Now that you get me to look more closely, composers and songwriters are not quite the same thing. According to Wikipedia, he “is a Jewish-American screenwriter, director, producer and composer.” While composers would not be involved in casting, he could get involved as a director or producer - information left out of this article. Looks like that particular oddness came from the way the article was written. You’re right, Deena, he does have the credentials to lure the unwary.

Someone without an agent being flown across the country should have been a big red flag.
A private audition (especially in an apartment) should have been a big red flag.
Being asked to drink real alcohol during an audition should have been a big red flag.

Are these women too young to remember the so-called “casting couch”??

What sounds odd to me is that anyone would believe that a composer would be auditioning actresses.

Most of the articles here are “By The Staff at wowOwow.com”. This is very generic, and responding to “The Staff” is much less satisfying than responding to a specific individual. Using a nom de plume is a time-honored tradition when one’s true name would detract from one’s message. It is nice to have a single persona to tie multiple views and opinions to. At this point, it doesn’t really matter if you are one of the principles, married to one, or C3PO.

I find it interesting to see how other people interpret what you say. The more passionate pundits seem to filter what you say through their own bias. For myself, I see irreverence and pragmatism with a touch of blue cheese. 8-D

I have found Darjeeling tea (sipped, not snorted) helps hydrate the sinuses a bit - enough to keep from getting stuffed up anyway.

Maybe you are looking in the wrong aisle… Do they still make saline solution for contact lenses? I (the pack rat) have an old bottle (expired 2007, about when I stopped wearing contacts) that says it is “An isotonic sterile aqueous solution containing a borate buffer system and sodium chloride. Preserved with 0.1% sorbic acid and disodium edetate.”

Normal saline: (physiology) U.S. Pharmacopoeia title for a sterile solution of sodium chloride in purified water, containing 0.9 gram of sodium chloride in 100 milliliters; isotonic with body fluids. Also known as isotonic sodium chloride solution; normal salt solution; physiological saline; physiological salt solution; physiological sodium chloride solution; sodium chloride solution.

Ask your respiratory therapist about it.

How quickly people have forgotten how high the price of oil can go, and how much it can hurt the economy. Prices dropped due to a huge drop in demand and OPEC recognizing that they could deeply hurt the global economy with high prices.

Prices get relatively low again, a few signs of economic stability show, and people start getting complacent. No more “drill, baby, drill”, big oil actually shut down exploration, and it’s 2007 all over again. Almost. There are still some who remember that the clock is ticking on a cheap oil-based economy. For the past few weeks, gas prices have been rising again. OPEC and the speculators, seeing a hint of a recovery, have started trolling for profits again. Will it kill the recovery before it fully takes hold?

Having said that, I do not think that a 1-2 MPG improvement is worth the taxpayer dollars. They should also take a good look at clunkers bought after the program was announced. I have already heard people planning to game the system.

The so-called “czars” are nothing like political officers. They focus on the success of a particular policy, not the ideology or “loyalty” of individuals. If you want political officers, talk to Michele Bachmann. She’s already expressed interest in that sort of thing.

The term was coined back in ‘82, under Reagan. These appointments by Obama are not new to government, and do not represent a new change in the structure of government.

The checks and balances went out with Bush43. Obama44 has been bringing them back.

Probably the same as she feels about the selfish republican SOB’s that live in Hollywood, making 20 million dollars for just 1 movie. Maybe you should ask her how she feels about the 2007-2008 writer’s strike, and the way that the AMPTP tried to cheat the Writer’s Guild of America members out of their fair share of new revenue streams - yet again - and created a localized recession in CA in the process. A not-so-nice little run-up to the big one.

As for the (admittedly overpaid) athletes that make millions and millions, they work in leagues that operate under salary caps or profit sharing - because a pure free market model was not working. That’s right, self-inflicted “socialism” for the sake of profits. Of course there are some owners who pocket the money intended for players and a more competitive team, but that just reinforces DeBurca’s point about greed at the top instead of her point about level playing fields.

And if you do not think that athletes generate jobs, then you probably have not experienced one of the big debates about public assistance for new stadiums. The franchise owners are happy to itemize in detail just how many jobs and how much tax revenue would disappear along with a team. Some might call it good business, others might call it blackmail.

Well done, Bill. You nailed it in one! I would also add that said top secret AI was hacked into by a kid with a modem. The first point being that such a computer would be even more vulnerable to corruption and manipulation than are living people. Remember that cyber attacks were also at the heart of the CIA leftwing extremism threat assessment.

The second point would be that we don’t even have certified, reliable electronic voting machines - in spite of efforts to develop them. I might also point out that here in Minnesota, we are well into the eighth month of the last election.

The third point would be the nightmare of voter accessibility, voter identification and the prevention of voter fraud. I do not like the idea of inviting Chinese and Russian hackers to manipulate US presidential decisions. The basic foundations of the internet were not designed to be secure, just convenient.

Who could be trusted with the contract to develop CyberPrez? And what about the operating system? Have you ever read a Microsoft license all the way to the end? You might be surprised at the rights you surrender just to use Windows.

Then there is the problem of educating the voters to make an intelligent decision, and the problems of leadership by committee. What segments of society would be doing most of the voting? The time it would take for all eligible voters to properly educate themselves to make informed, intelligent choices would crush productivity - and the economy.

No top secret briefings, either.

You could do an entire dissertation just on the legal and Constitutional problems involved.

The last point is to never put the computer on a pedestal. The computer industry has a saying: “garbage in, garbage out.” There is no “easy button” here.

Diamond, “czar” is an unofficial reference that has been in use since the early Reagan era. Who are these 21 people you refer to and what are their official positions?

Trust a computer? “Do.you.want.to.play.a.game?”

I do not recognize “their” country either, EKA. As far as I have been able to piece together:

• They want the confederacy back.
• They want theocracy.
• They want to abdicate control of the country to large corporations. I find this one especially insane considering, oh…say - the entire history of the industrialized world!
• They want to compete with the rest of the world - at a third-world level.
• They see a country unaffected by changing weather patterns, diminishing oil reserves, the economic development of other countries, or anything resembling a progressive political party.
• They see a country with a strong yet inexpensive national defense. Fat chance.

They seem to see a country that can only exist in a Norman Rockwell painting.

MQC, the leftwing and rightwing extremist threat assessments are products of the Bush administration. If you do not like what they say, talk to Bush.

(U) Key Findings
(U//FOUO) DHS/Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) judges that a number of emerging trends point to leftwing extremists maturing and expanding their cyber attack capabilities over the next decade with the aim of attacking targets in the United States.

• (U//FOUO) The potential for economic damage, the individually-initiated and anonymous nature of cyber attacks, and the perception that cyber attacks are nonviolent align well with the ideological beliefs, strategic objectives, and tactics of many leftwing extremists.
• (U//FOUO) The increasing reliance of commercial businesses and other enterprises on cyber technologies, including interconnected networks and remote access, creates new and expanding vulnerabilities that technically-savvy leftwing extremists will exploit.
• (U//FOUO) The proliferation of cyber technologies and expertise as well as the public availability of online hacking tools and “hackers-for-hire” offer leftwing extremists incentives to adopt a cyber attack strategy.

(U) Appeal of Cyber Attacks
(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A assesses that cyber attacks are attractive options to leftwing extremists who view attacks on economic targets as aligning with their nonviolent, “no-harm” doctrine and tactic of “direct action.”

• (U//FOUO) Their no-harm doctrine includes claiming to ensure the safety of humans, animals, and the environment even as they attack businesses and associated operations.
• (U//FOUO) Many leftwing extremists use the tactic of direct action to inflict economic damage on businesses and other targets to force the targeted organization to abandon what the extremists deem objectionable. Direct actions range from animal releases, property theft, vandalism, and cyber attacks—all of which extremists regard as nonviolent—to bombings and arson.
• (U//FOUO) The North American Earth Liberation Front Press Office, the media arm of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), published the following guidance for activists: “By inflicting as much economic damage as possible, the ELF can allow a given entity to decide if it is in their [sic] best economic interest to stop destroying life for the sake of profit.”

Your sarcastic depiction of the leftwing extremist threat assessment would only be appropriate if you did not consider leftwing extremists to be a genuine problem. Leftwing extremism is focused on behaviors, not people.

Trying to devalue the threat from rightwing extremism just because they are violent and the leftwing is not does nothing to make anyone safer.

All three murders were acts of terrorism, but the doctor and the guard were victims of home-grown terrorism while the soldier was the victim of foreign-born terrorism. On the day that the Holocaust Museum was closed, another rightwing extremist painted anti-gay/lesbian messages on a couple of roads in the Twin Cities. Domestic rightwing hate and terrorism IS on the rise.

They are commentators, not journalists.

Mel, the difference is that the Islamic extremists use the “sword” while the Christian extremists use the “pen” (most of the time). They both still seek to force others to live according to their extreme ideology. The blind devotion to their cause, and the absolute belief in their own divine righteousness are also the same. IMO