Category Archives: Is this politics?

Are we there yet?, film, Is this politics?

Elysium

Matt Damon with gun

I thought I was tired of the blockbuster summer movie busts, but here I am, anticipating yet another one. Basically it’s because this new one has two of my favorite actors in it.

Jodie Foster and Matt Damon are being billed as the stars of the movie Elysium1. Both are known for choosing movies with interesting subject matter, so this looks promising.

Neill Blomkamp, the director of District 92 is also directing this film. Apparently Elysium will explore more of the same types of themes. This time dealing with issues such as immigration, health care and class issues. Seems pretty timely.

Check out the previews. (When I viewed these, there must have been a large number of people at the server because there was a lot of  stutter.  Hopefully  Sony Pictures will correct this soon.)

Jodie Foster

  1. Scheduled for release 9 Aug 2013. ↩
  2. From Wikipedia: The story, adapted from Alive in Joburg, a 2005 short film directed by Blomkamp and produced by Sharlto Copley and Simon Hansen, pivots on the motifs of humanity, xenophobia and social segregation. The title and premise of District 9 were inspired by events that took place in District Six, Cape Town during the apartheid era. ↩
health, Is this politics?, President, race

Joe Wilson and the fringe right

It is understandable that he chose – or as some suggested, was told – to bellow “You lie!” when the President was explaining for the umpteenth time that undocumented immigrants would not be covered under health care legislation. After all, Wilson’s extreme anti-immigrant positions are well known.

Albor Ruiz hits the nail on the head in his column in today’s Daily News. He cuts right through the crap and hits right to the main belief system of the GOP extreme right wing (or is it their middle ground?).

Much of what they have to say, is based in racism and hatred.  Maybe one day, the Conservatives will take over from the hatriots.

Is this politics?, obama, You've got to be kidding!

What Is the AIP?

And what does it have to do with Sarah Palin?

…the Alaskan Independence Party. Putting plunder above patriotism, the members of this treasonous cabal aim to break our country into pieces and walk away with Alaska’s rich federal oil fields and one-fifth of Americas land base–an area three-fourths the size of the Civil War Confederacy.

AIPs charter commits the party “to the ultimate independence of Alaska,” from the United States which it refers to as “the colonial bureaucracy in Washington.” It proclaims Alaska’s 1959 induction as a state “as illegal and in violation of the United Nations charter and international law.”

This is from an article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over at the Huffington Post. Apparently, Palin’s husband was a member until very recently, and Palin herself still has strong ties to it.

Palin’s husband Todd remained an AIP party member from 1995 to 2002. Sarah can be described in McCarthy-era palaver as a “fellow traveler.” While retaining her Republican registration, she attended the AIP’s 1994 convention where the party called for a draft constitution to secede from the United States and create an independent nation of Alaska. The McCain Campaign has reluctantly acknowledged that she also attended AIP’s 2000 Convention. She apparently found the experience so inspiring that she agreed to give a keynote address at the AIP’s 2006 convention and she recorded a video greeting for this year’s 2008 convention. In other words, this is not something that happened when she was eight!

AIP was founded by a man named Joe Vogler who said, “I’m an Alaskan, not an American, I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.”

Apparently, Palin doen’t see the same America as you and me.