On Letterman, Maher Charges Racist ‘Tea-Baggers’ Are ‘Corporate America’s Useful Idiots,’ CBS Expunges Vile Term
April 26, 2011 No Comment
Regurgitating the same kind of derogatory comments he regularly spews on his Friday night HBO show, Bill Maher showed up Monday night on the Late Show with David Letterman where CBS, unlike HBO, excised his vile terminology for Tea Party activists. Maher denounced Tea Party followers as “sad, unfortunate people” because they are “corporate America's useful idiots” who don’t allow “facts” to “get in that tin foil helmet.” Then he employed his usual “tea-baggers” phrase, but CBS silenced the “baggers” so viewers heard dead air when Maher spoke that foul term: I don't have any respect, no, I don't have any respect for the tea-(baggers) [word silenced] and I do call them the tea-(baggers) [word silenced again] — even though they hate it. I will stop calling them Tea-(baggers) [word silenced for a third time] when they stop calling it Obamacare, that's my deal. He proceeded to allege opposition to President Barack Obama is motivated by racism. Maher maintained the debt “was mostly ran up under Bush,” yet “where were the Tea Party then?” He offered some mock speculation: “So there’s just something about him that they don't like. I can't put my finger on what it is. (audience laughter) But there's some way that he’s just not like them. I don't know what. He's skinny that must be it. He's skinny, they're fat and he's skinny.” Audio: MP3 clip that matches the video From the Monday, April 25 Late Show with David Letterman on CBS: DAVID LETTERMAN: What about your Tea Party pals, what do you hear there? BILL MAHER: Well, the Tea Party, you know, they are sad, unfortunate people because — well, they are, because they are, you know, corporate America's useful idiots. (Applause) They are they — I would have more respect for them if they knew a thing, if any fact could get in that tin foil helmet. If they would get out of their chat rooms and have their house tested for lead for just a minute. (Laughter) LETTERMAN: Is this part of your friendship campaign, Bill? Is this- MAHER: No, I don't have any respect, no, I don't have any respect for the tea-(baggers) [word silenced] and I do call them the tea-(baggers) [word silenced again] — even though they hate it. I will stop calling them Tea-(baggers) [word silenced] when they stop calling it Obamacare, that's my deal. (Applause) But here's the thing. Their whole campaign is based on money. It's all about we have too much debt, the deficit is too high. They are, after all, named after a tax revolt. But you know, there's these things called facts. Where did all this debt come from. Well, the facts will tell us it was mostly ran up under Bush. Two wars that we put on the credit card. (Applause) Prescription drug program that was unpaid for. Tax cuts for the richest one percent, that was unpaid for. Where were the Tea Party then? Crickets. But suddenly, when President Nosferatu took office — suddenly debt became intolerable. So there’s just something about him that they don't like. I can't put my finger on what it is. (audience laughter) But there's some way that he’s just not like them. I don't know what. He's skinny that must be it. He's skinny, they're fat and he's skinny. — Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
Continue reading …Obama’s Easter Sunday Pastor Rails Against Racist Talk Radio (Compares Rush to KKK!)
April 25, 2011 No Comment
The media stood and applauded yesterday when President Obama and his family went to church for Easter. Yesterday’s visit to Shiloh Baptist Church in D.C. shows again that Obama really is a man of faith, the reports seem to suggest. But while the media rushed to report on the first family’s attendance of the predominately black congregation (and the family’s outfits ), what it failed to mention were… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Blaze Discovery Date : 25/04/2011 16:47 Number of articles : 3
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Click here to view this media Rick Santorum voted with the rest of the GOP to create the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which as Chris Wallace pointed out, was not paid for, but now he thinks the Republicans in Congress should do some more hostage taking and refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless the Democrats agree to defund the Affordable Care Act, or as he calls it, Obamacare, which would, by the way, make the deficit worse as well. So never mind that he helped blow a huge whole in the budget when he was in the Senate, now he’s going to pretend he cares about running up the deficit. Republican, thy name is hypocrisy. Think Progress has more on Santorum and his hostage taking — Rick Santorum: I Would ‘Absolutely’ Let The Country Default Over Defunding The Health Care Law . WALLACE: OK. So, you say that the GOP should refuse to raise the debt limit until the other side agrees to take all the funding out of Obamacare, which is roughly $105 billion that is tucked inside Obamacare. Given the fact — you know as a political realist — the president would never accept that, are you willing to let the country go into default? SANTORUM: Well, is the president willing to let this country go into default, to support a program that has been found unconstitutional by a couple of courts — WALLACE: And has been found constitutional by a couple of courts. SANTORUM: Again, but has been found unconstitutional by a couple of courts, has also — has widely unpopular — 60 percent negative across the country, is already increasing the cost of health care, is already causing job losses because of the complexity and taxes that are being put into place. This is a program that if the president wants to defend it, he should stand up and say the 2012 election is about Obamacare. We’ll put it this on hold and we’ll make it a referendum on Obama. WALLACE: OK. But that’s one thing, the 2012 election. You’re saying you’d let the country go into default on this issue? SANTORUM: No, I think the president would let this go into default on this issue. WALLACE: But you would make that a condition, you’d make that the price? SANTORUM: Absolutely. WALLACE: Now, didn’t you contribute to the deficit problem when you were in Congress? Back in 2003, you voted to create a new prescription drug, Medicare prescription drug benefit, but you didn’t provide any funding. And according to most estimates, it’s adding $60 billion a year to the deficit. SANTORUM: Yes, I would say that that was a mistake. That one of the — we did two things that were wrong in that bill. Number one, we made it universal. In other words, we had a problem that was about 15 percent of seniors didn’t have prescription drugs. And we — and the president compromised with the Democrats, President Bush, to provide a universal benefit. I was against that. I spoke against it. I worked against it. But we lost. And so, now, we have — we have a situation — WALLACE: And you voted for it. SANTORUM: I voted for it for a lot of reasons beyond the Medicare prescription drugs, for example, Medicare Advantage. WALLACE: OK. But the point is you created a vast new entitlement without paying for it. SANTORUM: I agree. And I think we should have — the second thing, we should have paid for it. Again, that was not an option on the table at the time that we were voting for it. We did have a program that was substantially less money than what the Democrats were proposing and we did have substantial reforms of Medicare as well as health savings accounts, which was a reform in the private sector also in this bill. So, I said at the time, it was a 51/49 vote. In retrospect, it was probably 51/49 the other way.
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Click here to view this media This is what happens when a district with more Democrats than Republicans elects a Republican Congressman who doesn’t campaign on changes to Medicare but then votes to end Medicare as a social contract and hand out vouchers. Constituents get angry . Of all the town hall videos I’ve seen, this one is definitely the most confrontational so far, with one speaker being forcibly ejected from the meeting after calling Barletta a Republican fascist. It’s unclear from the video whether the cheers at the end are coming from the conservative side of the room or not, but the repeated calls for anyone disagreeing to sit down and shut up seem to indicate they are. Linda Chrisman, the first speaker, is chairman of the Carbon County Democrats for Change, and also a constituent. When she asked Barletta why he voted for Medicare to be changed to a voucher program, he responded with a hostile BS answer that reeks of the current GOP talking point about “saving Medicare, not ending it.” This isn’t the first time Barletta has been met with hostility at town hall meetings. In February, he had an equally difficult time: Though Barletta tried to answer questions in an evenhanded and clear manner about what he’s been doing in Congress, the people, for the most part, said they were upset about what they believe are flawed practices and policies. “How can you sit there and say that corporate taxes are too high when all those corporations are shipping American jobs overseas. Why are you going to bat for these corporations?” asked Will Landstrom, of Effort, who works as a manager for AT&T. Right on cue, of course, Barletta charges that the town hall meeting disruptions are orchestrated , as if a voter who is also a Democrat and leader of grassroots efforts is somehow being yanked like a puppet instead of righteously angry over something her counterparts in the Republican party were furious over back in July, 2009. Furious enough, in fact, to climb onto Americans for Prosperity-funded buses and head out to town halls across the country. I haven’t found a senior citizen yet who thinks the Paul Ryan plan is a good idea from a social or political standpoint. This includes very conservative seniors living in my neighborhood, people I’ve “talked with” online, and others. Those seniors at the tea party gatherings with “Hands off my Medicare” signs were not faking their outrage about losing benefits they’ve come to rely upon. I wonder whether they’ll lend them to me for this round.
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Bonus payouts shrank by 8% over last 12 months at the same time as permanent 7% rise in basic salaries in Square Mile Workers in the City of London who have seen contentious bonus payouts shrink by 8% over the last 12 months have more than made up for their loss through a permanent 7% rise in basic salaries, according to a study published today. Bonuses paid to City workers fell from £7.3bn to £6.7bn for the year to April, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) says, but these purported performance-linked payouts remain a step above levels recorded in 2009, when the worst banking crisis since the 1930s saw the City’s bonus pool dip to £5.3bn. However, more than offsetting the impact of shrinking City bonuses, basic salaries in the Square Mile – which still make up the lion’s share of pay deals for most City workers – jumped 7%, according to CEBR’s analysis of official data from the Office for National Statistics. Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat peer who resigned as a party spokesman in protest at what he saw as the coalition’s failure to curb banking industry excesses, said: “Real incomes are now being seriously squeezed in the rest of Britain but City pay just sails merrily on.” Permanent salary rises for City workers were well ahead of pay settlements awarded to the rest of the UK’s employees. They ensure City workers are more than equipped to weather the soaring cost of living brought about by global demand for oil and food. Average wage settlements were up just over 2% for the UK as a whole over the same period, while the retail price index measure of inflation – commonly used as a benchmark for wage negotiations – stood at 5.3% for March. Revelations about spiralling City pay come just two months after an uneasy compromise, known as the Project Merlin deal, was struck between the government and Britain’s big five lenders – Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Santander – over small business lending and bank pay restraint. It was instantly branded “toothless” by the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, and prompted Oakeshott to resign. Last month new disclosure rules imposed on banks forced Barclays to admit that five top managers had shared annual payouts of £110m despite the group failing to hit its financial targets. Weeks later it emerged that the new boss of the taxpayer-owned Lloyds Banking Group, Antonio Horta-Osorio, had negotiated a package potentially worth up to £13.4m after receiving a £4.6m “golden hello” on joining. Scott Corfe, CEBR economist and co-author of the research, said: “City workers are not earning less – their earnings are merely becoming less bonus-driven as basic pay continues to grow much faster than other parts of the economy.” TUC senior policy officer Janet Williamson said: “Ordinary people are paying a heavy price for the economic problems the banks helped cause. “Essential services are being cut, workers are seeing a real-term cut in wages as prices rise higher and faster than their salaries and many are at risk of losing their jobs. “Despite all this hardship it’s very quickly gone back to business as usual in the City.” Executive pay and bonuses Banking Financial crisis Global recession Financial sector Simon Bowers guardian.co.uk
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French actor, novelist and director who starred in films by Truffaut and Buñuel Those who followed the adventures of Antoine Doinel (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud) in a series of lyrical and semi-autobiographical films directed by François Truffaut – incorporating adolescence, marriage, fatherhood and divorce – will know that Doinel’s first and (perhaps) last love, Colette Tazzi, was played by the stunningly beautiful Marie-France Pisier, who has been found dead aged 66 in the swimming pool of her house near Toulon, in southern France. Doinel and audiences first caught sight of Pisier in Antoine et Colette, Truffaut’s enchanting 32-minute contribution to the omnibus film L’Amour à Vingt Ans (Love at Twenty, 1962), during a concert at the Salle Pleyel in Paris of Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. She is conscious of Antoine’s stares, and pulls down her skirt. We soon realise that Colette is going to break Antoine’s heart. Léaud and Pisier were born in the same month and were both 18 when they appeared in the film. Pisier was discovered by a casting director, who had been instructed by Truffaut that: “Jean-Pierre Léaud’s partner must be a real young girl, not a Lolita, not a biker type, nor a little woman. She must be fresh and cheerful. Not too sexy.” Colette, who treats Antoine like a “buddy”, much to his frustration, runs into him again briefly in Baisers Volés (Stolen Kisses, 1968) and, finally, in the last film of the series, L’Amour en Fuite (Love On the Run, 1979), which she co-wrote. By then Colette was a lawyer, divorced like Antoine, but far more emotionally mature. The film contained what Truffaut called “real flashbacks”, when we see the differences between Pisier in her screen debut and Pisier 17 years and more than 20 films later, when she was midway through a prestigious career. She worked with such auteurs as Luis Buñuel, Jacques Rivette and Raúl Ruiz, appearing in quality French mainstream movies, with a short and unhappy detour to Hollywood. Pisier was born in French Indochina, now Vietnam, where her father served as colonial governor. She moved to Paris with her family when she was 12. While starting out in films, she completed degrees in jurisprudence and political science at Paris University. After she had appeared in several mediocre genre films, including thrillers directed by the actor Robert Hossein, Pisier’s career took a more interesting turn. In 1974, she appeared in the most outrageous and amusing sequence in Buñuel’s penultimate film, Le Fantôme de la Liberté (The Phantom of Liberty), where she is among the elegant guests seated on individual lavatories around a table from which they excuse themselves to go and eat in a little room behind a locked door. In the same year, in Céline et Julie Vont en Bateau (Céline and Julie Go Boating), Rivette’s brilliantly allusive comic meditation on the nature of fiction, she and Bulle Ogier act out, in a stylised and exquisite manner, a creaky melodrama in a mysterious house. Pisier was cast by the director André Téchiné in several of his early films, including Barocco (1976), for which she won a César award for her supporting role as a prostitute with a baby in tow. She later played Charlotte Brontë, alongside Isabelle Adjani (as Emily) and Isabelle Huppert (as Anne) in Téchiné’s Les Soeurs Brontë (1979). Her performance as a frivolous, neurotic wife in Jean-Charles Tacchella’s Cousin Cousine (1975), a hit in the US, led to her starring role in The Other Side of Midnight (1977), a Hollywood soap opera in which she almost overcame the cliches as a naive French girl who, betrayed by an American pilot, begins to use men for their money and power. But subsequently, apart from French Postcards (1979), in which, according to the critic Roger Ebert, “Marie-France Pisier, her jet-black hair framing her startling red lipstick, is the kind of dark Gallic woman-of-a-certain-age who knocks your socks off”, she was little seen in English-language movies. Among the rare exceptions was Chanel Solitaire (1981), in which she portrayed the designer Coco Chanel with her usual elegance. She made a splendid Madame Verdurin in Ruiz’s Proust adaptation, Le Temps Retrouvé (Time Regained, 1999), and was ethereal in the same director’s magical Combat d’Amour en Songe (2000). More recently, she was an iconic presence in Christophe Honoré’s homage to the French new wave, Dans Paris (2006). Pisier also directed two films, Le Bal du Gouverneur (The Governor’s Party, 1990), starring Kristin Scott Thomas and adapted from Pisier’s own novel about some of her childhood spent in New Caledonia in the Pacific, and Comme un Avion (Like an Airplane, 2002), a family drama based on the death of her own parents. Pisier was an outspoken defender of women’s rights and legal abortion. She overcame breast cancer in the 1990s. Her first husband was the lawyer Georges Kiejman, with whom she had a son. She is survived by her second husband, Thierry Funck-Brentano, a businessman; her brother, Gilles; and her sister, Evelyne. • Marie-France Pisier, actor, writer, director, born 10 May 1944; died 24 April 2011 France Europe Ronald Bergan guardian.co.uk
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‘A painting costs less than a sports car. And if it makes you feel something, then the expense is worth it’ What got you started? I grew up in an area of Munich that was full of artists and architects. My father was an artist; my uncle was an architect; my best friend’s father was an art dealer. I never considered doing anything else. What was your big breakthrough? Being part of a show called New Photography at MoMA in New York in 1996 . It put me on the map. You’re based between Berlin and Los Angeles. Which city do you find most
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The best works auctioned at east London’s Drawing Room, by Turner prizewinners and younger artists alike, are self-regarding, silly, and muse on the nature of drawing itself Every two years the Drawing Room in east London holds a fundraising exhibition, sending artists a sheet of A4 paper and inviting them to return it with an original drawing. Anyone can bid at the silent auction on 18 May for works by Turner prize contenders and winners, younger artists and well-known names such as Tacita Dean, Richard Long, Grayson Perry and Paula Rego, all with a starting price of £250. A not-for-profit gallery focusing on drawing and housed in a canalside studio block in Hackney, the Drawing Room is a good thing. The Biennial Fundraiser is democratically arranged, with more than 200 drawings hung up in plastic sleeves three-deep, and there is always a lot of humour. Mark Wallinger has supplied a self-portrait reduced to nothing but his pair of spectacles, which are as distinctive as Eric Morecambe’s. Michael Landy’s self-portrait is a cartoon of a council rubbish bin. Gavin Turk has just written his signature with a bit of charcoal stuck on the end of a long stick, emulating Henri Matisse, who drew in similar fashion on the ceiling when bed-ridden in the last years of his life. There is a lot of writing-as-drawing. Goshka Macuga’s just says Transubstantiation, while Bob and Roberta Smith (aka Patrick Brill) has copied out his raging manifesto against the arts cuts. Is a photograph of a bird’s nest a drawing? You wonder whether nests are drawings anyway. Maybe they’re sculpture. Tania Kovats, who supplied the photograph, recently wrote a book about drawing, so maybe she knows. Heather Deedman has copied the cover of Adrian Hill’s What Shall We Draw, a 1960s TV spin-off teach-yourself book, and Fiona Banner has painstakingly copied the worn, plain cover of Life Drawing by George B Bridgman. There is a lot of interesting anxiety about what drawing is or isn’t. The good stuff really declares itself among the dots and scribbles, the self-regarding and the silly. Here’s a drawing of a yellow duster, there’s some mad calligraphic nonsense produced under hypnosis by Matt Mullican. All works can be bid for online. I covet Angela de la Cruz’s sketch of a figure in a pile of boxes, and a hermaphroditic photo-collage by John Stezaker. But I might change my mind on the night. Until 18 May, Drawing Room, Tannery Arts, London E2 Paula Rego Grayson Perry Tacita Dean Art London Adrian Searle guardian.co.uk
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Novelist threatens to abandon the sex-near-horses genre to write a proper book Jilly Cooper says she now finds it “difficult” to write sex scenes , even though she used to bash them out with the joyous snuffling of a Laura-Ashley-yellow Labrador finding a chocolate button under a sofa. In fact, Cooper may abandon the sex-near-horses genre entirely, and try to impersonate Margaret Drabble instead. “I’d like to write a good book, a proper good book,” she says, being entirely ignorant of my opinion that her murder-mystery Score! is a masterpiece. What is this? How can a woman who once compared an orgasm to the machinations of a washing machine abandon us to the sexless wastelands of more literary writers, when the experience of reading them is like watching Ian McEwan doing a handstand? Could the memory of a passage from Riders , Cooper’s other masterpiece, remind her of what she has lost and what may come again? This scene features the psychotic show-jumper Rupert Campbell-Black, who is based on Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, copulating with Amanda Hamilton, the wife of the foreign secretary. So, if you are very literal, you are about to imagine Andrew Parker Bowles and Ffion Hague in bed. “Fascinated, she watched his long fingers stroking her belly, then sliding into the dark bush . . . ” I have to cut the sentence, because there will be complaints from readers who think that sex is evil, particularly when it involves fictional characters who vote Conservative. But this next bit should be OK. “Now he was lifting her right leg, holding back the inside of her thigh . . . it was like an express train going into a tunnel.” Why does this scene work? Rupert may be a wife-beating anti-intellectual with Boarding School Syndrome, but in what posh women call bed it is all about making a woman feel like a washing machine. Rupert has the shell of an alpha male but the heart of a subscriber to the Save the Badger campaign. Another element is the inclusion of a simile that people who live in the middle-class badlands can relate to, in this case a train. A train that works. This is the key to the psychology of Cooper’s sex scenes, as she strokes the British love of pornography that features plumbers, electricians and purveyors of utilities generally, while soothing our snobbery by giving the lovers acreage and pig farms. This is your formula, Mrs Cooper. Long may you write. Jilly Cooper Tanya Gold guardian.co.uk
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23-year-old performer dies in hospital after accident at Scott May’s Daredevil Stunt Show at Kent county showground A man performing a human cannonball act at a stunt show in Kent has died after a safety net failed. The accident happened at a performance of Scott May’s Daredevil Stunt Show at the Kent county showground in Detling on Monday afternoon. The 23-year-old stuntman was taken to Maidstone General hospital by air ambulance where he died. Kent police said: “A man taking part in a human cannonball event this afternoon has died after it is believed a safety net failed to engage. His next-of-kin have been informed but he has yet to be formally identified.” A statement on the Scott May website stated: “With our apologies, due to unforeseen circumstances all shows have been cancelled until further notice.” An evening show due to start at 7.30pm did not go ahead. The show has been touring in the UK since 1991, according to the website, and features pyrotechnics, motorbike and monster trunk stunts. It has enjoyed a “100% safety record” over its 20 years, it adds. The human cannonball equipment is built on to the back of a standard 7.5-tonne truck. “The stunt performer climbs the ladder and slides down to the deep dark depths of the gigantic barrel,” the website says. “Many a seasoned stunt performer cannot cope with the claustrophobic conditions, and those who can are highly respected for ther courage and daring. “Once in position they signal to the crew that they are ready and then remain braced for the explosive propulsion to shoot them out into the fresh air. They then have to turn whilst in flight and land in the safety net. Within a few seconds of landing the performer must get down from the safety net before the poles holding the net in position crash to the ground.” Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk
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