N Los Angeles, CA —I just finished watching the film, “ 12 Years A Slave .”  I found the acting superb.  The cast and crew behind the film were as good as it gets.  As for the film it was little more than the historical revision of American slavery.  In the film every Black was a hero or victim and every White (except Brad Pitt’s character) was evil.   Dramatic entertainment license trumps truth every time.  Make no mistake slavery was and will always be a terrible stain on America’s honor and sensibilities. The film ignored the realities.  Africans were kidnapped and sold to slave traders by other Africans.  Jungle savages were bought here and sold as property.  The enslaved Africans soon embraced American Christianity and simply became a menial and somewhat willing workforce.  When the slaves were freed the vast majority found themselves in non-union jobs on the same plantations where they were enslaved.  Did a...

Phoenix, AZ —A while back when I was doing a great deal of investigative TV news producing there was this KPHO-TV general assignment reporter I was working with, Eileen Faxas .  Faxas was not your typical cookie cutter reporter.  She stood out with her wild red hair and statuesque showgirl figure from all the rest.  You’ve seen a lot of her in the 1990s on CBS5 news reports. Faxas was dedicated and disciplined but was too often assigned to less exciting news stories perhaps because she found ways to make them interesting.  She managed to pick up a few Emmy Awards along the way.  Faxas was a stickler for using proper English and I soon was surprised to learn she was a Cuban commanding two languages!  One day Faxes moved on. Frankly this lady did not really belong in TV news but had a higher and more demanding calling. Faxas showed up in Miami, FL and put herself out for theater, commercials and as a singer.  I never envisioned her as a sin...

Washington, DC —The ultimate Nanny Laws are the drug prohibitions.  Drug laws are intended to prevent stupid people from harming themselves with nature’s chemicals and compounds.   The idea was to protect the children.  There are better ways to do that than making the incredibly expensive and un-American police state and the deadly and vast torrent of crime and violence associated.    First of all the cost of manufacturing the dangerous drugs that plague our society is really miniscule.  Creating the drugs costs no more that tea, soft drinks or Twinkies.  The price of drugs is driven by police enforcement and the associated risks involved. The risk associated with drug trafficking is exactly what inflates the profits. Addicts pay incredible amounts of cash for illicit drugs simply because they are illegal!  The cost is so high and their addiction is so overpowering in the process we created a new class of thieves, robbers, burglar...

Matthew McConaughey and  Jared Leto Los Angeles, CA —This screenplay languished in Movie Purgatory for years before it broke out and was finally turned into a feature film.   It’s the biographical story of rodeo cowboy, electrician and small time hustler Ron Woodroof .   In the early 1980s Woodroof was a homophobic that practiced unsafe heterosexual relations and abused drugs.  After getting diagnosed with HIV and soon AIDs,  he began serious research into the experimental drug therapies.  They were all experimental then, because drug protocols had not yet been developed to combat this deadly plague.   Because of the incredibly slow action and outright obstruction of the FDA Woodroof began importing and distributing the non-narcotic drugs himself.  Rather than sell the drugs he circumvented the law by forming The Dallas Buyers Club and selling memberships. Woodroof proved to be e hero to those suffering from HIV and ...

Washington, DC —Our economy was once sound and people were working.  After decades of expanded entitlements and extortionate taxation American productivity is at a standstill. They can claim unemployment is down but the number of Americans on food stamps is up, way up. As long as the boot of government is on the neck of every employer in the land there cannot be relief.  Jobs outside of government meaningless jobs programs like the TSA and the Obamacare bureaucracy are dead like Dillinger. Without meaningful employment, health insurance is unobtainable.  Obamacre is a lot of things but free or affordable is not one of them.  Medical professionals are nearly universal in their disdain for a government cure far worse than the disease. Government officials and politicians want Obamacare for anyone but themselves.  Even the Leftist unions that led the way with supportive propaganda has dodged Obamacare at every opportunity. When the ...

Chicago, IL —The biggest lie ever told was that, all men are created equal.   That may have been the first recorded politically correct statement.  It was simply designed to make anyone who felt inadequate feel better about being shortchanged by life.  It only served to strengthen the fact that someone is indeed inadequate! When you think about it some folks are always taller, stronger, faster, smarter, wealthier, healthier and more attractive.  We all have our strong points and weaknesses.  Life is not fair, not by a long shot. We humans are not clones but come in all shapes, sizes and colors with educations, sexual proclivities and cultures that are widely diverse.  Humans are drawn to different faiths and subscribe to them with different levels allegiance.  Most of this is determined at birth. We all have a stereotype and some of us seem stranger to each other or even comical.  That’s not hate, ill will or some evil ma...

Los Angeles, CA —Police training has taken a fascist turn here along with our political leadership.  One only has to look at the prison population to understand we are in a police state growing by the second into something no rational human beings will want. Police work is sometimes dangerous.  Criminals despite laws and every kind of gun ban still rape rob and murder.  We insist of maintaining the miserably failed Drug War keeping illicit profits and government corruption at an all time high.   Our liberty and freedom has been at an all time low as a direct result. We’ve turned street cops into urban commandos raiding homes (many by mistake) at all hours.  The result is far more dangerous than the outlawed drugs themselves. We want our cops alive and train them to take no chances.  The hero cop is really an endangered species. I was trained differently.  We had no ballistic vests and carried six-shot service revolvers as we w...

If you never owned a dog your life has been incomplete.  Owning a dog is not difficult or burdensome.  The only bar to dog ownership are serious allergies, landlord prohibitions or you’re gone away from home for long periods of time.  Today there are a surprising number of dog friendly employers that allow pets to be brought to work.  I’ve even seen this at locally owned TV stations.  I think many companies are learning that being dog friendly is actually good for business, productivity and certainly employee morale.   Dogs are a tremendous cure for depression and walking them insures you get more exercise and perhaps a longer life.  Dogs are also wonderful matchmakers for their unattached owners!  Dogs make it a lot easier for members of the opposite sex to approach each other on the street.  Egos always interfere with our first meetings but when a dog is present ego problems seem to simply vanish.     A dog will...

Los Angeles, CA —What to you call a sinking boatload of TSA bureaucrats and screeners?  It’s an excellent beginning!   Do I absolutely abhor the TSA?  That’s an understatement at best.  When I see them in their quasi police costumes I always view them as nasty Nazis.  They are simple minded, poorly trained goons that lack minimal tolerance for anyone or anything. Too many of them are thieves stealing valuable passenger’s property every day. Factually, the TSA’s totally tyrannical mission is a violation of travelers Civil Rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.   The courts have wrongly held that travelers “voluntarily submit” to the searching and that somehow justifies the privacy invasion and seizures of property. I say there is nothing voluntary about most people traveling by commercial airlines.  Americans must travel in order to earn money to feed themselves and families.  There really is no alternative.  M...

Washington, DC--U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon ruled today that the government NSA domestic telephone spying program was a violation of our rights under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. On June 5, 2013, UK publication, The Guardian dropped the Edward Snowden bombshell that our NSA and various telecommunication companies had a domestic spy program in place collecting our telephone conversations and other data.  This was without the pre-requisite search warrants or even minimal probable cause. Government snoops can simply access any of our past calls and listen in at will!  The group Judicial Watch and others, including Larry Klayman filed suit against Barack Obama in the D.C. U.S. District Court seeking an injunction halting the outlaw behavior.  The Obama Administration claimed this lawless program was necessary to thwart terrorism but the government could not cite a single event where a terrorist act was interrupted because ...

Here I'm at Berlin's  Reichstag Earth —This planet we inhabit is quickly getting incredibly smaller.  We travel where we please easier than ever despite the thieves and thugs of the TSA.  When we can’t travel we make wonderful free video calls to our friends even internationally via Skype.com and can send e-mail. I’m blessed with incredibly wonderful friends here in the USA, Europe and even India.  All of my friendships are threatened simply because because life itself is fragile.  Many of my friends have left me for the hereafter. Many died way too young.   I’m in reasonably good health despite the reality that time is marching and I can’t reverse the aging process.  I’ve been both blessed and cursed with more excitement in my life than most people will ever see.  Surviving a life changing shooting in 1987 and a career that brought me face to face with horrible violence, injustice, tyranny and some really wonderful expe...

New York, NY—NBC put on two projects, the making of this project and then a week later the live play. This was a classic film with Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews .   It was based on a great World War Two inspired story of the von Trapp family.   Okay I much preferred the show about making the show better than the show itself.   The first problem was ridicules miscasting of the talented singer Audra McDonald as Mother Abbess.   It was beyond dopy to cast an African-American woman as the Austrian Catholic Mother Superior.   Was this some sick idea of political correctness?   This was distracting to say the least.    Carrie Underwood was wonderful as was Stephen Moyer .   Underwood is a versatile performer.   The cameras all loved her and she delivered.  This despite her pure American persona rather than being a European like the real deal.  The Children were adorable and I can only imagine how ...