UPDATE: Note the environment Cameron’s in when he’s lashed out at conservative “Avatar” critics:
- According to the Hollywood Reporter Cameron called Beck a f–king a–hole “surrounded by journalists inside a West Hollywood hillside mansion.”
- Last month Cameron took on his right-wing critics in a Hollywood Cafe while being interviewed by an L.A. Times reporter.
- In January the Malibu Mansion Dweller gave us hell from the Arclight Theatre at a screening for Hollywood Insiders.
Interesting. And with that I end the update.
Uh, oh, James Cameron’s angry and you know how James gets when he’s angry… Stupid:
“Glenn Beck is a f—ing a–hole,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “I’ve met him. He called me the Antichrist, and not about ‘Avatar.’ He hadn’t even seen ‘Avatar’ yet. I don’t know if he has seen it.” …
“I want to call those deniers out into the street at high noon and shoot it out with those boneheads,” Cameron said. “Anybody that is a global-warming denier at this point in time has got their head so deeply up their a–, I’m not sure they could hear me.”
Cameron said conservative criticism of the environmental message of “Avatar” aren’t necessarily attacks. “They’re just people ranting away, lost in their little bubbles of reality, steeped in their own hatred, their own fear and hatred,” he said. “That’s where it all comes from. Let’s just call it out. Let’s have a public discussion. That’s what movies are supposed to do, you know. You can have a mindless entertainment film that doesn’t affect anybody. I wasn’t interested in that.”
My first question for Mr. Global Warming would be to ask why a mansion-dweller so concerned with the welfare of the planet would initially release ”Avatar” on DVD and Blu-ray with no extras whatsoever.
Here’s what a cynical charlatan James Cameron is. The first “Avatar” DVD release occurs on Earth Day to take full advantage of all his Stupakky fans who want to feel good about themselves without actually doing anything to further their cause. But it’s a barebones release. This way Cameron can make a whole lot more money in the future releasing the same film again and again in Special Editions, Deluxe Editions, Platinum Editions and so on.
Does this sound like someone who gives a hi-ho hearty damn about Mother Earth? No, this sounds like just another greedy capitalist wringing every possible nickel from his wares by finessing the market in a way that promotes as much consuming as possible of a product that, by the way, comes in a thick plastic case that must have a landfill half-life of a couple thousand years.
For the record, I have a tremendous amount of affection for greedy capitalists who wring every dime out of their product.
It’s lying hypocrites who slander the military I can’t abide.
James Cameron doesn’t believe the planet’s in trouble. If he did, he would live and behave differently. And if he does, his behavior is a form of genocide. He’s intentionally conducting his life and business in a way that will kill us all. (Who’s the f–king a–hole now?)
If Beck calls Cameron’s bluff (pretty please, Glenn), I’d bet all kinds of money Cameron locks himself in his air conditioned mansion and refuses to come out.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Democratic Solutions? Republican Solutions? Let�s Have Both. [Andrew Redleaf & Richard Vigilante]
To the extent one believes that regulators can actually get a firm grasp on what the megabanks are doing, what they own, and what they owe, or reliably distinguish risky and reckless practices from safe and sound ones, the president’s vision — the vision espoused in the Dodd/Frank bill — has a chance of succeeding. We certainly don’t want to get in the way of his trying. By all means, give the regulators the tools they ask for and let them do their best.
It’s just that there is so very little evidence that they can succeed. The glaring and disheartening truth is that the regulators endorsed every one, and required some, of the practices that led to the crisis. Even the staggering complex mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the crisis, with their bogus AAA ratings (conveyed by government-regulated ratings agencies), were produced in such huge volume largely because the regulators had blessed them as the safest of all possible bank investments short of U.S. Treasuries.
Still, some version of the Dodd/Frank bill will become law within weeks or days. Republicans should not obstruct that effort. On the contrary, they should offer their full support. Better regulation is one possible answer to the problem. But in return, Republicans should ask for one little thing.
The Democrats want better regulators. That’s a Democrat thing. Republicans should want better markets. That’s our thing. And they way to get better markets is to give them better information. Markets failed two years ago because for many years, markets were denied the information they needed to make good decisions, to separate good mortgages from bad, good banks from bad, and shift capital accordingly.
For too long, American banks have operated in the shadows, their inner workings hidden not from regulators (who have an invincible legal right to examine every line in the banks’ books) but from citizens and investors. That’s why we have proposed the one truly radical reform that would have prevented the both the mortgage crisis and the crash and would do far more to prevent future catastrophes: Require every significant financial institution in U.S., every firm managing other people’s money, to disclose every investment position, every asset, and every liability every week, between market close on Friday and market open on Monday morning.
We don’t mean mere accountants’ summaries. We mean the raw data. Every stock, every bond, every long, every short, every hedge, every swap. All of it. Collectively millions and millions of lines of data.
At first it would be too much data even to be useful. But as the short sellers and curmudgeons, the rag-and-bone shops of the financial world, gradually absorbed the data and constituted massive parallel-processing systems over months and years, we bet the result would be an early-warning system that would run rings around the regulators and do far more to keep the banks on the straight and narrow than any grand high council or regulatory poo-bahs.
We say not one word against the grand high council. Let them commence their duties this minute. But let’s give them some help. Let’s back up dozens, nay hundreds, of regulators with millions of citizen investors. Let’s build redundancy into the system. In the end, letting our fellow citizens back into the game is the best protection we can have.
— Andrew Redleaf and Richard Vigilante are respectively CEO and communications director of Whitebox Advisors. They blog at www.capitalismbetrayed.com.
04/22 06:19 PMShare
No comments:
Post a Comment