Movies to Watch - Game Change [Premieres this Saturday on HBO]

"One of the most memorable moments of Election Night in 2008 came when Sarah Palin joined John McCain after his concession speech. As she walked onto the platform Palin looked visibly angry, not someone resigned to a loss but someone still ripe for a fight. Apparently the reality of the situation had yet to sink in and Palin was still in campaign (i.e. pit bull) mode. What prompted her anger was later revealed by political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin in their best-seller "Game Change" and acts as the climax to the HBO movie based on the book that premieres this weekend. And, yes, she was pissed." [edge]

People who have already seen this movie are raving about it, but it doesn't come without the backlash from the folks on the right - the Reds.  To put it in simple terms, instead of people placing aside their political differences when watching this film, there's the pre-conceived notion that Hollywood was being biased in the making of this film.

Well, I kinda have to agree with that; Where's the first part of the book by Halperin and Heilemann?  You know - the part where Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were at each other's throats?  But place this aside for the moment, because we all know that a majority of the REDs would agree that Palin wasn't fit to handle the job.  And even more were weary of her becoming President if something would have happened to John McCain.  But going back to the book the film is based on - more than 300 people were interviewed who were involved in the McCain/Palin campaign, so it begs the question, how could it be false if all these people were involved in the campaign?

Watch the trailer, it's definitely is an award-winning film and makes for must-see-TV.  It's definitely something Ryan and I will be watching this Saturday night on HBO - 8PM Central

View trailer 1 after the jump

Movies to Watch - Game Change

I'm sure all of you know by now I'm a political junkie, and that nothing pleases me more than to piss off Gay Republicans (oxy), or Republicans in general.  haha, but I still love ya! :-).  I'm just kidding.

Everyone has their views, and I respect that. So long as it doesn't constitute using vulgar words or calling each other names. I'm cool with debating religion or politics.  I enjoy it.

My only thing is... 

I CAN'T WAIT FOR THIS MOVIE!!!

A couple of weeks ago HBO released their teaser for it's upcoming adaptation of Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's book Game Change, and it seems like it's going to be a thriller of a movie.  Just so you know, Mark Halperin was suspended in 2004 from MSNBC for calling President Obama "a dick" on the Morning Joe show.  Regardless, the movie is about all the inside information Mark received from the McCain and Palin camps during the 2008 Presidential campaign.  And it doesn't look very good for Sarah Palin.  I'm thinking she won't be portrayed very nicely.  The movie stars Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin, Ed Harris as John McCain, Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt and many others.

While the book does mention the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama primary fight, their story is not in this movie.  This is more about what transpired when McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton Most Admired Man and Woman of The Year, 2011

Some of them I understand, some of them I don't. I will keep my mouth shut so as not to piss anyone off. LOL.  But just to let you know, the results of the USA Today/Gallup Poll for the Most Admired Man and Woman of they year have come in.

For the 10th year in a row, Hillary Clinton has achieved the Most Admired Woman of the year.

For the 4th year in a row, President Barack Obama has been the Most Admired Man of the year.

But here's the kicker, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, Billy Graham, and Warren Buffett round out the top five men, and Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin, Condoleezza Rice round out the top five women.  Interesting stuff.

Gallup said of the top 10 Most Admired men, four are government leaders (Obama, Clinton, Bush, and Newt Gingrich), three are business leaders (Buffett, Donald Trump, and Bill Gates), and three are religious leaders (Graham, Pope Benedict, and Thomas Monson, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

Of the top 10 Most Admired women, eight are from government roles and two are from television (Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres).

[Source-USA Today]

Betsy Loves Sarah Palin

Watch as Betsy's dream is crushed when she learns not one South Carolinian is keen on seeing Palin become their President.

Game Change - The Sarah Palin Movie Casts Hottie, Justin Gaston

Sarah Palin is looking pretty good these days...  ha, ha, ha, gotcha!  This is not Sarah Palin - it's Julianne Moore - one of my all time favorite actresses. She will be playing the Alaska governor in the upcoming HBO movie, Game Change.  The Hollywood Reporter released this image of her yesterday and I'd have to say, she looks really darn good.

The actress nails Palin's look with a bright suit, patriotic flag pin and similar glasses. She also ditched her trademark red hair for Palin's brown style, which she wears in a look-alike updo.  Production begins on Wednesday for the movie, directed by Jay Roach and written by Danny Strong. Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman are executive producers.  Ed Harris plays John McCain in the film, which follows the Arizona U.S. Senators failed 2008 Republican presidential bid. Woody Harrelsonplays Steve Schmidt, McCain's senior adviser. Temple Grandin’s Melissa Farman will play Bristol Palin, The Hollywood Reporter first reported Tuesday.

How dare they forget to mention the most important actor of all, Justin Gaston to their column.   He's playing Levi Johnston after all; Levi is Bristol's ex-husband.  

Of course Justin is a thousand times hotter.

Remember - We Still Have The Cheapest Gas

With gas prices going up, and people complaining day in, and day out, on how President Obama and our government are screwing with us. Remember, you could be paying $8.04 a gallon, as in the U.K.  People fail to understand that the demand for gas is high; we have more people driving. Not to mention the conflicts occurring in the Middle East, this too is a contributing factor.

So instead of listening to Sarah Palin rant on the "$4-Per-Gallon President," Ben Jervey (Contributing Editor, Environment) decided to take a closer look at gasoline prices around the world. Mrs. Palin might be interested to learn, that the world already has quite a few $4-Per-Gallon Presidents. In fact, the world already has $6-Per-Gallon Parliaments, $7-Per-Gallon Prime Ministers, and $8-Per-Gallon Presidents!

Importance of Religion in a State by State Comparison

click to enlarge

Gallup Poll released a series of charts titled the "State of the States" in early 2009, after the election of President Barack Obama.   

"The series examines state-by-state differences in party affiliation, religiosity, consumer confidence, and employer hiring and letting go, based on Gallup Poll Daily tracking data collected throughout 2008." - Gallup.com 

Who would've thought that Alaska wasn't as religious as we were all led to believe.  Interesting, considering the state introduced us to Sarah Palin.  It is ironic though, that Alaska is so Republican yet least religious, could mean only one thing... the state is heading towards a more independent or libertarian demographic.

Kathy Griffin, New Directions, The Beatles, Pink, and a Nun - What More Could You Want From Glee?

I don't even know where to begin.  Santana vs. Brittany, Kathy Griffin vs. Sarah Palin, New Directions vs. Warblers, and who the hell is going to die?  These are all the questions I'm having issues with.

Last week we saw Santana confess her love for Brittany, but Brittany wasn't going to have any of it, because she can't drop Artie at the drop of a hat.  She did manage to tell her that she would be the next choice if they so happened to break up.

Tonight we have Kathy Griffin acting like Sarah Palin as a member of the Tea Party and Loretta Devine as a nun, which can only mean one thing - there's an appeal to our friends on the right by casting these two.  And who better to show their true colors than Sue Sylvester and her Aural Intensity by singing, "Jesus Is My Friend."  Clearly someone will be playing to them.

In addition to that song, the Warblers will be singing "Blackbird" by The Beatles (Kurt)
"Candles" by Hey Monday (Kurt and Blaine), "Misery" by Maroon 5 (Blaine), and "Raise Your Glass" by Pink (The Warblers).  And while New Directions may only have 3 songs up their sleeve tonight, they're all original, with 2 of them released already, "Loser Like Me" and "Get It Right."  Both of those songs rely heavily on Rachel Barry.  The third song will be all about Mercedes, "Hell to the No."

And what of the death of the century?  Did everyone seem to forget about that?  It seems like it vanished from thin air and no one is talking about it any longer.  My thought is, we could either be taken by surprise or it was simply thrown out.  Either way, we will find out tonight on Fox at 8/7 central.  Don't Miss It!

10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan

While everyone is enjoying their Superbowl today, people like Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh will be out celebrating what would have been Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday.  C'mon people, really?  The man is dead, let him rest in peace;  And besides, didn't Ron Reagan, his son, say he had Alzheimer's while President?  That's probably why he forgot he sold weapons to Iran...

"But Reagan was not the man conservatives claimed he was. This image of Ronald Reagan as a conservative superhero is a myth created to untie the various factions of the right behind a common leader. In reality, Reagan was no conservative ideologue or flawless commander-in-chief." - Alex Seitz-Wald.

Reagan, almost all the time strayed away from his agenda.  He raised taxes more than eleven times, tripled our federal deficit, and vetoed an Anti-Apartheid bill for God's sake.


ThinkProgress has compiled a list of the top 10 things conservatives rarely mention when talking about President Reagan:

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to chose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.

6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.

9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”

10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendency.

I, for one, will be over at my in-laws having subway sandwiches and watching a few seconds of the game; I say a few seconds, because I dislike both team with a passion.  Conservatives will always try to picture Reagan in a positive light, when in fact, there was so much about him that wouldn't sit well with conservatives today.  Where was the support back when he was President?  Almost everyone who is supportive of him today, were not there to support him then.

Can "Sarah Palin Battle Hymn" Reach No. 1 on the Billboard 100?

I am very proud to be an american despite stuff like this, because although I disagree with these two, I'm happy they have the right to speak their minds.

Unfortunately people like Sarah Palin are harming our country more than helping it by rallying their followers to hate and fight the other side rather than work out our differences for the better of the country.

Then again, what the hell am I thinking?  I just vomited my dinner out of my nose.  Just Kidding.