Check Out My Latest on The Huffington Post

Click here:

Health Care Reform: A Handjob for Insurers;

Here's a Band-Aid, Shut up and Sit Down

by Matthew-Lee Erlbach

Word,

Matthew

Rare Helen Keller Video

This is extraordinary. And as she is honored with a bronze statue at the U.S. Capitol, what is overlooked is her commitment to women's suffrage, pacifism, workers' rights, and many progressive causes. Whether these ideas are learned or inherent in the human heart is up for debate. I tend to believe it comes from the heart.

Handbook for an American Revolutionary

Save Sept. 15 for a reading of my play Handbook for an American Revolutionary at New Georges. Handbook... gives voice to the changing face of America, from the Mennonite farmer and political prisoner to the transgendered youth and white nationalist. I've attached the info below:

Handbook for an American Revolutionary
written/performed by Matthew-Lee Erlbach
directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde
8pm • September 15, 2009
New Georges • 520 8th Ave • 3rd Fl • NY 10018

America's Great Religion

Check out my latest on Evangelical Capitalists on Huffington Post:
America's Great Religion
by Matthew-Lee Erlbach

The Islamic clerics are to Iran what Wall St. is to the U.S. Both operate under fundamentalist ideologies that seek to maintain power and subvert the will of the people and both use extreme force to do it.

Don't get me wrong, Iran and the U.S. have their differences: In Iran you get stoned for adultery; in America, you get stoned, and then, adultery. And while the Islamic clerics in Iran use religion for political gain, our Supreme Leaders in the Fed, Treasury, and Wall St. do the same, only their religion isn't Islam -- it's Capitalism -- and America rises to its feet and claps its hands with great fervor for Capitalism as it is, undoubtedly, America's Great Religion.

Yes, our churches are banks, with denominations ranging from Chase to Citibank, our saints, the CEOs of the Fortune 500, our prophets, the Secretary of the Treasury and Chairman of the Fed, and if you ever forget who you serve when depositing your tithings, it's God, and you should know that because it says so on your money. Don't forget. God is everywhere. Even in your bank account.

Well as it so happens, these financial prophets are false, our churches are spiritually bankrupt, and we all play Christ in this one as we become martyrs for the high priests and priestesses of the financial world. As our tax dollars go into record profits for Goldman Sachs, we all serve as martyrs for their sins -- or profits, depending on which side you're on. Yea unto our economic evangelists! Yea unto divine corporate intervention! Yea unto our profit prophets!

Who -- or what -- exactly, is becoming of this nation? We have been trained to be soldiers of the Dollar Almighty and to blindly accept the financial sermons screamed at us by CNBC and the Wall Street Journal. Where are our values anymore? Is this the best we can do?

Since this "new" America dawned in the '80s, we took a fairly well-regulated doctrine and somehow turned it into a fundamentalist duty. Sure, after WWII, the first shift to a material wealth culture began to emerge, but it really wasn't until Reaganomics that this nation was propelled into a financial holy war with itself: The Kings of Wall St. vs. Welfare Queens.

The line was drawn. The poor became the enemy. The rich became heroes. The in-between middle class, simply the fat kid in the basement window, trying to get outside to play with the rest of the cool kids.

Gone were the thinkers, inventors, artists, and truth tellers as our cultural elite. And if your version of the American dream didn't include a yacht, mistress, coke habit, and every other kind of excess you could dream up, well, then you're weren't really American, were you? This fundamentalist Capitalism got so bad it even infiltrated Hip Hop! Lest we forget, Hip Hop culture -- born from the spirit of community and activism -- wasn't always about blinging the shit out of your teeth. But diamonds are pretty, and really, what better way to prove your wealth by putting diamonds in your mouth?

This Capitalist fundamentalism is no longer a path to the American Dream: It is a mental illness and it is destroying America.

So why are we continuing to pray at these altars? Where is the uprising to completely restructure our financial system and furthermore, where are the prosecutions for these hijackers in the Fed, Treasury, and Wall St.? Why are we not putting them to trial?

Here, I'll speak in mainstream media language: "This is a financial 9/11" and we're arresting Henry Louis Gates for screaming racism but no one in the financial sector is getting cuffed for misappropriating billions of taxpayer dollars? What the hell is going on here? Where is the outrage?

Well I think it's time we "go Iran" on this system, because there's been a coup and it's been against us. This is no country. It's the biggest Get Rich Quick scheme in the history of the world. This is One Business, Under God, With Liberty and Justice for All.

God Bless America, indeed.

A is for Atom: Awesome 1953 Educational Cartoon

A is for Atom Part 1


A is for Atom Part 2


A is for Atom Part 3

Handbook for an American Revolutionary

I'm doing a mini presentation of my show Handbook for an American Revolutionary on July 18/7p at Nuyorican. The show centers on the stories of a diverse group of Americans, ranging from a former Pakistani soldier-turned NYC taxi driver to a Mexican B-Boy community activist from Iowa to a white supremacist mother coming to terms with her gay husband. And as the solo show thing is rather new and unexpected to me, it would be awesome to have your support. It'll be a good time, I promise. July 18/ 7p; Nuyorican Poets Cafe: 236 E 3rd. $10.

The Great American Bubble Machine: Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression

Thank you Matt, Rolling Stone, and of course, our patriot banking system, for making this the most memorable Independence Day ever:

The Great American Bubble Machine

Ayn Rand, first interview on Mike Wallace 1959

A compelling conversation that resonates on so many levels right now. Also great to see there was a time when an interview didn't end in yelling and name calling.

Baby Preacher

Yup...pretty much sums it all up:

My latest on Huffington Post: Barry Levinson and the Politics of Politics

Interview with Barry Levinson about politics, film, and Poliwood, his documentary on the 2008 DNC and RNC conventions now premiering at TriBeCa.

Link here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthewlee-erlbach/tribeca-interview-barry-l_b_191143.html

Obama to release OLC torture memos; promises no prosecutions for CIA officials

You want to throw a tea party protest? How about one for human rights and the attack on civil liberties:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2009/04/16/aclu/index.html

The Most Innovative Little Red Riding Hood

Check this out. Pretty innovative.

The Onion: Congress Forced To Watch Training Video About Bipartisan Cooperation

Enjoy.

Congress Forced To Watch Training Video About Bipartisan Cooperation

2008 Gold Award for "Pause"

Here's the trailer for the film Pause that I'm starring in with the always awesome Meissa Hampton, directed by Shine. Pause just won a Gold Award at the Aurora Awards, which is great news for everyone that worked so hard on it. Congrats. Enjoy.

Barney Frank on Partisan Amnesia

Due to WrestleMania 25 and related and not-so related deadlines, I haven't been able to contribute to The Huffington Post as much as I would like. But with this blog I'll be able to link up to other articles as a way of spreading some truth around: this latest piece from Barney Frank is pretty right-on.

But this all being said, I still can't help but feel that the American People are watching the nation's biggest dick show between the Democrats and the Republicans. It's time for the parties to fracture and represent that varying degrees of political thought and practice in this country. The two-party is establishment has proven to be the most effective way to divide and conquer the will of the people. And in an America that has largely been asleep at the wheel for the last few decades, the time is very ripe to bring in third and fourth party candidates that will help our nation progress, not keep it in the black and white divisiveness of the 20th century. Time to move on.

Click on the link to read:

Is There an Antidote to the Republican Amnesia?

YouTube Music Sampling

This guy has done a bunch of these taking individual music segments and mixing them together; the rap is pretty hot too. Check it out:

a post before the others

i am now committing to the commitment of maintaining a blog. if i can do this, then i can get the puppy i promised myself. i plan on training the puppy to be a sex activist, but that's another topic for another time. (but do plan on seeing puppies being the new face of the movement.)

this will be used for updates on performances as an actor, published/produced works as a writer (also at www.matthew-lee.com), necessary voices from the country, and the occasional youtube video of things we shouldn't be interested in.

as long as we all agree this blog will be sub-par, i think the rate at which i can impress you will be quite high. and that's what these things are for really; or something like that anyway.