Here’s a new way to try and hip-up the boring, ages-old, left-wing idea of tax hikes: link it to reality TV star Kim Kardashian. That is just what ABC News tried to do on the Wednesday, January 4 edition of ABC World News Tonight when the venerable news program helped advertise an effort by a small group headed by a former Democrat operative that wants to hike California’s income taxes. It is a two-pronged approach of hitching a big government, big spending, high tax agenda to the TV reality show star in order to drag younger people into the left’s class warfare game.

ABC highlighted a California Millionaires Tax policy recommendation from a group called Courage Campaign. The group is headed by Rick Jacobs who is the former head of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign in California, a Huffington Post writer, and leader of this admittedly “progressive” group.

ABC reported that the “liberal group” (and kudos to ABC for actually identifying them as a liberal group for a change) is upset that Kim Kardashian, who made some $12 million in 2011, only paid one percent more than the average middle class wage in the Golden State.

Here is what the extremist high-tax group says on it’s website about this:

Kim Kardashian made more than $12 million in 2010, but she only paid 1% more in taxes than a middle-class Californian. That’s not OK, especially when budget cuts are decimating schools and critical programs for children, the elderly, and the disabled. It’s exactly why Courage Campaign and two dozen other organizations are putting the Millionaires Tax of 2012 on the ballot.

Wow, that tiny, little one percent suuuure seems small, right? But let’s look at the actual payment, shall we? Kardashian paid a tax rate of 10.3 percent and 10.3 percent of twelve million is $1,236,000! And those middle-class folks that paid one percent less at 9.3 percent? Well if the average income in California is $47.000, then they paid only $4,371. Why aren’t these middle-class louts paying their fair share? (That’s called sarcasm, by the way.)

Now, it’s not that I care at all for Kim and her brood — I never watch so-called reality TV and have never seen her show — but this is all really just class warfare. After all, let’s look at the tact here. Instead of actually talking about what Kardashian pays, this ABC flogged extremist group focuses on that “one percent” as if that makes her tax remittance tiny. They mislead the public by purposefully avoiding any mention of the amount she actually paid.

Seriously, the fact is we could out right confiscate the millions made by the Kardashinas of this country and it wouldn’t make a dent in the hole of trillions of dollars that Democrats have dug for us.

But there is one last thing to ask about this ABC report. I’m just wondering, but has ABC ever highlighted the tax policy idea of some small Tea Party group that made a video to sell its plan to the people? Why does this tiny, left-wing group in California rate any attention at all in a national news program?

Obviously the answer here is that ABC saw the possibility of exploiting Kardashian and enraging her young fan base in order to drive them to support a left-wing idea. It’s all about branding, you see. If the far left and ABC can leech off Kim Kardashian to sell their creaky old socialist policies, then that’s what they will do.

Here at the site we often take Hollywood to task for its outrageous liberalism, and rightfully so. Of course it’s our job to look for the worst cases to alert you all about the nagging left-wing bias. But occasionally there are stories that are good ones and it is incumbent upon us to report those, too. This is one of those stories.

More often than not when we have stories out of Hollywood about life issues it is invariably a pro-abortion tale and in the case of scientific studies, it is usually some denizen of Tinseltown coming out forcefully for unethical fetal stem cell research. The destruction of life is de rigueur out there, unfortunately.

But not this time.

You might say that this celebrity has boldly gone where no Hollywooder has gone before. You also might wince at my horrible attempt at humor when you find out that we are here today to celebrate the efforts of Eugene W. Roddenberry Jr., the son of Gene Roddenberry the creator of Star Trek.

You see, in October the son of the “Great Bird of the Galaxy” donated $5 million to stem cell research. But, unlike so many of the Hollywood persuasion, this gift is not earmarked for fetal stem cell research. It is instead going to a facility that specializes in adult stem cell research.

The generous donation from the Roddenberry Foundation was bestowed upon The Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco, an independent research institute which is associated with the University of California, San Francisco.

As reported by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the Roddenberry gift will, “expand these existing areas of expertise among Gladstone scientists by creating the Roddenberry Center for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine – named after Gene Roddenberry, who created Star Trek.”

One of the notable scientists at Gladstone is Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D., who is pursuing research into reprogramming adult cells into embryonic stem cells.

Why is all this so notable? Because this is essentially a pro-life pursuit instead of one of those usual, liberal anti-life efforts. After all fetal stem cell research has proven ineffective in the many years it has been pursued — no advances in medicine have been credited to fetal stem cells in the last 20 years — but many of the far left are married to it regardless. Worse, fetal stem cell research is highly controversial as human embryos are necessarily destroyed in the effort. This raises ethical questions about human life being destroyed for the sake of science.

Some of you might remember the controversy that George W. Bush wound up in when he allowed federal funds to be used for fetal stem cell research using stem cell lines created before August of 2001. In 2006 Bush successfully vetoed an effort to expand federal money for fetal stem cell research.

Unfortunately, sticking to his penchant for infanticide, in 2009 Obama reversed those federal limitations. It should be remembered that before he became a national figure, Obama was the only Illinois state Senator that favored the barbaric practice of partial birth abortions.

Sadly, Obama’s reversal of the Bush era rule was one built on ideology and not real science. Even U.S. News reported that embryonic stem cell research is an obsolete field, and U.S. News is hardly a bastion of conservatism.

So, kudos to Eugene Roddenberry for putting his money where it will not only do some good but will do so ethically. Unlike the ideology drenched Obama administration, Mr. Roddenberry is interested in real science.

I think his father would be proud.

While denizens of Hollywood are running around praising the Occupy-Whatevers as an articulate, non-violent example of “democracy in action” and adopting the Occupy rhetoric, a new anthem of sorts has been unveiled to inspire these “non-violent” folks to greater activism.
But, for a “non-violent” movement, their new theme song (running nearly nine minutes long) is full of bloodlust and childish name-calling belying that claim to thoughtful democracy.

The song, “We Stand as One,” created by Grammy nominee Joseph Arthur, seems to fall short of the mythical claim that the Occupy movement is a non-violent, thoughtful “movement.” Filled with deep lyrics such as calling Occupy enemies “pigs,” warnings that their homes will burn and that the blood of Occupy enemies will be the Occupiers’ “paint,” this song sounds more like a call to violence than an appeal to the better angels of our nature.

Arthur has worked with such rock notables as Michael Stipe of REM and Peter Gabriel, and his 1999 EP “Vacancy” was nominated for a Grammy.

As Dan Gainor says, this song lays out an “entire rationale of why ‘we Occupy Wall Street.’” But while the song mentions “taking back our soul,” country, control, health care and the like, it also indulges scenes of violence reminiscent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

Catch some of this “non-violence,” won’t you?

• Your blood is our paint
• Like a pig you consumed, And like a pig you will roast
• Burning your homes
• Your body destroyed
• Strung up you’ll bleed, Like the pig you became

Sounds a bit grim, doesn’t it? But for a “movement” that has featured hundreds of arrests, rapes, shootings, property destruction and general law breaking, well, maybe it is fitting, indeed.

Of course, Tea Partiers don’t need a special song. They have the National Anthem!

There are a few major reasons that this Occupy-Whatever “movement” is as hollow as a Halloween pumpkin. One is that they are employing the sort of rhetoric with their “we are the 99%” claim that they complained about from Tea Partiers and two that some of their spokesmen are not what they claim to be.

A particular hypocrisy from these leftists has been repeatedly seen over the last two years when Tea Partiers would say what “America wants” or couched their rhetoric in terms of the country as a whole should do as if all real Americans wanted what the Tea Party was working for. Liberals would immediately scold the Tea Partiers saying that Tea Party folks do not represent the left so they shouldn’t act as if “Americans” wanted what the Tea Party wanted.

Yet, here come these leftists to claim that they represent “99% of America”! Sorry, Occupiers, but you do not represent me or anyone I side with, so don’t claim you represent “99% of America.” In fact, you don’t even represent half the voting base as liberals consistently poll at less than 20% of the Democrat Party these days.

Heck, you Occupiers don’t even represent 99% of your own side of the aisle!

Secondly, a recent Internet star for the far left was one Edward T. Hall III (yes, that’s really his name) and he seems to typify many of the most visible Occupiers. He was an Internet sensation for wallowing in hysterics about how he wanted to take his country back from the eeevil rich people, bankers, and that rotten ol’ “1%” that had stolen it from him and his Occupyin’ buddies.

He was the poster boy for these hippy wannabes. In his video he sported a stringy mop of unkempt hair stuffed into a colorful ball cap, wacky clothing, with full raft of left-wing bromides and rhetoric. He seemed just like one of the oppressed “99%” that was struggling to get by like so many of them are.

Even The New York Times presented this kid as a spokesman for the Occupy-Whatevers.

But this young man’s real life situation is anything but the ideal representation of these so-called “normal Americans” in the Occupy “movement.” It turns out that young Mr. Hall the third is a trust fund baby that doesn’t have to work for a living. He IS part of the one percent!

The guy is a faker. He is a poor, little rich kid that does not face the troubles his royal “we” are facing.

This is typical of many of these leftists. They claim to be “of the people,” yet they are very much the “one percent” they claim to hate.

Take millionaire actor Mark Ruffalo who claims to be a spokesman for the Occupiers. Or multi-millionaire movie director Michael Moore who also claims to somehow be just like the 99%.

These hypocrites really take the cake.

Of course, we also understand that anywhere there is money for these Occupiers, that money is coming from hardcore left-wing groups like unions, and George Soros controlled NGOs.

Not much “common folks” in that left-wing cabal, for sure.

The essential core of these occupy-whatever events are hollow of “real people,” and average Americans. It is all a false front. An empty shell.

Boston police moved in and began arresting scores of Occupy Boston protesters who refused to leave a large part of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway early this morning.

At 1:20 a.m., the first riot police officers lined up on Atlantic Avenue. Minutes later, dozens of sheriff vans and police wagons arrived and over 200 officers in uniforms and riot gear surrounded the Greenway.

Police Superintendent William Evans and Commissioner Edward F. Davis watched from across the street. Evans gave the crowd two minutes to disperse from the park, warning that they would be locked up if they did not comply.

The crowd of protesters, energized by the sudden appearance of the Boston and Transit police officers, chanted, ‘‘The people united will never be defeated,’’ “This is a peaceful protest,” and “the whole world is watching.’’

Then the police moved in to arrest those who were protesting a brutal dictatorship nebulous left wing talking points

About 100 people were arrested, Davis said. One police officer was hit in the face.

I guess Boston doesn’t want the place to stink to high heaven and become a toxic site soon to be put on the Superfund list, as the park near Wall Street will soon be is surely almost there. They probably do not want the park to become polluted and filthy.

Officials do not want the protesters, who originally settled in Dewey Square, to occupy the space across Congress Street on the Greenway because it recently underwent a renovation project where expensive improvements were added, according to Elaine Driscoll, police spokeswoman.

Well, I’m shocked. Boston PD was worried about these so-called environmentalists would trash the area?

Meanwhile, the #OWSMorons plan to march to the homes of Rupert Murdoch and other millionaires, and stink up those neighborhoods, reports The NY Daily News.

Day 24 of the chaotic, festive protest in Zuccotti Park saw a demonstration by schoolchildren who sang songs and waved signs saying “Money for Schools Not War,” a Native American protest against Columbus Day and a brief frenzy over the arrival of hip-hop icons Kanye West and Russell Simmons.

“I don’t pay enough taxes, and I know it,” said Simmons, the Def Jam magnate worth $340million and author of the new book “Super Rich: A Guide to Having It All.”

“I’m happy to pay a little more taxes if it means better education for our children,” he said.

No one is stopping you, chump. Write a check. Donate your money.

We’re also provided with this handy dandy photo

Upside down American flag? Check. Che flag? Check. Environmental destruction? Check. Trash everywhere? Check. Foolish use of Guy Fawkes mask? Check. Call for violence? Check.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. Please sign the drill now petition

Sadly, ABC’s The View is what passes for as “intelligent” conversation on TV, these days. The View yacker Joy Behar’s blather is also indicative of the historical illiteracy of the far left in this country.

Herman Cain made an appearance on the coffee klatch show this week and genius Behar had this comment about the history of the Republican Party for him:

The Republican Party hasn’t been black friendly over the many centuries in this country.

This comment is ignorant in a million ways.

Firstly, of course, this county hasn’t even been a country for “many centuries.” We are only about 235 years old as a nation! Most people don’t claim two as “many,” but only as “a couple.”

Secondly, the Republican Party has also not been around for “the many centuries in this country.” The party is only about 155 years old.

Thirdly, when the party itself was started it was derisively called the “Black Republicans” by Joy Behar’s Democrats because it was so friendly to America’s blacks. The party was the pro-black Americans party started with a core principle of freeing all blacks from slavery and assuring them civil rights! In fact, for many decades after the Civil War and on into the 1900s most black Americans were Republicans, not Democrats. Blacks being Democrats is relatively new in our history.

In fact, if it wasn’t for the Republican Party the Civil Rights Act of 1964 could not have passed. It was GOP votes that pushed that bill into law, not Democrat support. More Democrats opposed the Civil Rights Act than Republicans.

The truth is that the 1964 Civil Rights Act saw strong Republican support. Of the total number of Republicans then serving in Congress support never dipped below 70% on any of the final vote counts. The original House version got 80% GOP support, the Senate version got 82% and the final vote in the House was 82% of Republicans in support. On the other hand, Congressional Democrats never saw higher than 69% of its membership in support of civil rights for blacks.

And who was one of the leading voices in favor of passage? It was Illinois Senator Edward Dirksen, a Republican. Who was a leading voice opposing civil rights? Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat from West Virginia and for years afterward celebrated as the Democrat’s best man.

If it were up to Democrats in 1964 the Civil Rights Act would never have passed. Yet here is the uninformed Hollywood “entertainer” Joy Behar revealing her ignorance and trying get away with lies about the GOP once again.

Even Dancing is not safe from left-wing attacks on Tea Partiers, sadly. Tonight on the venerable dance show, fashion makeover maven Carson Kressley thought it would be a hoot to make fun of over half the voters in America with an attack on how he thinks Tea Party activists smell.

On tonight’s Dancing With The Stars, funny guy Carson Kressley hit the screen wearing a gorilla mask. Taking it off he snarked, “It still smells like a Tea Party.”

So, what are we to make of this nonsense? Is Kressley saying that Tea Party activists smell like gorillas?

Are we supposed to be laughing at that, now?

So, what do Democrats smell like? Maybe Europeans? How about reds?

I wonder what dance partner Anna Trebunskaya, who was born in Russia, thinks about that? I wonder how ABC will take attacking so much of its audience?

Whatever Anna or ABC thinks of it the bigger questions is, what do you Tea Partiers think? Maybe you can ask ABC yourself?

It looks like Hollywood has not learned the lesson that a graphic rape of a teen girl is not the best recipe for box office sales as this year, yet another rape fantasy film has emerged from the muck and mire of Hollywood in the hopes to assault audiences everywhere.

You may remember back in 2007 when upcoming actress, then a 13-year-old Dakota Fanning, starred in Hounddog, a film in which her character was raped. When the film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, the rape scene elicited actual boos from the audience. Still, the scene was not explicit and the rape itself was not shown on film.

This time, however, Hollywood went from the implied rape of a 13-year-old Dakota Fanning, to the graphic rape, bondage, and enslavement of a 13-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz in a new film hitting Sundance titled Hick.

You may remember that Miss Moretz was recently in another controversial film as the foul-mouthed, bad guy-killing character named Hit Girl in the comic book-styled movie Kick Ass (2010).

The film Hick, from a book by the same name written by Andrea Portes, follows the life of 13-year-old girl named Luli, a runaway from negligent parents, as she sets out alone for Las Vegas from her Nebraska hometown.

From recent reviews, it is almost a schizophrenic film starting out as a nice portrait of a precocious teen girl in a coming of age story in the style of Juno. Naturally, this 13-year-old seems older than her age.

One reviewer, however was disturbed by how the girl is constantly sexualized visually. With long flowing, golden hair, and skimpy clothing, Luli is filmed as an object of desire all too often. Also, for at least half the movie, Luli flirts with a 26-year-old character named Eddie giving the film a “will they/won’t they get together” theme.

But then the story goes from road picture to violent rape fantasy as ne’er do well Eddie in his black cowboy hat eventually drags her off into a cornfield and violently rapes the young girl. Worse, in the subsequent scene she awakes tied to a bed and told that she is to be the monster’s sex toy.

In the book, this creep not only rapes the girl and imprisons her but pimps her out to his equally scummy buddies as a prostitute repeating the rape a dozen times over. I am not sure if the movie carries this story line through in this case, but regardless what we have here is a violent, dark, and exploitative story line masked by a wistful coming of age story.

These are the sorts of stories that do nothing to enlighten or entertain. They cater to the worst, darkest impulses in us all. Unfortunately, it is these dark impulses that Hollywood returns to all too often. Hick has not yet found a distributor and let’s hope it doesn’t.

It is always amusing to hear actors and actresses venture into the unfamiliar territory of politics when interviewers are cruel enough to broach such issues. Sadly, actress Mila Kunis is no exception to that Hollyweird tendency toward guffaw inducing political bloviating. Naturally and in keeping with most of the rest of the industry, in a new interview she’s disgorging that prosaic, ill-conceived, left-wing trope that she heard somewhere or another that serves as the basis of her “opinion.”

Of course she’s all a gush over The One. “I love Barack Obama, I voted for him and I will forever be proud of my vote,” she is reported as saying to Britain’s Stylist magazine.

Kunis, it appears, considers herself highly informed about politics and most especially on how wonderfully she thinks Obama is doing in office. Conversely, she seems blissfully unaware of the zero job growth we just experienced not to mention the highest unemployment this country has experienced since The Great Depression. She seems also completely ignorant of the trillions of dollars of debt that Obama has piled up.

Still, she is sure that the compromises that she thinks Obama made in recent economic policies are going to hurt us.

“I think America is in a very temperamental state, and the decision that was made and the compromises made mean, in my opinion, that people are going to pay for a very long time,” she said.

Well, if she means the mess that is Obamacare, we most certainly will be paying “for a very long time.” But I doubt that is what she’s on about.

I suppose we shouldn’t fault her too much for knowing so little about economics, though. If she’s like many actors she’s likely so far removed from even her own economic condition that she simply hasn’t the experience to understand the issues. She doesn’t have to worry about living from one paycheck — or lack thereof — to the next.

But, darn it, the Obammessiah is trying so hard, dontcha know?

I know that he [Obama] tried. I know because you keep reading these reports of him trying to compromise with the Tea Party and the Republican Party and trying to come to a 50/50 agreement. I don’t think it was one. I feel the Democratic Party compromised everything and the Republican Party compromised pretty much nothing.

“Feeling,” Miss Kunis, is not knowledge. Now, I am sure she heard, maybe even read, about how the left-wing, Old Media characterized Obama’s efforts. I am sure she saw Obama’s speeches where he mouthed the need for compromise. But it is plain she never once actually learned that none of the plans and policies that Obama and his party have offered contained any compromises. It is plain her bubble world does not allow inside the fact that the GOP is the one doing most of the compromising.

One other thing she is sure about: you folks in middle America and you young people are so ill-informed, so dang stupid that you don’t know why you are even in the Republican Party. You dummies just don’t read, she told Stylist.

She chided the younger generation for not reading books, the news, the paper, and then zoned in on “Middle America.” “So obviously you are incredibly ill-informed to the point where they will go do these tests in Middle America… And they’ll ask, ‘OK, what party are you?’ And they’ll say, ‘Republican.’ ‘Why?’ And they can’t even tell you. They have no idea what the Republican Party stands for. Why did I vote for Obama? I can tell you why I voted for him, what I agreed and disagreed with him on, for hours.”

I think she is in a fantasyland, here. What “tests” is she talking about? Did she read this in a script? It sure doesn’t seem she read this from real life, anyway.

Finally, she has a word or two about you uneducated religious folks.

Whoever you vote for, don’t do it just because. And don’t tell me it’s because of religion either because that whole thing is knocked completely out the window. So you better just educate yourself.

If you are religious, you are uneducated? But, even her savior in D.C. claims to be religious. Is she saying he is uneducated? What contempt Kunis shows for all people of faith.

For one so young she sure has come to hate an awful lot of people. Let’s hope her hatred for the very people going to her movies and helping her earn a living don’t get offended by her dismissive, hateful attitude about them, eh?

Abel Ferrara made his new film “4:44 Last Day on Earth” to serve as a wake-up call to humanity over impending ecological disasters.

The movie, by the director of 1992’s “Bad Lieutenant,” focuses largely on one couple — played by Willem Dafoe and Shanyn Leigh — passing their final hours on Earth as they Skype their goodbyes to loved ones from a New York City high-rise.

“The bottom line is this film is about man’s destruction of the Earth,” Ferrara told reporters Wednesday in Venice, where the film is being shown in hopes of snaring the top Golden Lion prize later this week.

“This isn’t about a meteorite, this isn’t … some horror show. This is about humanity not coming to terms with its carbon footprint,” the director said. “It’s on us. It’s our responsibility.”

The time in the title is the exact hour before dawn when humanity ceases to exist. The exact calamity which befalls Earth’s citizens isn’t ever spelled out, although there is an “ozone-hole” theme.

Say, I wonder how much of that evil carbon pollution was put out, destroying the ozone-hole, making this film, taking fossil fueled airplane flights to Venice, and so forth? Now, if he had put zombies in it, it would probably have been more interesting.