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Alan Colmes
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Monday, July 06, 2009
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As America's most prominent broadcast liberal amidst a sea of right-wing conservative talk show hosts, Alan Colmes might be described as a professional dragon slayer. Unlike many talkfests, filled with harmonious voices soothing the ego of the host, Colmes Program and Hannity and Colmes, are cacophonies of discordant voices, many of whom regard Colmes as the guy they love to hate. Everything Colmes does seems to generate strong responses from whom ever is paying attention. This includes everything from his political views, to his personal life, to his hair. In October 1996, when Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News Channel, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes tapped Alan to co-host the channel's nightly prime time debate show. Finding a liberal in conservative times was not easy. Perhaps that is why conservative Sean Hannity had already been hired and the working title for the show was Hannity and LTBD, or Liberal To Be Determined. Colmes nickname during his first few months at Fox was (more...)
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Brian Dennehy
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009
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One of America's most respected and prolific actors since the mid-1980s, Brian Dennehy, whose work in film, television and on stage earned him numerous awards. Filmgoers first took notice of the powerfully built actor as the villainous sheriff in First Blood, but in the years that followed, Dennehy showed his versatility in everything from classical drama to science fiction and even broad comedy. Off screen, his acclaimed stage performances in Death of a Salesman and Long Day's Journey into Night netted him two Tony Awards. He was the offbeat bush pilot who deposits Charles Martin Smith in the Alaskan wilderness in Never Cry Wolf; the New York detective who aids Soviet policeman William Hurt in the thriller Gorky Park a casually cruel lawman in Lawrence Kasdan's revisionist Western Silverado; and he gave a memorable turn as the bemused alien leader in Ron Howard's Cocoon. He also earned a notable praise for the wisecracking cop who aids Bryan Brown's special effects whiz in F/X. He (more...)
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Matthew Modine
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Monday, July 20, 2009
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A tall and rangy, versatile and engaging actor, Matthew Modine has been a force on the silver screen. Modine has won Golden Globe and Emmy awards. He shared the Venice Film Festival Best Actor Award with the entire cast of Robert Altman's Streamers. Modine won widespread acclaim for his superb work as another Vietnam soldier, the severely withdrawn, schizophrenic title character of Alan Parker's Birdy and was at his self-effacing, ironic best in Stanley Kubrick's blistering Vietnam saga Full Metal Jacket. In Jonathan Demme's brightly-colored farce, Married to the Mob, he was charming as a slightly bumbling FBI agent who falls for a Mafia wife (Michelle Pfeiffer). Derivative roles as a cocky medical student in Gross Anatomy. Robert Altman cast him in another film as an unhappily married neurosurgeon in Short Cuts. On the hit Showtime series Weeds Modine recently played the Majestic City developer, Sullivan Groff, who besides being incredibly crooked and creepy, has aff (more...)
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General Tony Zinni
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Tuesday, August 04, 2009
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General Tony Zinni (ret.) was commander in chief of CENTCOM and the President's special envoy to the Middle East. General Zinni will discuss leading the charge. In this fragile economic environment, times are changing at an ever-increasing velocity. Old systems, organizations, and ways of operating no longer work in our dynamic, complex and increasingly unstable new environment. Out of this chaos and confusion, a new and different leader must emerge. Old systems and methods will no longer work. Tomorrows successful leaders in all fields, including the military, academia, politics, and business must know how to create, operate, and thrive in very fluid, flattened, and integrated structures that are remarkably different from the traditional organizations we are used to seeing. They will have to manage rapid changes, and create faster and more far-reaching spans of control. General Zinni's unique (more...)
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Governor Christie Todd Whitman
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Wednesday, September 09, 2009
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Governor Whitman served in the President of the United States cabinet as Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.) She was the first woman Governor of the State of New Jersey. She appointed New Jersey's first African American State Supreme Court Justice, its first female State Supreme Court Chief Justice and its first female Attorney General. She was the second woman and first Republican woman to defeat an incumbent governor in a general election in the United States. Under her direction as the Secretary Environmental Protection Agency the EPA produced a report detailing the expected effects of global warming in each of the states in the United States. The report was dismissed by President Bush who called it the work of the bureaucracy. In an interview in 2007, Whitman stated that Vice President Dick Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls, led to her resignation. At the time, Vice President Dick Cheney pushed the EPA to institute a (more...)
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Paul Krugman, 2008 Nobel Prize Winner
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Monday, October 05, 2009
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Paul Krugman is the world's preeminent economist, having won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics. An insightful, outspoken Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times, he is a passionate and articulate speaker with a gift for relating global economic events to everyday lives, and committed to speaking the truth as he sees it in the most compelling terms. In 1999 he wrote the book, The Return of Depression Economics, in which he warned - ten years ago - of the problems we face today. A signed copy of Nobel Prize winner Krugman's book and hors d'oeuvre reception for members to meet one another and to interact with Paul Krugman before the event is included as part of admission. Early RSVPs are suggested here since the event will reach capacity quickly. (more...)
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Senator Max Cleland
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Wednesday, October 07, 2009
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Senator Max Cleleand is considered to be one of America's most famous patriots. Max Cleland grew up on a Georgia farm, was shipped off to Vietnam - where he was blown up and became a triple amputee. Through willpower he fights death and depression. The President of the United States recognizes his courage and service and nominates him to head up the Veterans Administration, and he is confirmed. And later he becomes Georgia's youngest Senator. But his success is short-lived: he must learn to manage the scars left by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Then, he is tarred in ads as unpatriotic: and loses his reelection battle. The underhanded defeat pushes him to the brink of despair. Thirty years after Vietnam, he returns to Walter Reed, where his endurance, courage, and faith teach him about the deepest wounds of war and how to heal himself. President Obama has just appointed Max Cleland as Secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission. Senate Majority Leader Harr (more...)
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