainable: i.e., the very essence of capitalism. Rocky shows us that, even with the odds stacked against you, a person can succeed. Duke’s pep-talk to Rocky when they arrive in Russia: “I know you’re gonna have to do almost everything alone. . . . Now you’re gonna have to go through hell, worse than any nightmare that you ever dreamed. But in the end, I know you’ll be the one standing.” (a lesson the ‘gimme, gimme’ entitlement-crowd laying about at an Occupy rally would do well to learn… )

So there you have it – “Rocky IV”, the greatest unintentionally-conservative film ever made and, not coincidentally, a cultural masterpiece....

Oh yeah, my cousin loves Rocky, so this one was for you!

Spiegal Online on Nollywood:

At least 900 films will be produced in Nigeria this year, twice as many as in Hollywood. Nollywood is a $200-million (€148-million) business in a country where 70 percent of the population still lives on less than $1 a day, where residents can consider themselves lucky if the power is on for two hours a day, and where raw sewage runs through open canals along the streets. It is a country known throughout the world for corruption, Internet fraud, prostitution and oil, but certainly not for its film culture...[continue reading]

photo courtesy of Spiegal

G. Pascal Zachary on the 'The Oracle of Africa'

While Achebe criticizes Western thinkers on Africa, he also sets himself apart from other African intellectuals by his complex stance toward the Christianization of his people. The Igbo are among the most fervent Catholics in Africa, and evangelical Christianity is also strong among them. Achebe’s own father was enlisted by Anglican missionaries to convert other “natives,” and Achebe himself benefited from the schools established by foreigners. Yet he remains alive to the damage done by Christianity and relishes how traditional spiritual beliefs persist among Igbo and other Africans.

The critiques of the colonial and the Christian legacies in Africa come together in Achebe’s powerful indictment against Western do-gooders who, he asserts, demean and diminish Africans in their pursuit of helping them. “Lurid and degrading stereotypes,” he writes, are invoked by aid workers, humanitarians and missionaries in order to drum sympathy for African causes. Yet by “dehumanizing the sufferer,” advocates of assistance for Africa, abetted by international media and Hollywood, promote corrosive stereotypes that drown out authentic African voices.

More here

In Democratic Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm's speech, she touted that Michigan is growing and that there is opportunity here in our state. As evidence of this, she pointed to Motown Motion Picture Studios LLC as an example of how the government can help create new industry and business in a state. Although having a movie studio in the area would be really cool, and I love the fact that jobs and opportunity is being created, let's look a little bit more at the details of the deal, reported on by WWJ news:

Motown Motion Pictures LLC – The new business venture, which will be both a film studio and a production services company, plans to invest approximately $70 million in a 600,000-square-foot development with nine sound stages in Pontiac. The project is expected to create 5,139 new jobs, including 3,600 directly by the company. The MEGA board Tuesday approved a state tax credit valued at $101 million over 12 years to help bring the project to Michigan. In addition, Infrastructure Development Film and Digital Media incentives totaling $12.9 million have been approved to help support the project. Job training assistance through the MEDC and Renaissance Zone designation by the city of Pontiac are also under consideration.

Let's do a little math- 5,139 jobs created at the cost to taxpayers of 113.9 million dollars. That is $22,163 a job. That's about $127 a person- not much, but if you let every person in our state keep that money and spend it on goods and services or invest it, it would multiply many times over, and create more jobs and economic benefits than some pie in the ski scheme like this one. For those trying to do more research on this, according to the Oakland Press, here are some more details:

"It’s good news — it’s going to be 3,600 jobs,” Republican Oakland Couny Executive Patterson said Tuesday. The local investors in the new studio are Oakland County developers A. Alfred Taubman, Gary Sakwa of Grand Sakwa Properties in Farmington Hills and Linden Nelson of Nelson Ventures in Birmingham. They’re teaming up with Raleigh Studios of Hollywood, Calif., and Endeavor Talent Agency of Beverly Hills, Calif.

Notice how the number of jobs this is going to bring to Michigan has dropped considerably now, and that several major players who are receiving this funding from Michigan citizens are from California. This company will likely receive the full amount of funding- but I wonder if taxpayers will receive anywhere near the full benefit from this venture.

Today is September 11, and every year I do the same lesson for all my classes in remembrance of this event. Surprisingly, I'm one of the few teachers to do anything to observe this day, and I am the only teacher that I know to observe it properly.

What do I mean "observe it properly"? One of the other teachers used 9/11 to talk about why emotion should not be used when making public policy decisions, and then went on to rant against the War on Terror and the War in Iraq. Most teachers though just ignored the event, as if by pretending that it never happened would somehow reverse history.

Today in the New York Daily News, Eamon Stewart wrote a good opinion piece where he talks about these ideas, and I agree with his ideas, which follow (some edits for flow):

Everyone acts as if 9/11 never happened. If 9/11 is brought up at all in any classes today, it is discussed in dry factual terms- numbers, places, and people are mentioned, but they are not real to the students and no attempts are made to make them real. Worse, 9/11 is sometimes presented in Hollywood movie terms, where the events of 9/11 are cast in the context of entertainment. As safe as that all sounds to package 9/11, it's the most irresponsible thing that could be done to preserve the memory of that day.

Educators must acknowledge that Sept. 11, 2001 isn't ancient history. It's a day we all should remember and the lessons of 9/11 are too important not to pass them on to future generations. If children are truly going to comprehend the magnitude of the day, they're going to have to understand the experiences and emotions of the people who were there to witness it - and therein lies the problem with current 9/11 teaching methods.

An article by Jon Wiener in "The Nation" several years ago laid out a list of the most popular textbooks on 9/11 at the time, and he noticed that they all suffered from the same problem - they all focused on the reasons 9/11 happened, rather than convey the impact 9/11 and its aftermath had on individuals.

There is one organization that is taking a more personal approach in teaching 9/11. The September 11th Education Trust has developed a program which draws on the first-person stories of 9/11 to educate and inspire students. The comprehensive program, available to schools next spring, was recently taught for the first time to high school students in New Jersey.

It is probably not possible to make people fully understand what people who were there feel in their hearts. That would be impossible. But I do hope that it makes people remember that beyond all of the hard data, 9/11 is about real people, people who lived and died during a pivotal event. Teaching the lessons of 9/11 is the greatest way to honor those who died that day and to remember that this nation's citizens deserve to know the personal viewpoints connected to the events that have shaped our history.

So how do I teach 9/11 in my classroom that is so different than other teachers? First, class begins with discussion that is supposed to help the students remember their connections to the vents by asking them what they remember from that day. Then we watch the first half hour from a video called "In Memoriam- New York City 9/11/01." I like this video because it does focus on the individuals of this event- it shows raw unedited footage of the attacks. It does not get into the reasons for the attacks or responses to the attacks- instead, it makes students feel like they were there, so they can relive the event, and be a part of this American event. It's a good video- most students are deeply moved by it, and some cry. After the video, the last 10 minutes of class, I ask the students how they feel after watching the movie. It is incredible how much students opinions and memory of the event are changed after this- before, it was a dry event they might have seen some edited footage of- afterwards, they know and understand the event better. They experience emotions such as sadness, grief, disbelief, fear, anger, and pride. And then they understand better why America changed on 9/11.

I hope teachers read this and begin to set aside some time in their classes each year to teach this event. Students remember this lesson, and deeply appreciate it. And the country is better for it.

Occasionally I run across a post that nicely ties together what is going on in our country, and is funny and pointed and has a lot of great lines. Over at Big Hollywood, I read such a post, and am now passing it on to you- I suggest you read the whole Guns, Gold, and Secession post, but here are the best parts:

Not too surprisingly to my Republican friends, guns sales have skyrocketed across the country since Obama was elected. A week after the election, I read that gun sales near where I grew up in north Texas had gone up 185%.

Similar sales figures have popped up all over the U.S. By mid-February 2009, an article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune reported an 82% increase over the previous year’s gun sales, due to “customers fearing for their safety in desperate economic times and worrying that President Barack Obama might resurrect some 1990s gun bans.” The same article cited FBI background checks as surging 27% over the previous year in the last three months of 2008.

And it’s not just guns being bought and hoarded. Gold sales are skyrocketing. In January 2009, the U.S. Mint sold more American Eagle coins than it shipped in the entire year of 2007, and gold prices just topped $1,000 an ounce. You’d think people didn’t trust the markets or the dollar any more.

You’ve probably heard of Igor Panarin, the Russian professor and former KGB analyst who predicted the breakup of the United States in 2010, giving it “a 55-45% chance.” In his opinion, Russia will regain control of Alaska, which sounds like a lot of wishful thinking, given that the Russian stock market and banking system is currently in worse shape than in the United States. As quoted in the Wall Street Journal, however, his prediction that “wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union” makes a bit of sense, when one considers the fact that the U.S. will actually need to pay back the trillions it owes.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Second Vermont Republic movement? And in June of 2008, long before the election, the State of Oklahoma declared its sovereignty under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

A MEMOIR OF BETTY WHITE’S FIRST FIVE DECADES ON TELEVISION—AS IRREVERENT AND IRRESISTIBLE AS THE BELOVED ACTRESS HERSELF

BETTY WHITE first appeared on television in 1949 and has gone on to have one of the most amazing careers in TV history, starring in shows such as Life with Elizabeth, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and The Golden Girls, among many others. She is one of the hardest-working actresses of any era, and her sense of humor and perennial optimism have seen her through half a century of industry changes and delighted millions of fans.

Now, during Betty’s sixty-first year on screen, a year in which she has enjoyed a huge resurgence of popularity, her 1995 memoir makes a comeback too. Here We Go Again is a behind-the-scenes look at Betty’s career from her start on radio to her first show, Hollywood on Television, to several iterations of The Betty White Show and much, much more. Packed with wonderful anecdotes about famous personalities and friendships, stories of Betty’s off-screen life, and the comedienne’s trademark humor, this deliciously entertaining book will give readers an entree into Betty’s fascinating life, confirming yet again why we can’t get enough of this funny lady.

Click here to buy from Amazon

Why not make tonight a movie night? If you are looking to go out to a movie, I highly recommend "The Expendables"- this action/adventure about a group of mercenaries is hired to infiltrate a South American country and overthrow its ruthless dictator would fit right into the action/adventure movies of the 80's, and for good reason- it stars some of the best stars of the 80's! With Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, and even Dolph Lundgren, it is sure to be a smash of a fun movie! Go check it out tonight!

And if you want to stay home and rent something good, Big Hollywood has put together a nice list of the Top Five Conservative (Fairly) New Films On DVD, including The Road, From Paris With Love, Dear John, Book of Eli, and Brooklyn’s Finest. Go ahead and rent one of those movies and have a great time tonight!

Includes the following Harry Bosch thrillers, award-winning and all voiced by standout Broadway veteran Len Cariou:

THE NARROWS (AudioFile Magazine Earphones Award Winner): FBI agent Rachel Walling finally gets the call she's dreaded for years, the one that tells her the Poet has surfaced. She has never forgotten the serial killer who wove lines of poetry in his hideous crimes--and apparently he has not forgotten her.
Former LAPD detective Harry Bosch gets a call, too--from the widow of an old friend. Her husband's death seems natural, but his ties to the hunt for the Poet make Bosch dig deep. Arriving at a derelict spot in the California desert where the feds are unearthing bodies, Bosch joins forces with Rachel. Now the two are at odds with the FBI...and squarely in the path of the Poet, who will lead them on a wicked ride out of the heat, through the narrows of evil, and into a darkness all his own...

ECHO PARK (2007 Audie Award Winner for Mystery): In 1995, Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket in Hollywood. Harry Bosch worked the case but couldn't crack it, and the 22-year-old woman never turned up, dead or alive. Now Bosch is in the Open-Unsolved Unit, where he still keeps the Gesto file on his desk, when he gets a call from the DA. Michael Connelly's suspenseful new novel pits the detective People magazine calls "one of the most complex crime fighters around" against one of the most sadistic killers he has ever confronted. It confirms that Michael Connelly "is the best writer of suspense fiction working today" (Richmond Times-Dispatch).

THE OVERLOOK: In his first case since he left the LAPD's Open Unsolved Unit for the prestigious Homicide Special squad, Harry Bosch is called out to investigate a murder that may have chilling consequences for national security. A doctor with access to a dangerous radioactive substance is found murdered in the trunk of his car. Retracing his steps, Harry learns that a large quantity of radioactive cesium was stolen shortly before the doctor's death. With the cesium in unknown hands, Harry fears the murder could be part of a terrorist plot to poison a major American city.

 

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Okay, so maybe I am not a beauty pageant expert, but I've watched most of the Miss USA's over the years, and although my first choice of West Virginia didn't make the final 10, to me the clear choice for Miss USA was Miss California. She looked great in a swimsuit, looked incredible in an evening gown, and gave a mature and honest answer to the interview portion. The story is here. So why wasn't she chosen? Because she personally does not believe in gay marriage.

Miss California, Carrie Prejean, was asked by openly gay gossip blogger and pageant judge Perez Hilton when he thought the US would destroy the religious institution of marriage between man and women and start actively encouraging people in the United States to be gay (this is my loose interpretation). That he was allowed to ask this question in such a manner like this upset me quite a bit- it was a set-up. She also seemed taken aback, but gave a good answer- Ms. Prejean said:

"We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."

Let's deconstruct this- she thinks it is great that we live in a country of choice and opportunity. But she also would point out that she personally thinks that marriage is between man and women, and doesn't mean to offend anyone out there, but that's how she thinks. What is so freaking wrong with that statement?

"The way miss California answered her question lost her the crown, without a doubt!" Perez Hilton told Access Hollywood after the pageant. I guess Miss USA does not support truthful and honest answers- he was upset that Ms. Prejean didn't just parrot back the line he wanted to the pleasure of the adoring masses. Liberals and leftists don't like free speech and free thought, you know, and by not bowing to his will, he punished her by not giving her the crown- how is that for women's empowerment?

Many people, Keith Lewis, who runs the Miss California competition, tells FOXNews.com that he was "saddened and hurt" by Prejean's statement- apparently he does not think it is a good thing that people can choose traditional marriages in their states, apparently he does not think it is okay for someone to personally not believe in gay marriage, and darn it, he is going to be offended if you don't totally support his lifestyle- he does not want gay marriage, he wants to control your beliefs on the issue. And that's wrong.

No offense to Miss North Carolina Kristen Dalton who was crowned Miss USA, but she did not stand out in any way in this competition. Miss California did, and she should have won Miss America, and I think the reason she did not was because she refused to compromise her personal beliefs on gay marriage, and that's wrong.

UPDATE: I watched the interview from the Today show with Carrie Prejean and Perez Hilton, and you know what- Ms. Prejean is a moral and good person, and did not deserve to be treated that way by the foul-mouthed dirty-minded Mr. Hilton. I don't care if he is straight or gay- he is intolerant, small-minded, petty, and cruel, and I don't care if Ms. Prejean is straight or gay, she is honest, open-minded, intelligent, humble, and nice. My support of her grew after watching the interview- I encourage you to do so too. Women can be religious, intelligent, and beautiful, and Miss California Carrie Prejean should have been Miss USA.