Archive for September, 2009

Andy Hefty

Can too much media exposure backfire on the President?  What about not enough?  Shortly before George W. Bush gave his first nationally televised address (hint:  it was a month before 9/11), I commented to a friend that he bears a striking resemblance in “media presence” to Richard Nixon.

And now, the Barack Obama reality TV special!

Instead of getting before the American people with his policies and agenda, he hunkered down and let others speak for him – or against him in some cases.

Enter Barack Obama.  This man seems to love getting on TV as much as Jesse Jackson.  I have long said that being between Jackson and a rolling camera was almost as dangerous as getting between a pregnant woman and a bathroom door.  I’m beginning to believe that Obama will trump Jackson in that infamy before his term expires.

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Candace Talmadge

Netflix, Inc., must be the envy of every C-suite around the world. It managed to get tens of thousands of geeks to work on solving a major business problem — for free.

The company just awarded $1 million to a team of seven software and electrical engineers who won the company’s contest, called the Netflix Prize. The team was first to submit a greater than 10 percent improvement to the accuracy of software that makes additional viewing recommendations for the company’s online DVD rental subscribers.

Thanks for the work, suckers.

Left out in the cold, however, were more than 51,000 other participants from 186 countries who also labored individually and in teams, usually forfeiting personal time for a chance to win big. They received a zilch payout, except maybe for some intrinsic intellectual satisfaction that brainy types get when they do geeky things and think geeky thoughts that completely baffle the rest of us.

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Dan Calabrese

His family, especially his grandparents, were like most of the black people he knew growing up. They watched the news and nodded in affirmation whenever a Democrat appeared. They believed conservatives like Ronald Reagan were the enemy.

That was just the way it was.

"This guy says everything I think, and yet, we were being taught to despise him."

But two seminal events had a huge impact on Kevin Jackson, now 46, and he explains in his book, The Big Black Lie: How I Learned the Truth About the Democrat Party, about his journey to becoming a dyed-in-the-wool conservative.

Throughout today, Jackson is engaged in a major campaign to make his book number one on Amazon. (Here’s where you can buy it.)

Jackson writes a blog and hosts a radio show on BlogTalk Radio. It all started in 1976, when he heard losing Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan give a speech about his vision of America.

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Dan Sherrier

I’d like to bring to your attention a serious problem in today’s schools. Their theatre departments keep performing the same plays over and over and over!

Fortunately, there’s a solution: AllTheCoolKidsDoTheatre.com. That’s “Theatre” ending in “re,” not “er.” The concept, not the physical place.

No offense to Romeo & Juliet, The Glass Menagerie, or Pride and Prejudice, but maybe teens might want to perform something different. Maybe first-time student directors don’t want to settle for the first one-act they find that doesn’t use curse words.

"A Doll's House" or this? C'mon...

So, I present to you…more options!

You probably guessed that I’m the one behind AllTheCoolKidsDoTheatre.com. I’ve been writing plays since the end of high school, and I’ve put together two compilations: one for high schools (though some plays would be perfectly suitable for middle schools) and one compilation for colleges. Read the rest of this entry »

Dan Calabrese

Agence France Presse talked to audience members who attended Sarah Palin’s speech yesterday to the CLSA Investors’ Forum in Hong Kong. No transcript of the 75-minute (!) speech has been released (it wasn’t open to the media) and it’s not always easy to tell what happened for scattered audience reactions, but this much appears clear:

Substance.

Palin railed against President Obama’s spending and predicted it would lead to increased poverty down the road.

She slammed Obama’s decision to slap tariffs on Chinese tires, and took the position that the U.S. should be working toward a constructive economic relationship with the Chinese – which might not be a bad idea considering they hold $800 billion of our debt.

She talked at some length about the effectiveness of Reagan economic policies.

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Bob Franken

While we used to debate how similar the Iraq War has been to Vietnam, the Iraq misadventure is nowhere near the parallel universe that Afghanistan is. And we are being sucked in again.

With his insistence he needs more troops to emphasize protecting Afghan civilians, General Stanley McChrystal sounds eerily like the commanders who assured us that a bigger military commitment would be necessary to “win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese”.

And what about the U.S.-supported leaders? As the man said, “Here we go again”. This time around it

Repeating Mistakes?

is Hamid Karzai who presides over a hopelessly corrupt system. Back then America’s crook was Ngo Dinh Diem.

But what is most striking is each country’s repeated rejection of foreign occupiers. The people of what was then called Indochina had just gotten through disgracing the French by driving them out when the United States became the next fool to rush in.

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Kelly Anderson Wright

“I can’t believe you voted for the white guy!” Obama fans are incredulous when they meet me. I am a conservative white woman with biracial sons and a black ex-husband. And yes, I did not vote for the first African-American President in the history of the United States of America. Shame on me.

I sigh deeply and explain. “Last time I checked, choosing one person instead of another because of his skin color is racism. I think it’s great we have a black president, he’s just not the right black president.”

If it's all about race, explain this!

I further explain that I vote for someone based on his or her beliefs and character, not color. Obama lovers are aghast, they are stunned, they don’t know what to say, for about five seconds … and then it begins, as it usually does, the abusive, insulting, diarrhea-of-the- mouth tongue-lashing and character-bashing against poor little moi! It starts with being called a racist.

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Kelly Anderson Wright

Last year, when Michelle Obama declared, “America is a mean country,” I disagreed. As the white mom of multi-racial children, I knew our country had its share of race problems, but I never would have called America “mean.”

Apparently, Michelle’s “mean America” comment was simply premonitory. Last year, I was a sweet, naïve, middle class, white Italian-American businesswoman and single mother.

Speaks volumes.

This year, I’m a racist, Brooks-Brothers’-suit-wearing, rabid, Nazi, right-wing, political terrorist wacko. How did that happen? And when did owning a Brooks Brothers’ suit become a bad thing?

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