Liam Neesom as Hannibal?To the Congress of the United States(both sides of the isle):
The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775 - you have had 234 years to get it right.......... it is broke.
Social Security was established in 1935 - you have had 74 years to get it right;...............it is broke.
Fannie Mae was established in 1938 - you have had 71 years to get it right;........it is broke.
The "War on Poverty" started in 1964 - you have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor";.......it hasn't worked and our entire country is broke.
Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 - you've had 44 years to get it right............they are broke.
Freddie Mac was established in 1970 - you have had 39 years to get it right..........it is broke.
Trillions of dollars were spent in the massive political payoffs called TARP, the "Stimulus", the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009... none show any signs of working, although ACORN appears to have found a new source: the American taxpayer.
And finally, to set a new record:
"Cash for Clunkers" was established in 2009 and went broke in 2009! It took cars (that were the best some people could afford) and replaced them with high-priced and less-affordable cars, mostly Japanese. A good percentage of the profits went out of the country. And the American taxpayers take the hit for Congress' generosity in burning three billion more of our dollars on failed experiments..
So with a perfect 100% failure rate and a record that proves that "services" you shove down our throats are failing faster and faster, you want Americans to believe you can be trusted with a government-run health care system?
20% of our entire economy?
With all due respect,
Are you crazy?
What is "this terrible situation", anyway?Woody Allen, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese today added their names to a petition demanding the immediate release of Roman Polanski from detention in Zurich. The director was arrested on Saturday over a three-decade-old underage sex case when he arrived to receive a lifetime achievement award at the city's film festival.
"Film-makers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision," says the petition, which is co-ordinated by the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD), a film industry organisation which also represents performance and visual artists.
"It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him," it adds.
The petition has now been signed by more than 70 film industry luminaries, including Polanski's fellow directors Michael Mann, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodóvar, Darren Aronofsky, Terry Gilliam, Julian Schnabel, the Dardenne brothers, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Wong Kar-Wai, Walter Salles and Jonathan Demme. Actors Tilda Swinton, Monica Bellucci and Asia Argento, as well as producer Harvey Weinstein, have also put their names on the petition. Yesterday, Weinstein stated he was "calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation".
In 1977, when Polanski was 44, he lured Geimer *, who was then 13, to actor Jack Nicholson's home on Mulholland Drive, saying he wanted to take photographs of her for a magazine. During the shoot, he gave her champagne and part of a Quaalude and forced her to have sex. After spending 42 days in a prison hospital ward for a mental evaluation, a deal was worked out for him to plead guilty and be sentenced to time served.There are commentaries (see here and here) which suggest that it was Polanski's lawyers who triggered a renewed determined attempt by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office to arrest Polanski.
Geimer* has said that although the sex was not consensual, she wants the matter dropped.
"He should never have been put in a position that led him to flee," she wrote in 2003. "He should have received a sentence of time served 25 years ago, just as we all agreed."
Polanski had been trying to get his Los Angeles County arrest warrant dismissed. In July, lawyers for Polanski appealed Los Angeles Superior Court Peter Espinoza's denial of his petition to have the charge dropped.
* "Samantha Geimer, who is now 44, married and living in Hawaii, [and who] has previously said she wished the matter would be dropped ..."
The accusation that the Los Angeles County district attorney's office was not serious about extraditing Polanski to face sentencing in a child sex case he fled in 1978 was a minor point in two lengthy July court filings by the director's attorneys.
