I consider myself a Reagan Democrat turned Republican, but now I am considering calling myself a Reagan Democrat turned Republican, now Independent.
This isn’t just because I am not happy with who we conservatives have to choose as our next president. Senator John McCain is as much a liberal as Democratic Senator Barack Obama when it comes to such issues as global warming and gay marriage, to name a couple.
It’s mostly because I feel the Republican Party no longer has anything they firmly stand on. If someone came up and asked you to name a Republican in Congress right now, would you be able to name more than one? I can name two and both are no longer in Congress: Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole.
The fact I can name more than five members of the Democratic Party literally leaves me with a brief touch of stomach flu. This is all thanks to the liberal “drive-by” news media who see Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy as their “darlings.”
The Republican Party has no “Contract With America,” like the one Newt Gingrich and other representatives came up with back in 1994 that detailed several actions they’d take if elected.
Hence, the reason why Republicans lost congressional seats May 13, 2008 in Illinois, Louisiana, and Mississippi to Democrats. These were seats the Republican Party held in years past.
Can the Republican Party make a comeback?
Almost immediately following those disastrous election results, conservative talk show host Sean Hannity outlined 10 ways on his website, http://www.hannity.com//Article.asp?id=711786, in which the Republicans can be victorious this November if they stand by these 10 beliefs. I won’t go into all 10, but here are the most important.
Number 1: “To be the Candidate of National Security”
They should not only stay the course in Iraq, stand behind the troops and support the Patriot Act, but keep Guantanamo Bay open to hold terror suspects.
Let’s face it. Whether you are for or against the Iraq War, we’re there to win. Anyone who thinks Senator Obama can come through on his promise to start bringing troops home within a year if he takes office should look back in history and find out just how long it took President Richard Nixon, after he took office in 1968 to end the Vietnam War. It didn’t happen until after he resigned from office in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal.
Even if Obama pledges to start pulling out troops, it won’t happen in a year and like Vietnam which became a disaster when we pulled out, the same would occur in Iraq.
Number 2: “The Candidate who pledges to oppose Appeasement.”
To put it simply, a Republican will oppose all efforts to negotiate with dictators from countries like Iran.
I am amazed at Obama’s notion that he doesn’t see any dictatorship countries as a major threat.
"Iran, Cuba, Venezuela? These countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose any serious threat to us," he told people while on a campaign stop.
How do you negotiate with someone who says the Holocaust didn’t happen? Or, how do you negotiate with Muslims who believe killing themselves and others will get them 72 virgins in the next life?
Number 3: “The Candidate Pledges to support Tax CUTS, and fiscal responsibility.”
Anyone who thinks Senator Obama is going to lower taxes, if elected, lives in a dream world. I love it when people tell me how they are already being taxed as it is so the idea of a Democrat being president doesn’t make much difference. I also love how they compare me, a single person with no kids, to themselves who are married with children and say, I am not paying out as much as they are.
You know what? My blood is the same color as everyone else’s. Just because I am living the single life doesn’t mean I don’t have expenses. I might be able to put some money away, but not all of it. And every year that I get a raise just means more money gets taken out of my paychecks for taxes.
Number 4: The Candidate Pledges to be a supporter of “Energy Independence.”
Listen up people! This country has more than enough oil to last us a century. It’s time to stop using and relying on other countries for the product and stop worrying about the safety of endangered species here in the states, all because some want to save polar bears and penguins.
That means yes, drilling in Anwar and building new refineries and nuclear facilities. I’ve been living for 20 years behind an electrical tower that buzzes every time it rains. I haven't been diagnosed with a brain tumor yet.
If you think paying between $4 and $6 bucks for gas now is a joke, will you still be laughing when it one day hits $12 a gallon? It won’t be because we have a gas shortage. It will be because the demand for oil is higher.
Number 5: “The Candidate pledges to secure our borders completely within 12 months.”
When it comes to border security, the country is no more secure now than it was before 9/11. If there is any funding that needs to be spent, it’s for hiring more border patrol agents and getting a fence built.
Number 6: “Healthcare: The Candidate will look for Free-Market solutions to the problems facing the Healthcare industry, and will vigorously oppose any efforts to “nationalize healthcare.”
Is our nation’s healthcare system broken? Yes. But I would not trade it for the kind of healthcare other countries have, like in Canada. It amazes me at how people think they don’t have it great here in terms of healthcare. Perhaps they should go live in Canada, get diagnosed with a heart ailment that requires immediate surgery and see if they can wait six months for an operation that needs to be done within days or hours.
Or better still, look at how the government runs the post office or handles medical care for wounded military veterans and then ask themselves, do we want nationalized healthcare?
Number 8: Social Security and Medicare: “The Candidate will “save” Social Security and Medicare from bankruptcy.”
All that money taken out of our weekly or bi-weekly paychecks that’s used for Social Security and Medicare needs to go back to us. Let us decide how we want to spend it.
That’s never going to happen. By the time we turn 65, both these accounts will be bankrupt but we’re still going to get our Social Security checks. The government will just keep taking out money to put into an account that continues to borrow from everything else.
Which all goes back to my belief that I seriously doubt the Republican party can stage a comeback between now and Election Day, but anything can happen.
The haunting words of Mitt Romney still echo inside my head.
“Washington is broken.”
Going the Independent way sounds better and better every minute.
©6/4/08
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
‘Sex and the City’ movie should have a sign that reads “For women only”
Sex and the City ««
R, 145m., 2008
Cast & Credits: Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie Bradshaw), Kim Cattrall (Samantha Jones), Kristin Davis (Charlotte York), Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbes), Chris Noth (Mr. Big), Candice Bergen (Enid Frick), Jennifer Hudson (Louise), Jason Louis (Jerry ‘Smith’ Jerrod), David Eigenberg (Steve Brady), Evan Handler (Harry Goldenblatt). Written and directed by Michael Patrick King based on characters created by Candace Bushnell.
Near the end of Sex and the City is a scene where Sarah Jessica Parker’s off and on boyfriend of ten years named Mr. Big (Chris Noth) tells her the reason their wedding early on in the film didn’t go as planned is because there was “no romance” to it. It was a case of one person asking if they should get married and the other without thinking it, saying yes.
I can’t tell you how happy I was to know that somewhere in New York was a gentleman like “Mr. Big” who believed in the old married tradition that when it comes proposing to the woman he loves, he should get down on one knee and ask her to marry him. Even if instead of being a wedding ring, it was an $800 pair of Parker's blue Manolo pumps he proposed to her with.
Therein lies the problem with Sex and the City, the movie. For more than close to 150 minutes, it’s all sex, all about sex, mixed in with a heavy touch of expensive high heels, and absolutely zero to little romance.
The film should come with a warning sign posted above the title that says “For Women Only.” This is a “chick flick” plain and simple. It’s only for those die-hard female fans and judging from the amount of entertainment news coverage this movie is getting, apparently there are many, who know each and every little detail about the four characters played by Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall, and Kristin Davis.
I have no doubt female fans enthusiastically embraced that double-sized issue of Entertainment Weekly that came out a week before the film’s big screen premiere. The issue covered everything you ever wanted to know about the show from fashion to a rundown of every episode, and where the HBO series last left off when it aired from 1998-2004. I didn’t read the issue. I skipped over to the reviews. Though I must confess, I did like the cover.
Sitting there inside the dark theater upfront and being afraid to even look behind me to see if there were any brave males sitting among the audience, I could tell from the amount of laughs and various comments from women that they knew everything about these characters. When Parker’s relationship columnist Carrie Bradshaw reacts disapprovingly at the huge lack of closet space she will have for all her clothes and hundreds of high heels in her new Manhattan apartment she and “Mr. Big” will move into, I overheard a few women in the audience utter the phrase, “the closet.”
If any guys out there do like the show and embrace the film, my guess is they are not straight and have a love for wearing high heels. And those guys who are in the audience full of women, I would predict they are there because one, their girlfriends or wives dragged them to see it. Or two, the idiot like myself decided to write a review for the school newspaper because I stupidly felt it would be more timely to put in the upcoming issue than say Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Were it not for that decision, I would have skipped Sex and the City-The Movie and wouldn’t have felt like I was missing something. I had no problem with a mother’s baby near me who cried often throughout the film. In fact, if there is one movie I can honestly say I would not have had a problem with someone’s cellphone going off, it’s this one. God help any man in the audience though, who dares do that during this picture. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned you know.
I was not the least bit interested in any of these female characters on screen or their love lives, or to be more precise, sex lives. That’s what Sex and the City, the film and television show is really about despite Parker’s character claiming in the beginning the two main reasons women move to New York is to find “love and labels.”
For anyone even remotely curious about Parker’s three friends, there is work-a-holic lawyer, Miranda Hobbs, (Nixon) who during sex with her husband, Steve (David Eigenberg), pays more attention to how long it takes to climax as opposed to just allowing it to happen on its own. Charlotte York (Davis) makes it clear she is the happiest of the group; always with a smile on her face and it didn’t take me long to figure out why. She and her husband, Harry (Evan Handler), have sex three to four times a week.
I wasn’t surprised to learn the most colorful of the group was Samantha Jones (Cattrall) who when she can’t get a chance to screw her live-in boyfriend/actor, Jerrod (Jason Louis), spends time downing glasses of champagne in a hot tub watching a lean muscle bound hunk hump his wife and at one point engage in a threesome. She even has a horny female dog named “Baby” that thinks just like her when it comes to needing sex (the dog is always seen humping something). When she isn’t standing out from the rest of crowd in her bright red or yellow outfits, Samantha makes her presence known in other ways like cussing out loud during an auction when someone richer than she outbids her and saying the word “sex” in front of Davis’ young adopted daughter.
I have to say though from a man’s standpoint (and I am well aware this will cause me to lose any brownie points with any potential women interested in meeting me, if any), the character I most identified with in Sex and the City is Noth’s Mr. Big when it comes to romance and weddings. He has the same opinion about having a fancy wedding as I do. Early on, he tells Parker he’d be just as happy marrying her at City Hall.
I agree. When it comes to lavish, expensive weddings and having to get all dressed up to impress the guests, I’d just as well marry the one I love at City Hall or in Las Vegas where a group of Elvis impersonators are the guests and one of them is best man, and then have a small reception with a group of close friends.
I don’t mind sitting down with someone to see a romantic film. I am not ashamed to say I got a little emotional watching Titanic (1997) and no, it wasn't when Kate Winslet finds out boyfriend Leonardo DiCaprio freezes to death in the cold Atlantic waters as they wait for rescue.
When it comes to the subject of sex, Sex and the City-The Movie, is just about a group of four desperate sexually active women whose only real interest when it comes to men is getting laid, whether they're married or single.
Perhaps romance really is dead.
©6/3/08
R, 145m., 2008
Cast & Credits: Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie Bradshaw), Kim Cattrall (Samantha Jones), Kristin Davis (Charlotte York), Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbes), Chris Noth (Mr. Big), Candice Bergen (Enid Frick), Jennifer Hudson (Louise), Jason Louis (Jerry ‘Smith’ Jerrod), David Eigenberg (Steve Brady), Evan Handler (Harry Goldenblatt). Written and directed by Michael Patrick King based on characters created by Candace Bushnell.
Near the end of Sex and the City is a scene where Sarah Jessica Parker’s off and on boyfriend of ten years named Mr. Big (Chris Noth) tells her the reason their wedding early on in the film didn’t go as planned is because there was “no romance” to it. It was a case of one person asking if they should get married and the other without thinking it, saying yes.
I can’t tell you how happy I was to know that somewhere in New York was a gentleman like “Mr. Big” who believed in the old married tradition that when it comes proposing to the woman he loves, he should get down on one knee and ask her to marry him. Even if instead of being a wedding ring, it was an $800 pair of Parker's blue Manolo pumps he proposed to her with.
Therein lies the problem with Sex and the City, the movie. For more than close to 150 minutes, it’s all sex, all about sex, mixed in with a heavy touch of expensive high heels, and absolutely zero to little romance.
The film should come with a warning sign posted above the title that says “For Women Only.” This is a “chick flick” plain and simple. It’s only for those die-hard female fans and judging from the amount of entertainment news coverage this movie is getting, apparently there are many, who know each and every little detail about the four characters played by Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall, and Kristin Davis.
I have no doubt female fans enthusiastically embraced that double-sized issue of Entertainment Weekly that came out a week before the film’s big screen premiere. The issue covered everything you ever wanted to know about the show from fashion to a rundown of every episode, and where the HBO series last left off when it aired from 1998-2004. I didn’t read the issue. I skipped over to the reviews. Though I must confess, I did like the cover.
Sitting there inside the dark theater upfront and being afraid to even look behind me to see if there were any brave males sitting among the audience, I could tell from the amount of laughs and various comments from women that they knew everything about these characters. When Parker’s relationship columnist Carrie Bradshaw reacts disapprovingly at the huge lack of closet space she will have for all her clothes and hundreds of high heels in her new Manhattan apartment she and “Mr. Big” will move into, I overheard a few women in the audience utter the phrase, “the closet.”
If any guys out there do like the show and embrace the film, my guess is they are not straight and have a love for wearing high heels. And those guys who are in the audience full of women, I would predict they are there because one, their girlfriends or wives dragged them to see it. Or two, the idiot like myself decided to write a review for the school newspaper because I stupidly felt it would be more timely to put in the upcoming issue than say Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Were it not for that decision, I would have skipped Sex and the City-The Movie and wouldn’t have felt like I was missing something. I had no problem with a mother’s baby near me who cried often throughout the film. In fact, if there is one movie I can honestly say I would not have had a problem with someone’s cellphone going off, it’s this one. God help any man in the audience though, who dares do that during this picture. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned you know.
I was not the least bit interested in any of these female characters on screen or their love lives, or to be more precise, sex lives. That’s what Sex and the City, the film and television show is really about despite Parker’s character claiming in the beginning the two main reasons women move to New York is to find “love and labels.”
For anyone even remotely curious about Parker’s three friends, there is work-a-holic lawyer, Miranda Hobbs, (Nixon) who during sex with her husband, Steve (David Eigenberg), pays more attention to how long it takes to climax as opposed to just allowing it to happen on its own. Charlotte York (Davis) makes it clear she is the happiest of the group; always with a smile on her face and it didn’t take me long to figure out why. She and her husband, Harry (Evan Handler), have sex three to four times a week.
I wasn’t surprised to learn the most colorful of the group was Samantha Jones (Cattrall) who when she can’t get a chance to screw her live-in boyfriend/actor, Jerrod (Jason Louis), spends time downing glasses of champagne in a hot tub watching a lean muscle bound hunk hump his wife and at one point engage in a threesome. She even has a horny female dog named “Baby” that thinks just like her when it comes to needing sex (the dog is always seen humping something). When she isn’t standing out from the rest of crowd in her bright red or yellow outfits, Samantha makes her presence known in other ways like cussing out loud during an auction when someone richer than she outbids her and saying the word “sex” in front of Davis’ young adopted daughter.
I have to say though from a man’s standpoint (and I am well aware this will cause me to lose any brownie points with any potential women interested in meeting me, if any), the character I most identified with in Sex and the City is Noth’s Mr. Big when it comes to romance and weddings. He has the same opinion about having a fancy wedding as I do. Early on, he tells Parker he’d be just as happy marrying her at City Hall.
I agree. When it comes to lavish, expensive weddings and having to get all dressed up to impress the guests, I’d just as well marry the one I love at City Hall or in Las Vegas where a group of Elvis impersonators are the guests and one of them is best man, and then have a small reception with a group of close friends.
I don’t mind sitting down with someone to see a romantic film. I am not ashamed to say I got a little emotional watching Titanic (1997) and no, it wasn't when Kate Winslet finds out boyfriend Leonardo DiCaprio freezes to death in the cold Atlantic waters as they wait for rescue.
When it comes to the subject of sex, Sex and the City-The Movie, is just about a group of four desperate sexually active women whose only real interest when it comes to men is getting laid, whether they're married or single.
Perhaps romance really is dead.
©6/3/08
No happy ending for these two young lovers whose lives lie in the hands of ‘The Strangers’
The Strangers «½
R, 90m., 2008
Cast & Credits: Scott Speedman (James Hoyt), Liv Tyler (Kristen McKay), Gemma Ward (Dollface), Kip Weeks (The Man in the Mask), Laura Margolis (Pin-Up Girl), Glenn Howerton (Mike), Alex Fisher (Mormon Boy #1), Peter Clayton-Luce (Mormon Boy #2). Written and directed by Bryan Bertino.
Last December, I heard a tragic news story about an elderly woman who, on a Sunday night, was at home with her husband. Upon checking to see who rang the doorbell, the woman was shot and killed by an unknown assailant the moment she opened the door. Other than being a random case of homicide, there was no other evidence that whoever killed the woman had been planning a home robbery.
It was just another random senseless killing or home invasion which is what The Strangers is all about. The film opens with a brief narration from an unseen person who talks about how millions of such deadly home invasions like the one seen in this film take place throughout America and how this particular case is based on a true story.
If the script written by director Brian Bertino made me want to care about the young couple played by Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler who are terrorized by some young masked psycho thrill killers, I would have exhibited some anger towards the ones causing their predicament and hold out some hope for these doomed lovers.
Trouble is we don’t know too much about them except that both Speedman and Tyler are boyfriend and girlfriend. At a dinner party, Speedman proposes to Tyler to marry her and for reasons we don't quite learn, turns him down. He takes her to his parents beautiful but isolated suburban home where he already had a romantic evening planned.
As the two are about ready to settle down for the night, the doorbell rings. A young girl asks them “Is Tyler there?” Speedman tells her she has the wrong house and she leaves. Then he goes off to the store to get some cigarettes leaving Tyler alone for a few minutes while she stays warm in front of the fireplace.
Then the doorbell rings again and “the Stranger” asks the same question when Tyler asks who it is. What follows is routine. Tyler gets scared when the person refuses to leave, continuing to bang more loudly on the front door. She grabs a knife to protect herself and then predictably walks towards some closed curtains. If this same type of filmmaking exercise were not repeated in most every other predictable so-called suspense film (i.e. young woman left alone inside empty house being terrorized by unseen assailants), I might have jumped the minute Tyler opens up the curtains to see a masked stranger staring at back her.
Trouble is I already knew who was out there lurking about thanks to the film’s trailer. Speedman eventually arrives though at first refuses to believe Tyler that someone is watching them.
When Speedman's pal (Glenn Howerton) stops by the house to pick him up, I'd have said to myself telling him to look behind him as he is walking throughout the house trying to figure out what’s happening. I already knew, however, he was going to be the next victim one way or the other.
Which brings me to the question of why is all this happening to the young couple? That question is asked in the film’s only creepiest sequence uttered in a scene from the trailer.
When Tyler asks the masked strangers why are they terrorizing them, a masked young teenager says, “Because you were home.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the kind of answer such cold-blooded killers tell detectives during their investigations as to finding out what their motive was. It was probably the answer that assailant told detectives as to why he or she shot that elderly woman who all she was doing was answering the door to see who it was.
The Strangers is not a thriller. It’s not even a horror movie despite the one poster I have seen showing the three masked killers. It’s just one example among those millions of deadly home invasions the narrator said in the beginning that occur for no real reason other than the fact, it happened all because the residents were home.
©6/3/08
R, 90m., 2008
Cast & Credits: Scott Speedman (James Hoyt), Liv Tyler (Kristen McKay), Gemma Ward (Dollface), Kip Weeks (The Man in the Mask), Laura Margolis (Pin-Up Girl), Glenn Howerton (Mike), Alex Fisher (Mormon Boy #1), Peter Clayton-Luce (Mormon Boy #2). Written and directed by Bryan Bertino.
Last December, I heard a tragic news story about an elderly woman who, on a Sunday night, was at home with her husband. Upon checking to see who rang the doorbell, the woman was shot and killed by an unknown assailant the moment she opened the door. Other than being a random case of homicide, there was no other evidence that whoever killed the woman had been planning a home robbery.
It was just another random senseless killing or home invasion which is what The Strangers is all about. The film opens with a brief narration from an unseen person who talks about how millions of such deadly home invasions like the one seen in this film take place throughout America and how this particular case is based on a true story.
If the script written by director Brian Bertino made me want to care about the young couple played by Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler who are terrorized by some young masked psycho thrill killers, I would have exhibited some anger towards the ones causing their predicament and hold out some hope for these doomed lovers.
Trouble is we don’t know too much about them except that both Speedman and Tyler are boyfriend and girlfriend. At a dinner party, Speedman proposes to Tyler to marry her and for reasons we don't quite learn, turns him down. He takes her to his parents beautiful but isolated suburban home where he already had a romantic evening planned.
As the two are about ready to settle down for the night, the doorbell rings. A young girl asks them “Is Tyler there?” Speedman tells her she has the wrong house and she leaves. Then he goes off to the store to get some cigarettes leaving Tyler alone for a few minutes while she stays warm in front of the fireplace.
Then the doorbell rings again and “the Stranger” asks the same question when Tyler asks who it is. What follows is routine. Tyler gets scared when the person refuses to leave, continuing to bang more loudly on the front door. She grabs a knife to protect herself and then predictably walks towards some closed curtains. If this same type of filmmaking exercise were not repeated in most every other predictable so-called suspense film (i.e. young woman left alone inside empty house being terrorized by unseen assailants), I might have jumped the minute Tyler opens up the curtains to see a masked stranger staring at back her.
Trouble is I already knew who was out there lurking about thanks to the film’s trailer. Speedman eventually arrives though at first refuses to believe Tyler that someone is watching them.
When Speedman's pal (Glenn Howerton) stops by the house to pick him up, I'd have said to myself telling him to look behind him as he is walking throughout the house trying to figure out what’s happening. I already knew, however, he was going to be the next victim one way or the other.
Which brings me to the question of why is all this happening to the young couple? That question is asked in the film’s only creepiest sequence uttered in a scene from the trailer.
When Tyler asks the masked strangers why are they terrorizing them, a masked young teenager says, “Because you were home.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the kind of answer such cold-blooded killers tell detectives during their investigations as to finding out what their motive was. It was probably the answer that assailant told detectives as to why he or she shot that elderly woman who all she was doing was answering the door to see who it was.
The Strangers is not a thriller. It’s not even a horror movie despite the one poster I have seen showing the three masked killers. It’s just one example among those millions of deadly home invasions the narrator said in the beginning that occur for no real reason other than the fact, it happened all because the residents were home.
©6/3/08
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