links for 2009-07-17

Right now, there’s a good chance a Hollywood executive is leaning into a colleague’s office and quietly asking, “Did you see what Nikki just wrote?”
That would be Nikki Finke, a well-traveled newspaper reporter who has found her moment as a digital-age Walter Winchell.

In the three years since she started Deadline Hollywood Daily, a daily blog about the entertainment business, her combination of old-school skills — she is a relentless reporter — and new-media immediacy has made her a must-click look into the ragingly insecure id of Hollywood.

Just 35% of U.S. voters now support the creation of a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurers.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 50% of voters oppose setting up a government health insurance company as President Obama and congressional Democrats are now proposing in their health care reform plan. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

Local Tea Party patriots held an anti-Obama Care protest at Senator Claire "ACORN" McCaskill’s district offices on Delmar Boulevard today.
The protest was organized by Americans for Prosperity and the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition.
McCaskill's office manager locked the doors, pull down the blinds, called the cops and forced the protesters across the street.

And today? Obama's
first budget will consume 28 percent of the entire GDP; state and local governments another 15 percent. While there is some overlap, in 2009, government will consume 40 percent of GDP, approaching the peak of World War II.
The deficit for 2009 is $1.8 trillion, 13 percent of the whole economy. Obama is pushing a cap-and-trade bill to cut carbon emissions that will impose huge costs on energy production, spike consumer prices and drive production offshore to China, which is opting out of Kyoto II. The Chinese are not fools.