Funny Or Die - Ron Howards Call To Action

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Ron Howard, Andy Griffith, and Henry Winkler demonstrate the lengths they will go to endorse Barack Obama.

The Keating 5 and Thoughts on Dergulation

The McCain campaign lives in a big glass house and now they are throwing bricks at the Obama campaign. In response, this documentary, and a companion website have been released.

The research section of this site is really an eye opener. It has all kinds of letters etc that spell out exactly what this was about. For example: This is a quote from a letter John McCain wrote to the Whitehouse Chief of Staff at the time, James Baker.

Regarding regulation:

"I believe it to be unwise, and I think it flys (sic) in the face of our recent efforts to remove the hand of government from the affairs of private enterprise."

Here's the thing that really bothers me: We have a society here which is made up of human beings. We have agreed that human beings cannot be trusted to always regulate themselves and that the creation of "civilization" requires regulations. . also known as "laws." Without these laws people's primal natures are allowed to run wild and we have anarchy, chaos, tyranny and death.

Human beings once had a free market where everyone was on their own. The strongest families rose to the top and gathered power for themselves. This led to a world overrun for thousands of years by a number of tyrant leaders oppressing their populations and robbing them, and the land, of all wealth. Yet even these tyrants admitted that they needed regulations or their kingdoms would quickly fall apart.

The United States of America is very high minded scheme which attempts to create a society with a level playing field. We pride ourselves on this intention to give everyone a fair shot at success. Yet this doesn't happen without massive regulation imposed upon all of us. By agreeing to this regulation, America has benefited from the talents of many more people, and it has become very powerful.

Why is it that when it comes to human society, regulations (aka law and order) are considered necessary and it is a high minded goal to create a level playing field for all people. Yet, in the financial world, where society's well being is directly effected, regulation is an evil force that is ruining everything? Is there really a difference between tyranny and fraud in civilization and tyranny and fraud in the "marketplace?" Aren't civilization and "the market" a reflection of each other and dependent on each others outcomes?

Reidblog: If I had a 527. . .

This is a fantastic homegrown commercial in the spirit of the Media Crashers mission statement; from Reid Report. The titles are too fast to read in places but the message is there and they are basically footnotes anyway. You can pause it if you really want to know the source.

Stump Speech Sarah

So I went down to the Lee's Summit McCain/Palin rally, and was stunned to see such a large multi-state turnout (people from as far as Ohio came). Palin, of course, gave the same stump speech with all of the same embellishments and distortions for the election game-show that she and McCain are now playing. Afterward, I took some Q&A with the Obama protesters, and McCain counter-protesters and whipped this little 3 minute video together.

The video runs like this: 90 seconds of Palin's speech all snipped up, and then the reaction outside. I posed a few questions to the audience, mostly "what does it mean to be (your party affiliation) to you today", and tried to get "are you better off now than you were 8 years ago" -- people were really reluctant to touch that question, but one did.

Palin: Set... Match... Point

IMHO, McCain made the best VP choice since Ross Perot chose Admiral James Stockdale. Comedically speaking.

The VP debates should be hilarious.

Sunday Inspiration - Black Eyed Peas: Yes We Can

I find it very interesting that something like this video below, which is essentially a song that backs a political candidate, can strike a note inside of you that makes you think.

A political mashup meets a collage of music sung by some hollywood and music industry heavyweights (Black Eyed Peas, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Scarlet Johannsen, etc.) turns into subtle political art. So simple, but so poignant. This particular video is a wonderful minimalist approach to creating art as a political tool.



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