Real Time With Bill Maher: The Hypocrisy of Evangelical Christians

Source:The New Democrat

I’m going to be careful here, because there some actual Christians who I actually respect, including Protestants and Evangelicals and who are also still living. And when I think of Christianity and Christians as someone who isn’t, I think of these people and I think of their groups. And all of those charities that they run. That house the homeless, feed the hungry, some groups even go as far as educating the ignorant so they can get themselves a good job. All things that the so-called Christian-Right and a certain segment of the Tea Party views as socialism or communism.

When I think of Christians, I don’t think of Michelle Bachmann, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, all these so-called leaders of the Christian-Right. Who go out of their of putting people down and hating and saying so many horrible things about people who don’t live exactly the way they do, or look at the world exactly as they do. You know, I’m happy to look at those people as fascists, statists, theocrats, hypocrites, especially when they are preaching against big government. Liars, crooks, assholes, bullshit artists, con-people, all of those labels would fit them perfectly. But calling them Christians would be an insult to Christians.

There are people who are truly religious and actually believe in the religion that they say they follow. Those people I respect, even if I disagree with their religion. Christianity especially as it relates to lifestyle, is simply too conservative for me, but so is Islam. But I can respect people who truly believe in and follow the values of those religions. But what I can’t respect are people who use a great religion like Christianity to put down other people simply because they disagree with them. Those people are assholes and make Americans look as stupid as we get stereotyped as.

Real Time With Bill Maher: If Jesus Ran The Republican Nomination For President

Source:The New Democrat

If Jesus ran the Republican nomination for President, every single presidential candidate the GOP had back in 2011-12 would’ve been disqualified. Except for maybe Ron Paul, who is a good-natured doctor, who doesn’t go out of his way to put people down and actually believes in live and let live and treat others as you would want to be treated. You know, real Christian values that the other candidates up there, the Tea Party and Christian Right views as socialism or communism. Which is my point about Christianity, there’s Christianity that comes from the Bible. And there’s Christianity that so-called Christians like to make up to suit their own political needs.

I’m starting to think the term Christian-Right is offensive to actual Christians and I’m serious about that, because I use that term all the time. And there are Christians who are good people and truly live up to Christian values and the Ten Commandants. And then there are Christians who use Christianity to appeal to Christians to gain their political support on one hand. But on the other hand go out of their way to put people down who don’t live exactly the way they do and don’t look at America and the world the exact way that they do. I’m not sure even Religious-Right is an accurate term for people who use Christianity to suit their political goals, but don’t actually believe in what they claim they preach.

I love terms like Neoconservative, right-wing fascist to describe people who wouldn’t know what Christianity and conservatism really is if it kicked them in balls. Or in a women’s case, punched them in the nose. Because a lot of what is supposed to be conservatism today, looks nothing like it did in the 1960s and perhaps even 1970s, that looks more like conservative libertarianism or even libertarianism today. I mean Jesus Christ and Barry Goldwater today sure as hell couldn’t get nominated by the Republican Party today, at least at the national level. Why, because they believe in very different things than the far-right of that party that now has so much influence.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the far-right in the GOP was looked down upon like mental patients that were on the loose and needed to be brought back to their mental hospital. Today Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum are treated like mainstream serious presidential candidates. That is how much the GOP has changed in just forty-years where freakin Barry Goldwater would look like a freakin liberal or libertarian today. Mr. Conservative Barry Goldwater looking like a liberal, how times have changed in the Republican Party.

Al Pacino & Robert DeNiro: Heat (1995) Diner Scene

Source:Zavvi- Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the best scene from Heat (1995)

Source:The New Democrat

“The camera cuts to two men, sitting across from each other at a table in an American diner, surrounded by the hubbub of the other restaurant guests and staff.

The cups of coffee are barely touched, no food is nibbled on, the pair of men are far too busy trying to understand each other a little better.

And they soon realise that despite the fact they live on opposite sides of the law, that’s actually where the differences between them end.

They are two sides of the same coin, sharing the same understanding, and have a level of respect for one another too.”

From Zavvi 

“One of the best scenes in any recent movie. Showing that even though people can be on opposite sides of the law or the spectrum they can appreciate each other having similar character traits/qualities. This is from a movie that should be how most movies are made. There is no real bad guy. In the end you have to likable protagonists which is why this movie is so great. You can relate to both main characters. Here is the scene with no score since people didnt really like that. Please like and comment :)” 

Source:Rob Rash- Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the best scene from Heat (1995)

From Rob Rush 

“Master criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) is trying to control the rogue actions of one of his men, while also planning one last big heist before retiring. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Hanna (Al Pacino) attempts to track down McCauley as he deals with the chaos in his own life, including the infidelity of his wife (Diane Venora) and the mental health of his stepdaughter (Natalie Portman). McCauley and Hanna discover a mutual respect, even as they try to thwart each other’s plans.” 

Source:Valid HD- Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the best scene from Heat (1995)

From Valid HD 

“Pop culture junkies are perhaps familiar with the name Chuck Adamson through his television work. In the 1980s, he created the series Crime Story and wrote some episodes of Miami Vice, both of which are examples of some of the finest crime fare to ever grace the small screen. On top of that, he briefly appeared in a few notable film and television projects as an actor, including Thief, Beverly Hills Cop, and The Stand. However, prior to his tenure in the entertainment industry, he was a detective.” 

Source:Warner Brothers- Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in the best scene from Heat (1995)

From Film School Rejects  

There was another video about the Heat (1995) diner scene with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. But that video has since been deleted or blocked on YouTube.

Source:Robert Niro- Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro 

This is my favorite scene from Heat and this is one of my favorite movies of all-time and a movie that is roughly three-hours long. But think about it for a moment: a three-hour movie that doesn’t seem like three-hours. The same thing with Casino, because it was one major scene after another with either great dialogue like in this scene, or with a great action scene, like the first major robbery of the movie which is in the first scenes of the movie, or the diner scene that’s towards the end of the movie.

You don’t feel like you’re watching a three-hour movie when it is a great movie with one great scene after the other. Just like when you spend three-hours watching a great football or baseball game. Because you want to be there the whole time taking in everything.

It’s the mediocre or bad movies that feel like they’re taking forever and feel like they’ll never end and perhaps you even walk out on that seem to go on forever. Heat doesn’t allow you to do that, because there’s always something very interesting going on in the movie.

And what you see in this scene are two men who are both in charge of what they do and who lead the crews they work for and at the top of their game. And what they are doing here is looking at each other as human beings and getting to the feel for each other and perhaps even liking each other, because they are both being real and who they are. And not trying to come off as anyone else.

Neil McCauley (played by Robert DeNiro) the bank robber who has one big score left in him. Vincent Hanna (played by Al Pacino) the police lieutenant whose job is to stop McCauley and his crew.

Michael Mann: Heat (1995) Robert DeNiro & Al Pacino Star

Source:Melinda LaFromboise- Robert De Niro, across the table from Al Pacino, in Heat.

Source:The New Democrat

Heat is definitely one of my favorite movies, top 5-10 of all-time and perhaps the best movie of 1995 and even the 1990s as a whole. Which was a great decade for movies and 1995 was also the year Casino came out as well. Both Heat and Casino came out in October or November of 95 and were simply two movies that I couldn’t wait to see. Saw them both on a Friday night when they both came out and knowing I was going to see both movies, sure as hell made going to work those two days easier and this was before I was a blogger-writer.

What I love about Heat, similar to Jackie Brown is the realness to both them. This movie doesn’t try to fool you and show you a world that doesn’t exist for the most part and people who don’t exist for the most part. I love this movie because of the humanity of it. It is not a movie about Devils vs. Saints, but cops against criminals. And the criminals do bad things in this movie and hurt people. But they are professional criminals who in most cases in this movie are only hurting other criminals. And I hate this term, because all people are real and it sounds cliché, but they are real people. With real lives, families to take care of. Who happen to make their living stealing.

The cops are the good guys in this movie like in most action movies that involve good and bad. But the cops led by their lieutenant Vincent Hanna played by the great Al Pacino, is not a Saint. He’s a workaholic, because he spends so much time going after bad people and as a result does not spend enough time with his wife who loves him and his stepdaughter. And tends to only see both of them very early in the morning and very late at night. Why, because he spends so much time trying to track down and catch criminals like Neil McCauley, played by the great Robert De Niro. An ethnic-Italian playing an Irishman, is interesting to me, but perhaps that is a different subject.

Neil McCauley leads a crew or robbers and thieves who are very professional and very good. Why, because they are simply in it for the money and are very calculating in how they approach their work, so to speak and don’t take jobs just to hurt someone or for the thrill ride, because they hate prison and don’t want to go back. So they are very careful in what jobs they take to the point that McCauley has sort of an agent, an adviser who finds jobs and targets for him played by Jon Voight. Who gives him the pros and cons, the price tags of these jobs and the chances of doing the jobs successfully and then getting away with it.

Vincent Hanna played by Al Pacino, is an LAPD Robbery and Homicide lieutenant whose job along with his team is to track down the McCauley crew and put them away. Again Hanna is a workaholic, so putting in the time to put this crew away is nothing new to him and he has the manpower to get it done. The difference being that McCauley crew might be the most skillful and professional crew he has ever seen and it will be difficult for him and his team to put this crew away. Again they are professional criminals who are in it simply for the money. They don’t rape or murder for the hell or thrill of it. But rob banks and other business’s simply for the money.

Heat is a great movie if you cops and robbers movies that are realistic and aren’t cookie-cutter. That are different and clever and even funny, especially with Al Pacino who makes serious characters look like comedians simply because of how he delivers lines and with his ability to add flavor and character to his lines and work. Heat is not a cookie-cutter movie that looks and sounds like a lot of other serious cop movies before and after. That is solely based on style and special effects to look cool. Is has those things to, but with a lot of substance in the movie that the movie is based on.
Source:RYY

Greg Hengler: Catherine Moleski On Britain's 'Free Healthcare"'

Source:The New Democrat

Social Democrats and single payer health insurance and health care supporters would do themselves a huge favor and perhaps even risk building their support for their movement if they were simply accurate if not honest about how the say their system would be paid for and stop calling it free. There's no such thing as free anything that government provides. Even if they borrow the money to pay for some service they are giving their people, their people still pays for that in interest on the national debt. When you are spending other's people's money even for them, they are paying for the services that you give them.

Contessa Brewer who is not exactly a genius and generally does realty TV and technology related reporting and so-called human interest stories and not hard news, figured out pretty quickly that the U.K. NHS or National Health Service in Britain is not free and neither is their public health insurer that NHS also runs. It is paid for by British taxpayers and they pay for their own health care, just like Americans pay for there's. But Americans generally pay for their health care out of pocket or through their private health insurer. The British pays for their health care in taxes.

Show me free government services and I'll show you a beach house with an ocean view located in Minnesota. I would prefer however that you go first though, because producing a beach house with an ocean view in Minnesota would at the very least be a tall order. I would probably have better luck trying to swim from New York City to London, England. The whole Milton Friedman line about spending other people's money is perfectly appropriate here. Because money that government spends of behalf of it's people or even at their expense, does not come from some Monopoly game.

Money that government spends for their people doesn't magically appear from thin-air or some genie wiggles their finger and it suddenly appears. Or they print counterfeit money, well I hope about the counterfeit part, because government does so many things in secret, who knows what they are doing. But we do know that we pay for whatever they're doing supposedly on our behalf through either taxes, fees or interest on the debt. Government services are as free as cable bills or smart phone bills. Meaning not at all and people who want a government that is big enough to manage our lives for us, need to acknowledge that, if they actually want to have the big government they talk about.

Real Time With Bill Maher: Bill Maher On U.K. Conservatives

Source:The New Democrat

The main difference between a British Conservative and an American lets's classical Conservative, for any of you on the Right who is offended by the word real, is that the British Conservative looks like an FDR Progressive. They are conservative really only in the sense that they are to the Right of the British Socialists in the Labour Party and other social democratic parties in the United Kingdom. The classical Conservative in America, is exactly that and what I would call a yes a real Conservative. Not someone who wants big government out of the economy so they can stick it into Americans personal lives and have government tell us how to live what they would call a moral life.

I think a better comparison or debate would be the differences between a classical Conservative and an Neoconservative or in America Christian-Conservative. The Conservative Libertarian vs. the Neoconservative who questions personal freedom and should Americans have personal freedom in a free society or not. Which is a dumb question, I mean seriously what good is a free society and freedom in general without personal freedom. Things like the Right to Free Assembly, Free Speech, Right to Privacy, property rights, the ability for people to make their own financial and personal decisions.

So here are some of the differences between a classical Conservative, people who I respect, but certainly don't agree with on everything and Neoconservatives who, well, lets just say they have a constitutional right to their beliefs and values as well.

The classical Conservative wants big government out of our wallets and bedrooms. As I suggested earlier, the Neoconservative wants big government out of our wallets at least to a certain extent, but as long as we are spending our money the way they approve of. Once we start spending money on things they disapprove of, like movies and music they see as immoral, than they stick big government into our wallets and pockets and try to punish us for what we do with our personal lives.

The classical Conservative believes in Freedom of Religion. The Neoconservative believes in Freedom of Religion for Protestants and perhaps other Christians. But that "Islam is not a real religion, but a political philosophy and therefore doesn't deserve the same constitutional rights. And that Muslims if they are from another country, should be sent home or locked up, because they are Un-American".

The classical Conservative believes in the Right to Privacy. Again goes to getting big government out of our wallets and homes. The Neoconservative doesn't and sees the Right to Privacy as a threat to our national security and preaches security and morality over liberty.

I could go on, but hopefully you have better things to do. I know I sure do and besides would like to save the rest of my material for future posts. But Conservatives in America, again real or classical depending on your sensitivity, are Conservatives, or Conservative Libertarians. Conservatives in Britain are really only conservative in comparison with Socialists over there. The real debate is not between the Tea Party and British Conservatives. The real debate is between Conservatives or Conservative Libertarians in America, vs. Neoconservatives and the Christian-Right.

Fan Fare Music: The Crowded Sky (1960)

Source:The New Democrat

If you are familiar with the disasters movies of the 1970s, Airport, Airport 1975, Airport 1977, Airport 1979 with the concord and I would add Airplane! 1980 in with that because that is about what the 1970s was about, I think you'll find where the inspiration for all of those movies came from. Those movies all follow The Crowded Sky that came out in 1960. Like the rest of those movies, The Crowded Sky features a lot of talented, intelligent, imperfect people who are all going through personal issues that affect in their jobs in the movie that comes out and plays a big part in the movie.

Like the disaster movies that follow, The Crowded Sky is a pretty funny movie with a lot of funny people and characters in it. It also has a lot of soap opera in it with people going through relationship issues, feelings of insecurity, family issues with their kids, like the captain of the commercial plane not getting along with his son. People on the commercial plane not falling in love, but getting romantically involve with each other. The navigator of the commercial plane who is a motormouth and can't shut up about how bad his wife is. The captain and first officer hating each other's guts.

The Crowded Sky is essentially a very funny soap opera for about the first hour and twenty-minutes or so, before the two planes collide in the air. But they collide in the air because the people on the ground who are supposed to be doing air traffic control, are overworked and not paying attention to the two planes until it is too late. A Navy jet and the commercial airliner. This is a very funny and entertaining movie with a very skilled pilot having to make up for his big mistake, which was flying the plane too high. Which is why he collided with the Navy jet.