NBC Bay Area

President Barack Obama will pop into Los Angeles on Monday to help raise money for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will join the president for the fundraiser, which will be held at the home of “West Wing” and “ER” producer John Wells and his wife Marilyn.

Seats at the dinner are priced between $2,500 and $30,400, and some of the heaviest hitters in show business are expected to attend.

Air Force One is scheduled to touch down at LAX about 4 p.m. Monday.

Earlier in the day, the president will make a fundraising stop in Milwaukee to benefit Mayor Tom Barrett. After Los Angeles, he heads to Seattle on Tuesday and is due in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday — all for fundraisers in his most extensive fundraiser trip planned for the mid-term election season.

By Jay Ambrose–Washington Examiner

Oliver Stone, a politically dim bulb wishing to shine bright with his new idolizing documentary on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, says he has just one complaint about the guy. He’s on TV too much. Ought to cut it out. Not good.

And so finally, after years of unrelieved, deep immersion in loony, leftist ideology, the Hollywood director has a solitary insight. Sadly, he understates it.

According to a press report, Stone said Chavez is “overpowering” with his many hours of almost daily rambles in which he mixes lectures, news and occasional songs.

Others of us might say this verbal strutting is exhibitionist, megalomania in keeping with Chavez’s bizarre imitation of a responsible leader. If it were not likely he would just make things worse, you might advise him to tend instead to an economy rendered one of the world’s worst by an 11-year set of policies Stone refers to as a wonderfully laudable “social transformation.”

Jackson Diehl, a Washington Post editorialist, ably sums up the transformational actuality. The Venezuelan inflation rate of 30 percent is three times higher than anyplace else in Latin America and worse than other economies mistakenly believed as bad as it is possible to be. While Mexico, Argentina and Brazil are growing at 8 percent a year, the gross national product of Venezuela was down in the first quarter by almost 6 percent. Notes Diehl, Greece can’t compete with that collapse.

All this manifests itself in cruel ways, observers report — four-hour-a-day electricity blackouts, ever fewer jobs, woeful wages, rampaging crime and, hey, you are looking for basic foods? Don’t look here, skinny ones.

While drought is a factor, the main reasons given for the debacle are willy-nilly confiscation of private property, arresting business operators for such horrors as raising prices when insolvency was the alternative, scaring foreign investors away by nationalizing their operations, inflation of the currency, sink-the-nation debt, ignoring infrastructure for transient goals and various other progressive policies.

But the poor are being treated more equitably under this socialist Robin Hood, right? Not according to a former economist with the Venezuelan government. In parts of an essay available on the Internet, he said Chavez had done next to nothing in his first eight years to increase that portion of the national budget devoted to programs for the poor, and that meanwhile life had grown harsher for them – a higher percentage of underweight babies and homes with mud floors, for example.

You as a Venezuelan don’t like what’s going on? Shut up, Chavez advises you through a law that will send you to jail for two and a half years if you criticize him.

Unfair? Hey, if you’re a reporter who is “inaccurate,” the sentence is five years.

He has come to control much of the media and has chased political opponents out of the country, had them locked up and has looked the other way when some have disappeared. Don’t worry about the Supreme Court saying stop that stuff. He has already stopped the court. He has taken control of it. It’s his baby.

Human rights violations don’t end there — our own State Department reports unlawful killings by security forces- but here is what you get from Stone and some other Hollywood buddies: Hugo is just as nifty as nifty gets.

Does this flapdoodle matter? Yes, because these clowns lend this tyrant credibility when there are elections coming up this year for the legislature and then the presidency and because a defeated Chavez just might be that much more inclined to resort to military power if emboldened by heil-Hitler reverence. Even stupid ideas can have consequences.

By Nile Gardiner

I’m glad The Hurt Locker triumphed over Avatar at tonight’s Oscars. Not only is Hurt Locker a far superior film – with standout performances, an intelligent and brilliantly executed script, as well as three dimensional lead characters – it is also a tremendously patriotic film which pays tribute to the courage of American troops serving in Iraq. For all these reasons I named it as one of the top 10 conservative movies of the last decade. The film won six awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Kathryn Bigelow), and Best Original Screenplay.

I acknowledge that Hurt Locker has attracted a good deal of controversy and has divided opinion in the States over aspects of historical accuracy, and the debate will continue to rage. But I believe it thoroughly deserved its Oscar wins, and that the powerful message it projects about the US mission in Iraq and those who serve in the American armed forces, is an overwhelmingly positive one.

Avatar is technically brilliant with the most sophisticated special effects ever committed to celluloid. Its director James Cameron has made some of the greatest sci-fi films in history and has been a visionary and ground-breaking figure in Hollywood for over 25 years. The film deservedly picked up awards for Visual Effects and Cinematography , but was not deserving of a Best Picture win.

The acting in Avatar was mediocre, the storyline simplistic, and frankly large stretches of the movie, while visually impressive, were rather dull. In terms of sheer cinematic excitement, Avatar is not in the same league as Cameron’s earlier classics, Terminator and Aliens, and less engaging than Titanic.

But what I found most jarring about Avatar was its overtly anti-American and anti-military bias. As I wrote at the time of the film’s release in December:

Avatar “is an intensely political vehicle with a distinct agenda. In fact I would describe it as one of the most left-wing films in the history of modern American cinema, and perhaps the most commercially successful political movie of our time. While the vast majority of cinemagoers will simply see it as popcorn entertainment, Avatar is at its heart a cynical and deeply unpatriotic propaganda piece, aimed squarely against American global power and the projection of US economic and military might across the world.”

Cameron himself has confirmed that in his mind, Avatar is in part an allegory of both the war in Iraq as well as the wider War on Terror. In an interview with The Times he declared:

“We went down a path that cost several hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. I don’t think the American people even know why it was done. So it’s all about opening your eyes.”

“We know what it feels like to launch the missiles. We don’t know what it feels like for them to land on our home soil, not in America. I think there’s a moral responsibility to understand that.”

Avatar cost up to $400 million to produce and market. In contrast, The Hurt Locker had a budget of just $11 million. Avatar is in essence a hugely expensive political statement against America’s leadership of the world, and the US-led war in Iraq. The Hurt Locker is not an overtly political movie, but it pays tribute to the tremendous bravery and sacrifice of American troops fighting in Iraq, at a time when Hollywood has produced a slew of anti-war movies.

The Hurt Locker is a brave film that goes against the conventional wisdom in an overwhelmingly left-wing film-making community, and which struck a powerful chord with both critics and the American public. The Hurt Locker was the clear underdog in this year’s Oscar contest, and its stunning win over a far larger adversary was a triumph for an independent movie that celebrates the heroism and dedication of American troops on the battlefield in the face of a brutal enemy.

The Sun UK

The singer makes his controversial claim about the Lord in a new US interview that will enrage America’s bible belt.

Elton, 62, declares as he pours out his heart to a magazine: “I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems.”

He adds: “Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don’t know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East – you’re as good as dead.”

He goes on in the same interview to describe how he and DAVID FURNISH, 47 – now his “husband” – first got together.

The pop veteran tells Parade magazine: “I was attracted to David immediately. He was very well dressed, very shy. The next night we had dinner.

“After it, we fell in love very quickly.”

He said of previous lovers: “I’d always choose someone younger. I wanted to smother them with love. I’d take them around the world, try to educate them.

“One after another they got a Cartier watch, a Versace outfit, maybe a sports car.

“They didn’t have jobs. They were reliant on me.

“In six months they were bored and hated my guts because I’d taken their lives and self-worth away. I hadn’t intended to.”

OAKLAND (CBS 5)

Film producer and director Kevin Smith was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland to Los Angeles after crew members determined that he was too overweight and insisted he would have to purchase two seats instead of one in order to fly.

Smith made the accusation in a posting on his Twitter account on Saturday evening.

A Southwest spokesperson at Oakland International Airport confirmed the incident to CBS 5 and said the airline was in contact with Smith.

The spokesperson indicated that Southwest flight crews are empowered to make the determination as to whether a passenger can be required to purchase two seats.

Smith later tweeted that he was allowed to board another Southwest flight without a problem, but he didn’t indicate whether he had to buy a second seat.

Smiths directing credits include the movies ”Clerks,” “Dogma,” “Chasing Amy” and “Zack and Miri Make a Porno.”

What’s Susan Sarandon been up to since her split with Tim Robbins? If you answered "dressing up as a schoolmarm to spank a costumed pig at a concert," you’d be right. No doubt it was a ‘Capitalist’ pig.

By Daily Mail Reporter

A new web craze where young girls make their virtual characters adopt children as fashion accessories has outraged parents’ groups.

The controversial My Minx game also sees girls as young as seven giving their characters contraceptives and morning-after pills.

Players clothe their virtual minxes in sexy lingerie and other revealing outfits and buy ‘trophy orphans’ – named after children already adopted by celebrities.

My Minx – a new web game that allows you to dress your character in sexy lingerie and adopt trophy orphans

The adoption clinic in a virtual Style City features girls called Pax and Maddox and a boy named Zahara after Angelina Jolie’s children.

The virtual youngsters have the same nationalities as Jolie’s with Maddox, three, said to be Cambodian and a fan of eating cockroaches.

Similarly up for grabs are Vietnamese noodle-lover Pax, five, and Ethiopian lad Zahara, four, whose favourite food is said to be guinea pig.

The adoption centre also boasts a David Banda, four, and Mercy, five, of Malawi, clearly modelled on Madonna’s adopted children.

And there is a Mongolian girl called Jamiyan – based on actor Ewan McGregor’s Mongolian four-year-old daughter – who is said to enjoy eating rats.

In even worse taste, gamers can adopt children from earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

Once they have paid the adoption fees, players style their new children in over-the-top designer gear and can then try to sell image rights for them to celebrity magazines.

They are challenged to outdo rival minxes by amassing ever more adoptive children to ‘make their family more fashionable’.

The controversial game, by north London firm Blighty Arts, also sees players take their minxes binge drinking and clubbing as they try to pull men.

For minxes that succeed in one night stands, there are virtual condoms and morning after pills.

Gamers design their own saucy lingerie brands and handbag ranges as they compete to create the most stylish minx.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and their adopted children arrive at Narita airport, near Tokyo, a year ago. My Minx pokes fun at such celebrity families

They take on rival minxes in ’style-off competitions’ to try and be crowned the ‘minx of minxes’ in the game, which is being marketed as ‘Barbie meets Chanel’.

There are no age restrictions on the game and when players run out of virtual cash, they top up their accounts by sending text messages costing £1.50 each or use PayPal.

The website’s creators also made Miss Bimbo, which has over two million members and was attacked for encouraging young girls to give their characters diet pills and ‘boob jobs’.

My Minx was launched shortly before Christmas and has already attracted 20,000 members – with some as young as seven.

But parents’ groups are horrified to see the game taking off and have accused the game’s creators of ‘exploiting children for profit’.

Andy Hibberd, spokesman for parents’ rights group Parentkind, said: ‘There are more than enough pressures on children to grow up already. We don’t need any more.

‘Their parents will not have any idea that they are playing this game and the children will fail to appreciate its irony.

‘Having them getting virtual condoms or morning-after pills will not make them any less promiscuous.

‘As regards child adoption, this game encourages them to think that they don’t need to worry about morals or ethics. It is all just a bit of fun.

‘It claims to be a microcosm of real life but you have to question whether it actually starts creating reality.

‘It is sending out all the wrong messages and the only reason its creators have made it is to make money.

‘They are exploiting children for profit. Children’s innocence is very precious and should be protected for as long as possible.’ 

But the game’s creator, Blighty Arts director Christopher Evans, insisted that the game was ‘harmless, tongue-in-cheek entertainment’.

Mr Evans, 30, said: ‘It is nonsense to suggest our game is a bad influence on young children.

‘We try to protect children too much from the real world for too long in this day and age. They cannot be wrapped up in cotton wool.

‘We should let them grow up making their own decisions about the games they play.

‘The game teaches children about the world while poking fun at celebrity adoptions.

‘Every time they turn on the TV they will see the likes of Madonna adopting African children anyway.

‘The contraceptives and morning after pills are only one part of the game and we are not encouraging young girls to take them, just reflecting real life.’

By Chris Johnson

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are set to go their separate ways, according to reports.

The Hollywood power couple are said to have been in talks with lawyers to agree a £205million split deal.

Legal papers, which the pair allegedly signed this week, reveal they plan to share their fortune equally and custody of their six children. [MORE NONSENSE]

 By Daily Mail Reporter

Happy Days actor Scott Baio has contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after being subjected to ‘death threats’ on Twitter.

The 48-year-old actor received a barrage of negative criticism when he posted an unflattering photo of America’s First Lady Michelle Obama with the tagline ‘Wow – he (Barack Obama) wakes up to this every morning.’

The Bugsy Malone star was stunned when some of his followers accused him of being racist, with one user threatening to ‘find your house’ and ‘finish you’.

The row started on Tuesday morning after Baio posted the picture, which showed Mrs Obama apparently shouting.

After receiving the initial criticism, Baio protested the photo was only a joke and appealed to his fellow Twitter users to have a ’sense of humour’.

He wrote: ‘I did not alter that picture. Stop bashing my charity just because I post an unflattering pic of a woman. Grow up people, have some humour.

‘One bad picture of a woman and everyone wants to bash me? If it had been of (Sarah) Palin people would have probably cheered. I am NOT making fun of anyone.

‘People need to relax and laugh a bit. Life is too short no matter what (political) party you are with. A joke is just that, a joke.’

However, one Twitter user in particular was particularly incensed and sent Baio some chilling threats, which the actor then posted on his own page, also known as ‘Re-Tweeting’.

The Twitter user wrote: ‘A grand wizard like you Scott Baio should be put down and someone will put you down. You, your wife and kid.

Unflattering: Baio posted this photo of the First Lady on his Twitter page

‘Easy to find your house Scotty boy and finish you. I am Republican and I love Mrs O.’

Baio then reported the user to Twitter bosses, writing: ‘This person is threatening my life and not f**king cool. Please report.’

The offending user’s profile has since been taken down.

Then, in a bid to prove he wasn’t racist, Baio posted a photo of himself with a black friend of his wife.

Worrying: Baio’s posted the threats on his Twitter page for all to see

He said: ‘I’m NOT racist for posting a pic of Michelle Obama. My wife’s best friend is black, hello.

‘If I’m racist, don’t think I would have directed shows like The Parkers and The Wayans Brothers or worked 41 episodes with Victoria Rowell on Diagnosis: Murder.’

After receiving more threats, Baio then contacted the FBI and informed everyone on his Twitter page.

He wrote: ‘Please note: The FBI has been contacted and we have a file number for the threats, along with twitter support.’

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Let’s be honest folks, Michelle is a physically unattractive woman. That of course is not her fault, that’s genetics working and people can and do tend to look past the physical unattractiveness of someone if that person has at least a modicum of morals and ethics. However, in Michelle’s case it’s impossible to look past her hideousness because she is an anti-American steaming pile of Marxist Manure!