In a wonderfully succinct clip, Professor Antony Davies addresses the oft-cited perspective that Government has a debt problem. While correct in fact, he examines the data and summarily notes that debt is caused by deficits leaving the question of what’s to blame – too much spending or too little tax revenues? The dramatic rise in spending per-capita by the government is exponentially larger than… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : zero hedge Discovery Date : 25/04/2012 15:53 Number of articles : 3
In a wonderfully succinct clip, Professor Antony Davies addresses the oft-cited perspective that Government has a debt problem. While correct in fact, he examines the data and summarily notes that debt is caused by deficits leaving the question of what’s to blame – too much spending or too little tax revenues? The dramatic rise in spending per-capita by the government is exponentially larger than… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : zero hedge Discovery Date : 25/04/2012 15:53 Number of articles : 3
Former presidential candidate U.S. Senator John Edwards goes on trial Monday on charges he used illegal campaign contributions to cover up an affair. Rielle Hunter became pregnant during his failed bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination and Edwards, with the help of aide Andrew Young, concealed it. John Edwards is accused of accepting more than $900,000 in campaign funds from two wealthy donors, with the hope of burying the love child scandal. The politician did this knowing the exposure of his extramarital affair “would destroy his presidential campaign,” prosecutors said in a pre-trial brief. The candidate at the time was a married father of three whose wife, Elizabeth Edwards, had terminal breast cancer. She passed away in December 2010. Jurors will hear opening statements at the federal courthouse in Greensboro, N.C., this morning. Edwards, 58, is accused of conspiring to solicit money. By receiving more than the $2,300 allowed from any one donor, and failing to report the payments as contributions, prosecutors say he broke the law. He faces six felony counts, each carrying a sentence of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Edwards insists he broke no laws throughout. Edwards admits personal failings, but he and his defenders say the government is overreaching with its prosecution of a case that is flimsy at best. Defense lawyers will dispute the Justice Department’s interpretation of federal election laws, arguing the donors would have given the money regardless of the campaign and did so knowing it wouldn’t be used for campaign purposes. The money was not spent to influence the election but rather to conceal the affair and resulting pregnancy from Edwards’ wife and children, they said. There was also a John Edwards sex tape involved. Edwards never personally received any of the payments, nor did his campaign for the White House. The money was used to cover living expenses and medical care for Rielle Hunter, rather than traditional campaign activities. Whether or not he is convicted may hinge on the jurors’ interpretation of campaign finance law (a complex matter to say the least), as well as his bid to discredit the credibility and motives of Young, the prosecution’s star witness. The jury selection process began earlier this month.
Jeffrey Neely, as expected, invoked the Fifth Amendment today in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s hearings on the General Services Administration’s lavish spending spree in Vegas and other places. And then, after he left the proceedings, he ran away from a mass of reporters trying to track him down. Fox captured the video of a bunch of reporters running after Neely. Some of them… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Business Insider Discovery Date : 16/04/2012 20:55 Number of articles : 2
The sci-fi action flick Lockout , directed by first-timers James Mather and Stephen St. Leger from a script they wrote with Luc Besson, features a scene in which characters somehow skydive out of orbit through the stratosphere to land, neatly and not even a little on fire, on an urban road. It isn’t a sequence of events I’d ever have dreamed I needed to see on-screen, but boy, was I glad to. Gleefully preposterous, Lockout is packed with moments like that — its very setup, involving a maximum-security prison in space that the inmates take over, is a metaphorical out-of-orbit parachute jump. Anchored by a smirky Guy Pearce channeling John McClane via Snake Plissken, Lockout is derivative and ridiculous and a good time, provided you can turn off higher brain functions along with any other part of you that might want to lodge a complaint about liberal borrowing from better movies. Pearce’s is always a welcome face to see on-screen, but in Lockout he gets the rare opportunity to be funny. And he is, in the style of a deadpan, wisecracking ’80s action hero — his character, Snow, is an agent who’s falsely accused of murder along with something about the selling of state secrets. He’s scheduled to spend a few decades in stasis on the experimental space jail MS One, the costs of which are being defrayed by a long-distance interstellar exploration company test-driving its cryosleep technology on a population no one’s concerned about, even if it sometimes causes brain damage. Before Snow can be put under and ferried out to the big penitentiary in the sky, MS One crumbles with surprising ease after psychotic prisoner Hydell (Joseph Gilgun, hamming it up with a heavy Scottish accent that’s almost incomprehensible) gets hold of a weapon. The other inmates are woken up and hostages are taken, one of them Emilie Warnock (Maggie Grace), the president’s daughter, who was there on a humanitarian mission. Who can possibly rescue her? Who? “We can send in one man,” suggests a higher-up named Shaw (Lennie James), a laugh line though not a joke. (A little later in the film, a declaration that “He’s my brother!” gets the same effect.) Lockout has no pretensions about being anything other than over-the-top hokum, but to its credit, it’s neither winking nor smarmily self-aware — it’s a straight-faced B-movie. And once all its players are in orbit, it becomes a brisk pursuit through the hallways and tunnels of MS One, as Snow sets out to save the target he’s been assigned while also trying to track down his old partner Mace (Tim Plester) by getting the location in which he stashed a briefcase, the contents of which could clear his name. Pearce is fun to watch, his character drawling out one-liners while demonstrating a cartoon-worthy near-indestructibility, a combo laid out in a nicely staged opening sequence in which he’s being roughly interrogated and each punch he takes knocks his face out of the frame, only to return a little more bruised, bloodied and snarky. Grace can’t keep up, though it’s hard to say whether the problem belongs to her or her dialogue — Emilie’s regulation flirty/angry banter with Snow upon meeting him involves her responding to every work out of his mouth with “You’re a selfish dick!” or “asshole” or “obnoxious.” (The film’s approach to putting the rescued princess in her place has a needlessly mean edge — at one point, Snow sucker punches her in the face as part of a disguise to make her look tough.) Peter Stormare summons up some restrained weirdness as Langral, the government guy who doesn’t trust Snow, and Vincent Regan is Alex, the self-appointed boss of the hijacked MS One. Besson, who also served as Lockout ‘s executive producer, leaves a few recognizable fingerprints on the film: Shot in Belgrade, it has his rootless, international feel, and when Emilie gets her hair cropped and dyed black as a disguise, she instantly transforms into one of his signature steely waifs. But the overwhelming inspiration is John Carpenter’s Escape From New York — sometimes Lockout seems to be paying tribute to it, other times just ripping it off. The world of Lockout is a similarly dystopian future in which the White House is now an armored bunker and crime has gotten bad enough to necessitate a 500,000-capacity multinational space jail, and the film shares an underlying disillusionment with social structures, with Emilie, in this case, getting taunted for acting high-minded in the face of the obvious special care she’s being given because of who her father is. But Lockout doesn’t actually have anything more ambitious on its mind than being entertainment, and while Mather and St. Leger are sometimes overly hurried (an early set piece involving a chase through a hotel, onto a road and down to the subway might be impressive if it weren’t so visually garbled), they manage just fine once the film makes it to MS-One. Lockout ‘s a weightless bit of galactic debris that fills an hour and a half just fine — you may not believe a man can parachute out of space, but wouldn’t you like to see him try? Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Maggie Q is some old as far as I’m concerned….at 32….bitch from Hawaii……Who is half asian…but more interestingly…half Vietnamese, cuz her white daddy worked for the government and fell in love with a local bitch during the Vietnam war…and saved her by bringing her to Hawaii where they produced this bitch a few years later…a fate far more exciting that living in communism as a hooker….or getting blown the fuck up by left over land mines and angry north vietnamese who hate you can you allied with America and killed their family and villages before they took everyong out……. She’s been in one or two American movies, the rest of her career has been the Asian American in Asian movies….where she probably has a huge fan base…cuz she’s got white in her and that makes her exotic to them…. Now she’s in Inked magazine showing a lot of ass…..but not as much skin as I’d expect from someone with her level of fame….you can’t please everyone….not even me…unless you get naked…no matter who you are.e…cuz I have low standards
In a succinct and chart-laden presentation, Professor Antony Davies, of Duquesne , offers a simple perspective on just how bad things are for the US (in terms of debt or obligations). Putting the interest cost in the context of war-spending, his analysis is interesting given the recent and dramatic rise in interest rates. Current interest payments, given the US Government’s lowest ever 3% interest… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : zero hedge Discovery Date : 20/03/2012 13:23 Number of articles : 2
Actor was arrested in Washington, D.C., outside the Sudanese embassy. By Jocelyn Vena George Clooney is arrested at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington on Friday Photo: Colin Drummond/ Splash News George Clooney was arrested on Friday (March 16) in Washington, D.C., after participating in a protest. The Oscar nominee was taken into custody outside the Sudanese embassy. According to MSNBC , the group was protesting Sudan’s blockage of food and aid from entering the Nuba Mountains and aimed to bring attention to the treatment of the people in that area of Sudan. His father, journalist Nick Clooney, was also arrested, according to MSNBC, as well as Martin Luther King III, NAACP President Ben Jealous, Rep. Jim McGovern and Rep. Jim Moran and former Rep. Tom Andrews. Clooney and the other protesters knew that, because the embassy is private property, they would be arrested if they refused to move. MSNBC reports that the protesters were warned three times before police moved in. The group reportedly held a sign that read, “Sudan: Stop Weapons of Mass Starvation.” He told the large crowd at the protest, “We need immediate humanitarian aid into Sudan before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.” He asked “the [Sudanese] government in Khartoum to stop randomly killing its own innocent men, women and children. Stop raping them, and stop starving them.” According to People.com , the group was then taken to a Secret Service van. “He’s being charged currently with disorderly crossing of a police line, which is a misdemeanor and he will be transported to the second district of the Metropolitan Police Department for processing,” Max Milien, spokesman for the Secret Service, told the site, noting that Clooney was being cooperative. “They were protesting the violence committed by the government of Sudan on its own innocent men, women and children,” Clooney’s rep said in a statement. “They were demanding they allow humanitarian aid into the country before it becomes the largest humanitarian crisis in the world.” The actor has been trying to bring change to the area, even meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Secretary Hillary Clinton and President Obama in the Oval Office on Thursday. One day before, he attended the White House state dinner for British Prime Minister David Cameron. He is expected to appear on “Hardball with Chris Matthews” on Friday.
The video featured above captures one of those rare, “out of the mouths of babes” moments. In an interview released Monday, an 11-year-old reporter named Topanga Sena challenged the first lady Let’s Move! anti-obesity program. Michelle Obama was asked to respond to critics of the program who say the government has no business telling people how to eat. Miss Topanga is certainly showing promise as… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : The Blaze Discovery Date : 12/03/2012 20:12 Number of articles : 2
With only three weeks to go until YA adaptation The Hunger Games hits theaters, Lionsgate has released the first actual clip from the Gary Ross-directed film, and it’s a memorable moment Hunger Games fans should recognize: Forced to show off her skills for the Capitol’s boorish, drunken Gamemakers — the designers of the Games, headed by Wes Bentley ‘s Seneca Crane — Katniss ( Jennifer Lawrence ) lets an arrow fly in an act of defiance that finally gets their attention. It’s a smart scene choice to unveil, as the barrage of trailers and TV spots released so far have offered only snippets from the film; this clip, meanwhile, gives more of a sense of Ross’s sense for tone and pacing within scenes, not to mention how he might treat iconic moments from the book. Katniss’s arrow flying at the pack of vulgar Gamemakers, in whose hands the fates of the Games’ tributes lie, is one of one her first impulsive displays of rebellion against the Games and the government that created them — the perfect way to get fans’ attentions, too. This scene also demonstrates Ross’s stylistic approach, sound design, and visual interpretation of Suzanne Collins’ Panem, and while I expected to see a little more outrage on Lawrence’s face at the :30 second mark, it works for me. What say you, Movieliners? The Hunger Games is in theaters March 23.
