It’s earlier than usual this time around, but the year of presidential politics has begun. You may have noticed I added some links in my sidebar for Huck. I’ve met Mike Huckabee personally when he visited my church. Our pastor grew up in Arkansas and he and Huck “go way back.”

I’ve also been following Fred Thompson’s campaign and I get regular emails from them. Mostly “rah rah” stuff and requests for more money. Fred didn’t make the big splash I (and probably he) expected. I prefer Huck, but if he falls behind in the primaries before I get to vote, I may switch to Fred. Fred strikes me as the more electable of the two.

I got the following from an email that Fred’s campaign sent out:

It’s “Tax Penalty” Day in Massachusetts

Mitt Romney says his government-mandated health care plan is one of his most important accomplishments as governor. But what does his plan really accomplish, and is this the kind of health care plan YOU would want to be forced to pay for?

Today, November 15^th, Massachusetts residents who fail to register with the government and show proof of health care coverage will be slapped with a tax penalty for this year!

For individuals, the amount will be on average $219 this year and they will receive a punitive fine as much as $2,000 over the next year.

Small business owner? It’s even worse; you’ll be fined $295 per employee who isn’t enrolled in Romney’s government-mandated health care plan!

So what sort of services does Romney’s health care plan provide?

Per the state website: $50 co-pay for abortions

While court mandate requires Massachusetts to cover “medically necessary” abortions in state-subsidized health plans, Mitt Romney’s plan covers ALL abortions – no restrictions.

After it passed, Romney vetoed dental care for Medicaid recipients from his health plan, but did nothing to prevent coverage of abortion on demand for a mere $50.

Romney has tried to distance himself from his Hillarycare-type plan, but you can watch the video where he takes full credit. There’s nothing conservative about Mitt Romney’s health care plan. It’s a government subsidized health care plan that requires citizens to register with the state, slaps working people with tax penalties, and provides $50 abortions on demand.

And what’s really scary to is that Mitt is more conservative than Rudy and somehow, the two of them remain high in the polls. Does anyone really know what these two guys stand for? If you call yourself conservative, you can’t possibly support Mitt and Rudy.

You may have noticed that Part I and Part II of this series are contradictory. That’s the genius of my master plan, see? I want to encourage both sides of this standoff to hold out as long as possible. If it goes on long enough, maybe, just maybe, Hollywood will collapse. The over-paid, egotistical freak show that has brought us years of pathetic movies (for a retarded $8-12 a ticket) will be brought to it’s knees and we can all go back to the days when movies were entertaining enough to be worth the ticket (the $5 ticket).

The way I see it, Hollywood has outlived is usefulness anyway. This is the 21st century for Pete’s sake! Are we still relying on 10 square miles of Liberal backwash for our entertainment? Let’s move on people!

After the great crash of 2008, Hollywood will be back, they’ll recover. But they won’t have the money or the hubris to spend millions of dollars on craptacular shows like “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” or Liberal bilge like “Lions for Lambs”.

Let’s face it. Hollywood is out of ideas! Don’t believe me? Here’s a taste of 2007’s unoriginal crop:

• 300 (Based on a comic book.)
• F4 – Silver Surfer (A sequel based on a comic book.)
• Ghost Rider (Based on a comic book.)
• Underdog (Based on a TV cartoon.)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (A remake based on a TV cartoon.)
• The Simpson’s Movie (Based on a TV cartoon.)
• Transformers (Based on a TV cartoon.)
• 28 Weeks Later (A sequel.)
• The Invasion (A slasher remake.)
• Hostel II (A slasher sequel.)
• The Hills Have Eyes II (A slasher sequel.)
• Saw IV (A slasher sequel.)
• Resident Evil: Extinction (A slasher sequel based on a video game.)
• Halloween (A sequel to a now 30-year-old slasher series. Seriously?)
• Hannibal Rising (A prequel to the prequel to the sequel to… Oh I give up.)
• Ocean’s Thirteen (The second sequel of a remake. How sad is that?)
• Pirates: At World’s End (A sequel.)
• Spiderman 3 (A sequel based on a comic book.)
• Harry Potter: Order of the Phoenix (Pretty good, but still a sequel based on a book.)
• Bourne Ultimatum (I’ve heard it’s awesome, but still a sequel.)
• Shrek the Third (A completely unnecessary sequel.)
• Evan Almighty (A sequel, and, from what I’ve heard, a suckfest.)
• Rush Hour 3 (A sequel. C’mon Jackie. You’re better than this.)
• Live Free or Die Hard (A very late and pathetic sequel. Go back to bed, Bruce.)
• Hairspray (A remake with John Travolta in drag. I’d rather lick a hobo’s armpit than watch this.)
• High School Musical 2 (Come on! Really?)

Can you see where I’m going with this? Where there any original, creative, and entertaining movies this year? Maybe a couple. But I think it’s time for Hollywood to die. Who’s with me?

The only big drawback in the short term is this: Reality TV shows don’t need writers. Hmm. Maybe if we get the Teamsters involved we can get rid of those too!

Now I want to put another two cents in on the writer’s strike. You can get up do date on the subject by reading Part I.

I think the studios should not give in. Anyone who knows anything about the movie business knows that that Hollywood has been going through a very difficult time financially since as far back as 2005. Studios are losing a fortune to pirate DVDs and illegal online distribution of their properties. Fewer and fewer people are coming to the theater. The financial situation for many studios is truly critical.

The writers union is one of many with which studios must juggle their dwindling resources. Teamsters, the Screen Actor’s Guild, and many others all vie for their cut of an ever shrinking pie. If the studios cave in and give more money to writers, who will follow? Directors? Sound editors? Prop builders? The list is a mile long.

In a very short period of time, all these unions will [descend*] on Hollywood like a plague of locusts, stripping the industry of every shred of profitability leaving behind a barren waste that once was Hollywood.

Besides, as you can see from the paragraph above, good writing isn’t that hard. Even I can do it.

So, I say: Studios, stand your ground! Don’t let those money grubbing leaches threaten you! If they think you can’t survive without them, prove them wrong. We’ll see just how long their union dues are able to pay for their valley condos while they lounge on the picket lines.

(Continue reading Part III.)

[*Edit: Yeah, yeah. I used the wrong word. Why can’t my spell checker catch stupid homophones.]

I want to put in my two cents on this whole writer’s strike business. For those of you who eschew “entertainment news” (one of my favorite oxymorons), the people who get paid to write the scripts, jokes, etc., for TV and movies have gone on strike. They want their union contract to include compensation for digitally delivered media. That is, they want a piece of the pie when their work is enjoyed via the internet.

I think the writers should not give in. Anyone whose “work” is of a creative nature knows how important it is to make sure you get compensated for it. It’s very similar to the “intellectual property” issues that software developers struggle with.

Besides, who really loses here? The studios treat just about everyone like dirt. The egomaniacs that produce and distribute our entertainment think that everyone should bow before their mighty power to… to what? What exactly is the value of big studio production? So they have money. It takes lots of money to make a “big picture”. Why? Why do the studios need so much money to produce a movie when, clearly, the studios don’t want to pay the people to actually make the movie. It’s a circular argument, really.

There are a number of articles online right now that show just how callused and cold these studio execs really are. Michael Eisner (of Disney fame) called the strike “stupid” and “a waste of time.” How’s that for belittling a cause?

Producers explicitly blamed the writers for all this hubbub saying that they refused to “compromise on their major demands.” Well isn’t that the point of major demands? Why did the headline not read that the studios wouldn’t compromise, because that’s equally true. The studios even went so far as to make secret, closed-door deals with the writers and then back out of those deals.

So, I say: Writers, stand your ground! Don’t let those jerks push you around. If they don’t think you’re worth a few extra bucks, see how well they can write their own darn scripts!

(Continue reading Part II)

I got an email from Adam, our favorite airman in Iraq. The first shipment of our chocolate drive has landed safe and sound.

Hello Trint and Tammy,

The package arrived today and it’s in perfect condition. Even the most sensitive chocolates were perfect and not melted! Thank you very much for what you have done, I am sure the patients will enjoy these treats very much. The variety is amazing, I have been here for only two months and my mouth started to water as soon as I opened the package! I can’t wait to see their reactions, believe me they will be blown away!!!

Again thank you,

God delivers,

Adam

I thought about harassing Adam for using the phrase “blown away” in reference to already wounded soldiers, but I decided that was too crass, even for me. (But not too crass for my blog!)

So many of the things we accept as normal, when you think about them, just don’t make any sense.

Why do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage?

And then, “we” (not me) pay another couple hundred bucks for a car alarm that only goes off during thunderstorms at two in the morning.

I’ve been lucky this year. I’ve dodged the various bugs and ickies going around. But this weekend, I finally got hit. I thought I would “work from home” on Monday, but that turned into sleeping on the couch all day long. Worse yet, Tammy’s got it now too. I hate being a transmitter because I know exactly how bad she’ll feel over the next few days.

I got a major part in this year’s Christmas musical at the church. I’m Joseph, Jesus’ step-dad, so to speak. It’s a very challenging role because there’s a lot of emotion involved as Joseph struggles with the fact that the woman he loves is pregnant with someone else’s baby and her story is too wild to believe.

And now for Tammy’s big story of the day:

Power FM, the best Christian rock station ever, has been doing a long running give-away contest called “the Battleship Game”. Each morning a randomly selected caller (They use a computer program to randomly select which line is the winner.) takes a shot. If you get a hit, you take another shot. If you sink a ship, you get a prize.

Tammy has always had supernatural fortune (See I don’t believe in “luck”) in these kinds of things. She’s won more stuff off the radio than I can even remember. But today, she out-did herself.

Over the last few days, all the misses around a recent hit have been eliminated. Everyone knew today someone would sink the ship. Tammy was lucky caller 2. (First time she’s gotten through since the contest began weeks ago.) They were going through the formalities before she took her shot when the phone line went dead. She wasn’t even on a cell phone. No one knows what happened. The DJ’s agonized over it. The phones were jam packed with people wanting to play so there was no way they were going to get Tammy back on the line. They fired up the program, selected a new random phone line and started over. Line 10, which is more lines than they have, so they had to hang up on several people to cycle through to the tenth caller. “Hey, you’re the lucky caller on line 10!” “YES!! This is Tammy!!!”

Unbelievable.

She won a Zune, Microsoft’s attempt to compete with the iPod. (We may eBay it and buy an actual iPod instead.)

In news that would only surprise people who’ve been living in a fallout shelter since the 1950’s (and maybe a few supercilious journalists), yet another study has been released documenting MSM‘s love affair with Democrats.

This time, Harvard University, <sarcasm>bastion of conservative ideology</sarcasm> , and a few other like-minded think tanks conducted a comprehensive survey of political coverage among newspapers, network and cable news, and even public broadcasting. The results are… not news.

You can read an analysis at Investor’s Business Daily, or see the complete data break down at Journalism.org, but here are the highlights.

In print, 6 in 10 stories about Democratic candidates have a positive bias, while less than 3 in 10 stories on Republicans show them in a positive light. On the other side of the coin, newspapers published negative stories about Republicans four times as often as they did Democrats.

I think the number that struck me the most and surprised me the least was that, while seeming to be the most “centered”, public broadcasting aired only eight percent of it’s stories praising Democrats and … get this … zero positive stories on Republicans. Yeah… zero.

The MSM‘s Democratic concupiscence is not only apparent in the way they raz Republicans. It’s also in the amount of air and ink devoted to Democrats in general. Positive, neutral or negative, Democrats get approximately 50% of all media coverage. Republicans get around 25%. Hillary and Obama together have had more media coverage than all Republicans combined. This is even true in talk radio, long considered the point of origin for the “vast right-wing conspiracy”.

Getting into the finer points, I was utterly un-shocked to learn that CNN topped the list as the most Republican hostile cable network. I was honestly a teeny tiny bit surprised to find that MSNBC was the most positive toward Republicans; rather than FoxNews. But then again, MSNBC was also the most positive toward Democrats, so maybe their just a little happier in general now that Couric is gone.

I have a very good friend who serves in the US Air Force. I met TSgt Adam Page while I lived in Colorado Springs. He’s now on his second tour to Iraq. Adam is a dietitian for the 332nd CASF. (That’s the Air Force equivalent of a MASH unit.) Adam also works on the team that transports casualties to and from the unit. He spends a lot of one-on-one time with our wounded servicemen and women.

He sent me a request a couple weeks ago. Due to the climate over there, chocolate is a rare commodity. But during the winter months, it’s possible to ship it safely. Every day, Adam goes through the wards talking with the patients and offers them some chocolate candy bars. He said it’s been amazing to see how much these guys light up when they see chocolate. It’s a bit of home that some of them have not seen in over a year.

Seeing as it’s Halloween shopping season, and our kids at church are looking for ways to serve people, I put a big box up at the church and explained to the kids I was taking donations of chocolate. We got a pretty good response. Then Tammy and I both sent out emails to our coworkers. The response has been huge.

One of Tammy’s coworkers even tried to get Hershey’s on board, but they, understandably, have some policies about donations that we can’t meet… yet. I’ve also gotten some pretty nice cash donations that I’m going to use to buy more candy when the post-Halloween sale prices hit.

This is all really exciting and Adam and I are both hoping in continues to grow. Adam has promised me that when he ships out, he’ll pass the word to his replacements and we’ll keep chocolate moving. Of course, we can only ship it safely two or three months out of the year, but the good news is that those two or three months are when chocolate is most available in stores.

If you’d be interested in donating to the cause, you can donate money via PayPal (in the side bar). We aren’t organized enough to offer tax deductions or anything, so this is just a gift from the heart.

Ever wonder…

Why do banks leave their doors wide open and then chain the pens to the counters?