The Remakes, Reboots, Ripoffs, and Re-imaginings of Politics
by Leigh ScottActor and comedian Sammy Petrillo passed away over the weekend. Who is Sammy Petrillo? Good question. I wasn’t familiar with him either when I heard the news, but after a few minutes on Al Gore’s Internet I found out a lot.
Sammy was a Bronx born actor and comedian who had some minor success in the 1950s. He took his physical similarity to Jerry Lewis and ran with it. He became known as the “fake Jerry Lewis” after creating an onstage and onscreen persona that mimicked Lewis’ shtick. He even went as far as to hook up with a Dean Martinesque straight man named Duke Mitchell. The real Jerry Lewis wasn’t amused and even went so far as to intimidate others in Hollywood not to feature Petrillo on their shows and bullied Vegas venues into blackballing his act.
Most reboots are epic fails.
The point of bringing up Petrillo (besides encouraging you to watch his funny performance in “Bela Lugosi meets the Brooklyn Gorilla” on YouTube) is to illustrate that the “trend” of ripoffs, remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings is nothing new. Take it from me, the guy who shamelessly made “Transmorphers,” remakes and ripoffs are part of Hollywood history. What is more depressing is the fact that re-imagining and remakes are also part of the political culture.
Our society has a sort of “political amnesia”; forcing us to repeat the same economic and policy mistakes every thirty years or so. What else is the Obama administration but a “remake” of the Clinton administration (with almost half the original cast!)? You can almost hear the pitch meeting. “It’s FDR meets Clinton! We reboot the franchise. We forget about the Carter episode just like we pretended that Superman III and IV never happened.”
It’s the same tired ideas. Same scripted attacks. Same demagoguery. Just listen to mental midgets like Paul Krugman discussing Keynesian economic models and talking about getting the “factories” started. Hey, Knuckleheads, in the modern world the factories are all in China and Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest employer. Let’s get “shovel ready” projects going so we can help out all those Starbucks baristas who are unemployed. Let’s pretend that race relations today are only slightly different than they were in Mississippi circa 1950. These clowns live in the past.
It’s maddening that this amnesia also affects our ability to learn from global history. How well has pandering to maniacal, tin pot, dictators worked out in the past? Why don’t we ask the Eastern Europeans how cool it was to have centralized everything and a government that spied on average citizens? Yeah, that flag@whitehouse.gov thing was a great idea.
I’m sure that every evil dictator started out by laying out his case for evil fascism. Stalin, Castro, Idi Amin, and yes I’ll go there, Hitler all showed up twirling their mustaches and telling everyone how great its going to be living in a statist hell hole. No, it always starts out with smiley faces and unicorns, but it ends in bread lines and political prisons.
While I don’t advocate a wholesale freak-out at this point, a little perspective would be refreshing. Anything resembling a massive clusterfark should ring alarm bells for all citizens, regardless on which side of the left/right paradigm they sit. We should be past the point of deficit spending orgies, head-in-the-sand foreign policy, and irrational discussions about impending Christian theocracies.
I like to smack around my leftist friends by pointing out that since 1970, for the past 38 years, we’ve had 26 years of Republican administrations and 12 years of Democratic presidencies. Yet, we don’t have prayer in school, forced Christian conversion, film and television censorship, book burnings, gay concentration camps or back alley, illegal abortions. Still, you can bet that in early 2011, the news media and the wunderkinds of the left will start crying about Palin’s book banning, Romney’s Mormon proselytizing, and Huckabee’s closet desire to turn the airwaves into 24/7 Christian programming. I can’t imagine what they will dredge up about my homeboy Bobby Jindal (oh, wait didn’t he perform and exorcism? Frack!)
I’ve seen this movie before. Several times actually. It is old and busted. Where is the new hotness?
There is a bright side. The latest episode of leftist nincompoopery seems to be particularly inept. Too many development execs and a weak, first time director. They had a big opening weekend, but their box office is down, and dropping fast. In 2010 and 2012 the other side may have an opportunity to return to the top spot. The question for us is this; do we want another lame remake or sequel of our own? Do we want our own “Transformers 2” or a remake of “Nightmare on Elm Street”?
I dig the original, but give me something new.
I vote that, at a minimum, we push for a re-imagining like “The Dark Knight.” I want familiar concepts and ideas but told with a new spin and by really talented people. I want it to be multi-layered and complex. I want a classic. I want something with staying power that resonates for generations and changes the landscape for the foreseeable future.
Even better, I want something completely original and fresh that changes the political landscape forever. Just look at the cinematic world before and after “Star Wars”. That’s what I want for politics. A reformation. I want to build on the successes of the past and avoid the obvious failures.
I want politicians who don’t want to be politicians. I want senators and representatives who push for term limits, and drastically reduce their pay. I want them all to understand the concept of “public service”. I want a massive dismantling of our government’s bureaucracy. I want a complete rethinking and overhaul of the tax code. I want massive, massive privatization. I want people of all races, creeds, religions, and sexual orientations to put aside their differences and join together under the banner of national pride. I want politicians who not only preach the dangers of socialism, but also extol the virtues of liberty and free markets. I want my fellow countrymen and women to understand that the true path to success for all people lies in self-reliance, responsibility and national brotherhood, not in the suffocating embrace of big government.
Any politician or movement that can capture that sentiment and actually deliver will get boffo box office. I’m talking “Titanic” numbers.
After eight years of George Bush bashing, a financial meltdown and a general desire for “change”, the left waltzed into total control of the nation. The right and the middle may find themselves in the exact same position in a very short time. When we do, let’s not make the same mistakes. Lets not accept another retread, no matter how nostalgic it feels, and demand something bold and totally different.
We are Americans. We deserve nothing less.
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90 Comments
You sir are absolutely one of my favorite writers her.
I agree that would be a winning stance, and one that i would support.
When are you going to run?
I for one am too broke at the moment and need a steady income. I also have no name recognition. yet.
Wow! From your mouth to God's ears.
I'm with you. Anyone else?
Good ideas. Now if only we had any political party that actually endorsed them rather than isolated individuals.
Ideas are dead. This is politics.
Great article. I'm with you. One off note was being able to put aside our differences about "sexual orientation". How do you do that? You either accept the practice as something that deserves legal acknowledgement as a civil rights issue and include it in the tolerance disclaimers (race, creed, religion, etc,). Or you see it as a deviation from an ideal way to live.
My take on it, were I an elected official:
Civil Unions–can be between two people who maintain one household, be it husband and wife, gay dude and gay dude, or your two spinster great-aunts who've lived together since they shared a crib and are now pushing 80. All the same tax benefits, visitation rights, shared property, etc as marriage, but without the religious overtones. This would replace the current marriage license process.
Marriage–a ceremony that happens in a religious edifice, left up to the individual church. You have to have your civil union license.
Leigh, it kind of reminds me that as a species, we humans are generally not nearly as smart as we give ourselves credit for being. Your visions are exciting, nonetheless.
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Why only two people? Where does that preference come from?
Excellant commentary. But ahh, the devils in the details. How do you cobble together a coallition of diverse postions under one great American banner.
As a conservative, the fiscal debt genie has to be returned to the bottle, but a large constituency of the left would fight tooth and nail. Nathan's civil union idea is alright by me-if its confined to a financial arrangement only. The problem is pushing for the adoption rights. ie how its being done in England.
Unfortunatly, any talk of reasonable abortion limits is holy water and garlic to the left. I mean come on, does anyone really want to defend "late term" prodedures like the One has?? Its ok for cable to show gruesome operations, but showing that prodedure? The left would die first. Let the People see that one time and that argument would be done!!!!
"…..we humans are generally not nearly as smart as we give ourselves credit for being…."
Oh so true……sad….. but true!
What is the point of marriage? To raise children in the safest and most stable situation as possible. Romantic feelings are a side benefit – not the main point. It is in the interests of society to encourage this. Does it make any difference to children if it's two men or two women or one man and two women or a kibbutz full of people? Yes it does. An ideal situation would have a man and a woman who compliment each other in many ways while putting a break on each other's worst impulses. That is the best situation. We can't all live up to the ideal and life is messy and we are sinners. That's what lawyers are for. You don't need any "civil unions' which just gives the government an opportunity to endorse something that is not in the benefit of our society. Tolerance does not mean endorsement.
You can establish your mailman as your next of kin without a civil union. Try LegalZoom.com.
Your right it's not the real point.
I guess I should have been more clear. Romance isn't the issue with civil unions, as I proposed. My aunt had the same roommate in her apartment for 12 years. No romance, and in fact, I don't think they liked each other very much. But it would have been convenient tax-wise, as I understand it, if they'd been able to get the marriage benefits of maintaining one household.
I pick two people because I have to vote as my conscience dictates. I don't think polygamy is a route this country needs to take.
Indeed. I'm coming to look foward to a new Leigh Scott article posted here more than just about anything else.
With respect to all, this very thread demonstrates why we can't get to where the writer wants to take us. The broader message was derailed by a debate about same-sex marriages v. civil unions, an important debate, to be sure, but it is part and parcel of why we can't get to the place where Leigh wants to take us. Everybody's got an issue of their own, and the larger vision gets short shrift.
Again, I mean no disrespect to all who have posted here. Just trying to see the forest despite the trees…
Chris
I love it Leigh, well put brother, …amen, …right-on, right-on! The party that puts forth an unabashed America loving conservative, will sweep the field of the our ‘60s radicals once and for all, and their worn out dogma.
It's too late. Government is on a ratchet: liberals grow it, conservatives can merely arrest the growth. Actually shrink it? Impossible. As Alexander Fraser Tytler (one of the Scottish Enlightenment and a contemporary of Adam Smith and the Founders) wrote:
"“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy"
We're screwed. The only thing that could save us would be a new constitutional convention which took steps to outlaw all manifestations of welfare-state socialism. Perhaps, "The United States shall make no appropriation of funds to any person, except in remuneration for goods or services."
I don't mean to sould like i was arguing. I agree with you on the let it be whomever part.
I'm ambivilant about Polygamy (i have no, zero interest in it for myself, but in the interest of full disclosure, I have ancesters who were polygamists). If some one can properly support such a large family, i say more power to you. What is it that you have issues with?
so a side conversation is somehow detrimental to the larger conversation?
do you see any anger or hatred in the threads above? What you see is civil discourse. How can that hurt the larger goal of working together?
The devil is in the details. But for the most part the conservative positions can be a winning formula when presented to the public in an articulate and sincere manner. It's harder to find a good conservative candidate because they have to be able to think and articulate and inspire. The Left just promises more stuff and claims somebody is keeping you down. But the details with the most devil in them are homosexuality and abortion. Conservatives have pretty much articulated a pro-life agenda on the national stage since Reagan. That is good. Prior to Reagan, conservatives conceded the argument. Homosexuality is more complicated. We tend to either avoid it, accept it, or argue against it on grounds that don't have to do with the nature of the issue. We have not discussed it straight on. Is homosexuality just a lifestyle difference or is it a deviation? I believe it is a deviation and there needs to be an argument formulated that is respectful yet honest as to why that is.
so a side conversation is somehow detrimental to the larger conversation?
do you see any anger or hatred in the threads above? What you see is civil discourse. How can that hurt the larger goal of working together?
Sorry, I just do see what you mean.
What do you mean there are no "gay concentration camps"? Have you been to Key West recently?
We're not that far yet. A few amendments would put us on a path back to health.
the way I see it: every one has urges. a person will choose whether to act on those urges. As for myself, I try to control my urges and baser instincts. I try to better myself. My path for personal betterment is not necessararilly yours. I see no need to punish a person's choices unless they hurt others. That said certain behaviors do nothing for society.
If a behavior betters society, i think we should support it. If it harms society, we should stop it. If it does nothing for society, we do nothing about it.
this may not make much sense, stream of conciousness.
I agree with you. We don't need to take that route. But it will be taken so what is your argument against it?
I don't have time to do any research, so this is all unsupported, personal preference. My religion is fairly clear on the issue. Man is meant to be with one woman, and that's that. It's also fairly clear on the issue of homosexuality, too, but it seems that's here to stay and there's no use fighting it anymore. Polygamy though, doesn't have a strong foothold here. All the polygamist cultures I'm aware of take a dim view on women's rights, and relegate women to the role of second class citizens, if not outright property. If there's genuine love and the man can support umpteen wives, good for him, but he'll have to do it under the table. He can have a civil union/marriage with a head wife, but all the rest of them will have to be live-ins. It's probably better for tax purposes, auditing and the like, there there be only two parties. But I also would back a national sales tax and eradication of income tax, and that would nip that problem right in the bud.
In truth, it's all kind of fuzzy. But my gut says no.
I don't think it is necessarily about punishing. What behaviors do we want to encourage and why?
Murder and lying and sex with children are here to stay so does that mean there is no use in fighting them anymore? Homosexuality will always be around. You don't need to endorse it.
Guillermo: thank you for good, thoughtful, considerate insight. We hear so much talk about gay rights, my rights, your rights…but we don't hear a lot about our children's rights. Sure, kids are very resiliant, and we've seen a myriad of examples of kids who grew up to shine, despite great adversity. But don't our kids have a right to be loved by the two people that conceived them together– ideally out of love– with the realization that parenting is not a right but a gift — a calling, if you will—and that our children are precious and important far above our own desires we try to transpose as rights? Or to be adopted by both loving mother and father, united as the cornerstone of a solid, balanced foundation on which to build their life, with the gentle nurturing influence both genders offer in their own right?
I say yes.
Scott has started a discussion by doing a good job of describing the forest. However, if the opportunity arises(com'on 2010) we must prepare now to pick up the map and compass and lead the way through that forest. That means navigating around one tree at a time. Look at the rambling mess in 2008, 06, or 04 for that matter. And we cannot simply reuse our old maps from the 1980s or 1950s. Blogs like this start the process. As conservatives/libertarians, we must decide how and where we want to go before we can convince the country to follow.
Those are all crimes with a victim. Homosexuality, while gross, doesn't produce a victim. No one has ever been seriously injured because an idiot got behind the wheel while gay. Whatever happens between two consenting adults is their squicky affair.
The government should be large enough to protect its citizens' rights, but no larger. Children need to be protected from pedophiles, and murderers need to be locked up.
Pedophilia and murder aren't going to go away, but we have weapons to fight those in local law enforcement departments. The weapon to fight homosexuality is a different one, and outside the government's purview. The government shouldn't care who's schtupping who. Civil unions are a financial arrangement only.
Does that make sense? I'm not sure if I'm explaining it clearly, but I don't want to write a novella, either.
Those are all crimes with a victim. Homosexuality, while gross, doesn't produce a victim. No one has ever been seriously injured because an idiot got behind the wheel while gay. Whatever happens between two consenting adults is their squicky affair.
The government should be large enough to protect its citizens' rights, but no larger. Children need to be protected from pedophiles, and murderers need to be locked up.
Pedophilia and murder aren't going to go away, but we have weapons to fight those in local law enforcement departments. The weapon to fight homosexuality is a different one, and outside the government's purview. The government shouldn't care who's schtupping who. Civil unions are a financial arrangement only.
Does that make sense? I'm not sure if I'm explaining it clearly, but I don't want to write a 1200 page document, either.
Wait until genetic screening allows homosexuality to be identified. I'll be LOL when the gay left and abortion left duke it out!
Seriously, conservatives need to sit down and determine the difference between personal choices that are protected under the constitution, and undermining threats to the republic that must be stopped.
Before you said it's here to stay and no use fighting it anymore. What is the 'different weapon' we should use to fight homosexuality?
Why thank you Pookiebear!
You, sir, are an idiot. You can't spell — "…didn't he perform and exorcism?" you ask, in addition to the wildly incorrect capitalization and other punctuation errors throughout your essay. You call Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman — by any measure a brilliant economist, even if you don't agree with his politics — a "mental midget." And let's not even get into the actual argument you attempt to make, which is riddled with inaccuracies and blather. If you learn how to spell correctly and stop insulting those who are more intelligent than you are, perhaps your arguments might be taken more seriously. But at this point, you come across as another wingnut in the Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity tradition who, despite your blindness, don't seriously add anything to the national conversation except for loud, shrill noise.
There is a huge difference between the Clinton and Obama administrations, and it isn' the war (Islam was always at war with us, Clinton merely chose to ignore that fact), it is Obama himself.
The Clintons are narcissistic.
Obama is a narcissist, a pathological one.
There are no limits to what a pathological narcissist will allow his or herself in the pursuit of their own power or pleasure, and therein lies both our greatest danger, and their greatest weakness.
We are only screwed if we choose to languish in the perceived defeat we allow—don't let apathy cloud your vision. We don't need a 'new Constitution', Hon, the old one ain't broke. We simply need to re-claim the rights and limits set quite solidly therein. It CAN be done; the goal is worthy and workable. Get in there and make it happen. There IS hope.
"If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem."
Look, we all know you're busy fighting for social justice, fair trade, environmental awareness, and freedom from Christianity… So to save you some of your valuable (yet untaxable thanks to your exploitation of 501c charitable non-profit regulatory loopholes) time, you can just cut and paste the following text into our comments:
"F**k Jay and Silent Bob. F**k them both in their stupid asses."
Everyone here at Big Hollywood will know what you mean… Fight the power, yo!
Look, we all know you're busy fighting for social justice, fair trade, environmental awareness, and freedom from Christianity… So to save you some of your valuable (yet untaxable thanks to your exploitation of 501c charitable non-profit regulatory loopholes) time, you can just cut and paste the following text into our comments:
"F**k Jay and Silent Bob. F**k them both in their stupid asses."
Everyone here at Big Hollywood will know what you mean. Fight the power, yo!
Undermining marriage is a threat to the republic.
Welcome to Big Hollywood Mr. Krugman!
Beautiful!
Your moniker is certainly a misnomer. You are doing exactly what you accuse Leigh Scott of doing. It's what Ann Coulter says, "You know what the liberals are doing when they accuse you of doing the same thing."
"…loud, shrill noise" is what your whole diatribe is as well. Also, the "and" is a typo, not a misspelling. Haven't you ever tried to type "the" and came up "teh"? The extra d is probably just the brain telling hte (the) fingers to type and because and is used more than an … a force of habit kind of thing.
Hmm, a leftist prize-giving panel giving an(d) award to a leftist economist. Nothing fishy there.
Yeah let's not get into the original argument because you can't refute anything he's saying. You come across as a liberal shill with his or her head buried in Krugman's lap.
By any measure a brilliant economist…..BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!! Good one!!
ah, and the dissent begins. which is very important for us to work out. I am completely against gay religious marriage. I however do not have issue with a legal and finacial partnership known as civil union. I do not think allowing consenting individuals to make legal decisions for each other on a limited basis is a direct threat to the country. I myself am involved with a financial union….. its called an LLC corporation!! There is nothing in the constitution that I can determine precludes such activities. Physically, such arraingements are self limiting. The problem arises from the advances in IVF technology and the adoption process. The UK has shown that once same sex conditions are allowed, that is the next front.
To move forward, we must determine a policy that realistically deals with a segment of the population who have a genetic component to their lives. we can't go back to the '50s. suggestions?
Paul Krugman is a "brilliant economist"? Is that because he worked as an advisor to Enron? Or maybe because he used to write glowing pieces of fiction about Enron in "Fortune" magazine? Or is he brilliant because he bashed former president Bush?
"Opposite Sex" marriage begins to decline in every country that has allowed same sex marriage or civil unions. Whether it's a cause or not is debatable. Cohabitation becomes more dominant. You can see the same patterns in the U.S. That is not good for children. All of this is a moot point if homosexuality is just a civil rights issue. It's not. Homosexuality is a deviation and should not be encouraged by the government with same sex marriage or civil unions. People can make a legal arrangement on their own in they choose.
If you give up the argument that the government should not be endorsing homosexual unions you will legally set the stage for pastors who decline to marry homosexuals or preach against it to be charged with hate crimes.
It's an issue that church-goers feel strongly about, so let the church fight it. All the gay people I have met, and they are legion, are sex addicts. There's a God-shaped void in their life, and they try to fill it without God. Christians should invite the homosexuals into the fold, and teach them to sin no more.
Happy: What …did you just discover yourself?
I agree with you there. The sexual promiscuity with gay men is incredible. Christians should invite homosexuals into the fold because filling that void is the real issue. The problem with retreating to only this approach is that when you give up the argument in the public sphere they will come after the pastors with hate crimes.
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The decline of marriage and the rise of co habitation are a sympoms of ethical decline. Trying to outlaw it will be unsuccessful. Ignoring it will be unsuccessful. The root causes of decay must be addressed. Statism and the welfare/victim mentality. I can see no constitutional based arguments against their living arraingements. Since it is legally permissable, and encouraged, to form corporations, I see no difference to extending these rights to individuals. Actually, I don't know why they aren't doing that instead of even worrying about marrage. Churches are private clubs. Are they subject to admission laws? I agree with your overall views, but he bottom line is that conservs need to come to a realistic postion. Gays exist and represent a sizable number of people. I hate talking about this topic, I'ld rather talk about the advance of fascism and statism, but the right must produce a workable position in order to advance the country. I think restoring the constitution and restoring fiscal solvency is more important than any long term negative "pro-gay" side effects. Not to mention, what will crazy gay advocates rail against if we just let it go? Is there a fault in my thinking?
Are you serious??? You want to talk ripoffs!! Ronald Reagan TRIPLED the US deficit, W nearly DOUBLED it to $10.7T when he left office, with his Budget (assumed by Obama) projecting a $1.2T Deficit for 2009!
The Savings and Loan failure of 1987, occured 7 years into Reagan's reign…The collapse of Wall Street, 7 years into W's reign!
Carter actually REDUCED the Deficit while Clinton added $1.3T….Again, Ronnie and W added over $9T!!
One more place W might repeat Reagan, Ron had 27 members of his Administration convicted of crimes….W is sure to reach close to that number once all the duplicity is revealed….For reference, Clinton had 0 convicted of crimes…
I love the idiots to that reference the narcissistic tendencies of Democrats…Take a step back and think really hard. Narcissism by definition is a Conservative trait! A Narcissist has no empathy for the plight of others, has no desire to provide societal support, no concern for equality!
Boy Happy,
You give the lie to your monicker. To be progressive means to be enternally p-ssed off.
I'm not talking about outlawing cohabitation. Let's not encourage more of it through civil unions or same sex marriage. The harm comes in the government sanctioning homosexuality as a legitimate institution. The underlying assumptions to that are profound. Are men and women interchangable? That is not a realistic position in the long run. Outlawing something and not encouraging it are two different things. They are symptoms of decline that needs to be countered. But the decline does not have to continue. There can be a cultural renaissance if the right things are in place. Until then let's not concede as many things as possible.
No concern for equality? Narcissism is a conservative trait? Carter's reduction of the deficit defines him as fiscally responsible or a good president?
Oh, wait…I forgot. Do not feed the trolls.
I think I will stick to the behind the scenes stuff for now….
We, as conservatives, are the guardians of the republic. We must determine our core values. There can only be two or three at the most. They must be explainable in simple sentences. Reverence to the Constitution, Personal freedom and responsibility, Defense of same against enemies both foreign and domestic. Those are core values that I think the right can agree on. I think "we" need to read the constitution and seperate the rights guaranteed versus personal opinion. Everything else is superfluous. There can be NO compromise on core values like the RHINO sell outs, or the Dem-lite crowd. BUT, like it or not, we have neighbors we don't like. How do we fit them into our core values? Rejecting them out of hand sends them straight into the enemy camp. Can there be no common ground? I think these are important considerations to break the growing statist stranglehold on our country. All the opposition has to do is promise YES to everything anyone wants to gain their support, regardless of the impossibility to deliver, and blame any failure to deliver on those darns conservatives.
Hopefully Christians have more sense then to preach the "Repent or be punished" message, and instead choose to preach the "God loves you, regardless" message. That message is a lot better at filling the emptiness than the hellfire and damnation one.
Classic example of cut-and-paste historicism worthy of Ward Churchill:
1. Reagan's expenditures succeeded in ending the four-decades long Cold War in our favor; his tax reforms resulted in DOUBLED tax revenues. It came at the price of making spending concessions to the DEMOCRAT controlled Congress. W inherited Clinon's recession and faced the market crises of the 9/11 attack and the panic caused by the fall of Enron, whose abuses and deceptions occurred on Clinton's watch.
2. You neglect to mention the role of the Keating Five (actually four senior Democrats–John McCain was tagged on by the media to make it a bipartisan scandal). Their abuses again occurred during the Carter years. You make no mention of the role of FANNIE MAE and FREDDIE MAC, whose abuses triggered the collapse of lenders, and reform and oversight of which were blocked by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, and the Congressional Black Caucus, including Obama, who received more money from the GSEs in his brief time in either House than anyone but Dodd. (continued)
3. Carter's economic policies gave us such novel new terms as "stagflation" and "misery index." Clinton can claim credit for economic recovery which occurred AFTER Republicans controlled Congress.
4. If you want to engage in a "Culture of corruption" competition, I will simply point to current Congressional leadership and White House appointees, whose combined exposed abuses of tax fraud, nepotism, cronyism, selling influence, and abuses of privilege and power dwarf anything you can point to in the GOP.
5. You display your own narcissism. You refuse to acknowledge that other opinions than your own may be based upon motives equally as altruistic as you claim yours to be. You feel free to assign base or selfish motives to opponents, and then whine about the lack of "civil debate."
Just imagine if we had secured our border years ago, we might be harnessing Obamayouth to go into Mexico and help them care about people. One day you have to realize, America has bought all it needs from China at the moment and then the third world can turn its greedy eyes to another. When corruption driving aid and depressed industry dumped goods are no longer what America exports, there will be peace in middle east.
GOP is DOA: Spoken like a witless 57th stater, that had no direct experience on subjects that it speaks.
You sir are absolutely one of my favorite writers here.
I agree that would be a winning stance, and one that i would support.
Bring back the Optimism. Obama (all hail) gave it lip service, and a lot of us had high hopes, but the follow through…..
When are you going to run?
I for one am too broke at the moment and need a steady income. I also have no name recognition. yet.
Part of the difficulty we conservatives face was best illustrated by P.J. O'Rourke twenty-five years ago, when he observed that you seldom saw conservative mass demonstrations because conservatives all had jobs.
Unlike liberals, we see government as a necessary evil for humans who have flaws and weaknesses which must be kept in check from time to time. Such a view limits the role of government to that of a lowly night watchman, making sure that nobody is breaking in to disturb the real business of America, which is conducting business with each other in an orderly and productive manner. As long as the common order is maintained, there is no need for government interference. The classical model of the ideal conservative leader is Cincinnatus, who three times took up the power of Rome in times of crises, only to return to his plow when the crises passed. He was the model for George Washington, who set the template for all future presidents.
continued…
We do not see government as modern liberals (I prefer the term statists or progressives) see it, as an instrument for achieving a kind heaven on earth. This view requires a government which actively interferes in the day-to-day lives of its people, shaping them into the sort of people who can live in this utopian society. This approach merges the roles of both politics and religion. This model requires an iconic, charismatic leader, whose personal faults will be air-brushed away by a fawning, subservient, statist media.
cont…
For a modern Cincinnatus to prevail, he or she will need to run the gauntlet which we've seen Sarah Palin run in her one year in the public spotlight. She gives the lie to every stated assumption of the Left–that they stand up for women, the 'little guy", and against entrenched corruption and big business, and she's been required to pay an excruciating price. Her personal life, and even her children are fair game for character assasination by the MSM. Under these conditions, Cincinnatus might have stayed home.
Sites like Big Hollywood have a tall order to fill to start the techtonic shift which will need to occur to ensure that conservative contenders will not be required to pay such a horrific personal price.
"has no desire to provide societal support, no concern for equality!"
You might want to look up "assumed premise." What on earth does Narcissistic Personality Disorder have to do with your Twin Pillars of Socialism? No individual can "provide societal support." Only "society" (the mask worn by the State) can, and that only by coercion and confiscation. When it comes to genuine charity, voluntary personal giving, liberals are skinflints compared to us 'selfish' conservatives.
A liberal's compassion is "I gave at the office. Or at least forced somebody else to."
Yes, Paul Krugman is a mental midget. His only claim to fame formerly was that, after Galbraith died, he was the last living acolyte of the Cult of Keynes in America, and accordingly the New York Times gave him a soapbox from which to preach his leftist blather. (Oh, and he was 'brilliantly' advising Enron on the side).
Then last year, a committee of socialist Swedes looked back 35 years and dug up an abstruse paper on an obscure area of trade policy which *by amazing coincidence* happened to have been co-authored by the Obama campaign's economic advisor. Presto: Instant credibility!
The words 'lipstick' and 'pig' come to mind. Or 'polish' and 'turd.'
Nathan, I have been saying this for a while: if i want to establish my mail man or my brother as my next of kin, why not?
Look if I am willing to pay for it, why can't I ensure my sister's kid on my insurance?
why can't my best friend be my family?
But Guillermo has a point too. Why can't i have 3 unions? If the term is no longer marriage it can mean anything.
I don't understand the necessity to prove a romantic relationship to establish a legal relationship.
Let marriage be what it is and let the legal relationships be whatever someone wants.
but that is not the real point is it?
Awesome.
so a side conversation is somehow detrimental to the larger conversation?
do you see any anger or hatred in the threads above? What you see is civil discourse. How can that hurt the larger goal of working together?
Sorry, I just don't see what you mean.
I always find that those who praise the Carter administration and belittle the Reagan administration lived through neither.
I love Transmorphers, I just picked up part 2 on blu-ray. And Snakes on a Train is just as good as the original.
No question.
I love it Leigh, well put brother, …amen, …right-on, right-on! The party that puts forth an unabashed America loving conservative, will sweep the field of our ‘60s radicals once and for all, and their worn out leftist dogma.
[...] Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » The Remakes, Reboots, Ripoffs, and Re-imaginings of Politics bighollywood.breitbart.com/lscott/2009/08/21/the-remakes-reboots-ripoffs-and-reimaginings-of-politics – view page – cached Actor and comedian Sammy Petrillo passed away over the weekend. Who is Sammy Petrillo? Good question. I wasn’t familiar with him either when I heard the news, but after a few minutes on Al Gore’s Internet I found out a — From the page [...]
I'm not really sure what you're saying. It sounds like you think conservatives should just get over it and accept government sanction of same sex unions as part of personal freedom. I do not think the government should sanction it because I think homosexuality is an aberrant practice that is destructive to civil society. It's like telling an alchoholic that their compulsive behavior is just another lifestyle choice.
They should preach both. But you are missing the point. If they choose not to marry homosexuals it will be considered a hate crime.
Here's one case…
http://culturecampaign.blogspot.com/2007/12/pasto...
"Take it from me, the guy who shamelessly made “Transmorphers,” "
…
Why do you admit so easily to making that piece of cinematic suffering? There's nothing wrong with a good ripff, but that is not a good ripoff. I'd have thought it's good common sense: If you don't have the budget for an effects spectacular, don't try to make an effects spectacular. Make something plot-driven, focus on the writing. Play to your strengths, and within your means. Even make an attempt at a parody – I don't know how you might parody Transformers, but I think a good enough writer could do it. But Transmorphers… no. Just no.
Churches are private organizations, as I understand it. I can name five churches off the top of my head that have refused to marry people who weren't members. If a homosexual couple wants a church wedding, they'll either find a church willing to marry them or find God and renounce their sin. Either way, hate crime legislation is codswallop.
As an aside, I think hate crime legislation needs to be taken off the books. We're a post-racial society, after all.
That's bad on Canada's part. Given their attitude towards militant Islam, though, it doesn't surprise me. I like to think that people wouldn't equate not marrying a gay couple to a declaration of war, but I've been wrong before.
I think it is wrong and is not good for society. Think of these emails as a radio message from a distant out post being over run asking for help. I'm in a BLUE state. There's no stopping them here at the local level. I just think that from a legal consistancy view, a constitutional view, and a political strategy, that a "civil union" (no marriage) that combines whats legal now anyway: power of attorney, wills, beneficiaries, etc, and might be a way of seriously uncutting an opposition voting block without giving much away. My state's already creating special laws to include alot of these things anyway. The welfare state buys votes for the other side while bankrupting us, czars make a mockery of our process, illegal immigration hands new voters to the opposition, cap and tax will sink us, but this? doesn't really cost us anything. I'm just trying to put out ideas so that in 2010 we can hit them both barrels. The GOP here is useless, so someone had better start thinking out of the box. BTW I would vote FOR an amendment banning the marriage. Zero chance of that here.
So why so… worried?
[...] this banana republic dictatorship disguised as the new "American Socialism." The Remakes, Reboots, Ripoffs, and Re-imaginings of PoliticsLeigh Scott, Big Hollywood: The Remakes, Reboots, Ripoffs, and Re-imaginings of Politics Let Freedom [...]
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