Xmas Movie Reviews

Of course, I haven't seen everything that is out, but lets take a look at a few.

1. The New James Bond (I refuse to acknowledge the distinct names for this endless sequelization): The movie is worth the price of admission, which is more than can be said for the last couple. The decision to bring the action up to full speed, rather than slow motion, really pays off, giving the new Bond film a fresh, fast paced, rough and touble feel. Also, the decision to tone down the final showdown (it is a fight over money, not world domination) is refreshing and removes James from the ranks of the superheros and into the ranks of the secret agents, where he belongs. Also, nice girl choices.
2. Happy Feet: My family loved it.
3. Eragon: Hmmm. My 8 year old loved it. This is a problem. The violence in the movie is much too graphic for 8 year olds. I didn't take my 6 year old, and am glad for it. But the movie is too cliche, sappy, predictable and lacking in interesting dialogue to be appreciated by anyone over 8. So if you have an 8 year old who enjoys graphic violence, this is your movie.
4. The Holiday: Great date movie. Silly plot, terrible dialogue, good acting...this is the kind of movie that you can leave to go to the bathroom, get popcorn, slip into another theater for a few minutes and return, without feeling you missed anything. In fact, you could skip the entire thing and feel as though you hadn't missed anything. But alas, some movies seem made simply to warm the wives up to our advances, and this movie seems to fit that bill.

THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS

Thank God for the War on Christmas. Apparently the American public had grown tired of the War in Iraq, and Fox News decided a new war might capture their attention. Like the War in Iraq, I confess that I do not fully understand the goal of Fox's War on Christmas. The gist seems to be that good red-blooded Americans celebrate Christmas and only Christmas this time of year. But the new-age, vegetarian liberals, with their "Happy Kwanzaa, Season’s Greetings, Happy New Year, Felice Navidad, and Happy Hanukkahs," want to include Jews, Blacks, and Mexicans (Fox News has not quite figured out what Felice Navidad means, but they suspect it to be a neo-leftist slogan celebrating illegal border crossings).

One wonders exactly why the expansion of the holiday season would cause such consternation. After all, there were not any Christians at the first celebration of Christ’s birth, just a few Jews and pagans (the wise men were Zoroastrians). I suppose it is the same as the gay marriage problem. If gay people marry then it will somehow ruin my heterosexual marriage. If store owners say Season’s Greetings instead of Merry Christmas, then Santa wont stop at my house.

My spiritual advisor, Jackson Beaman Floyd (lobbyist for big insurance companies), recently reminded me that it was the pagan emperor Constantine who established the Christmas holiday, deciding both the date and colors of the celebration. We English speaking folk probably have Prince Edward to blame for the Christmas tree, having brought them into England from his homeland in Germany in the 1800’s. Of course, the Christmas tree was a pagan symbol generally associated with Solstice celebrations. Same too goes with holly and mistletoe.

The point is that Christmas was already a fine blend of divergent cultures and religions: a veritable poster-child for the new-age, vegetarian liberal’s multi-culturalism. But in the end, perhaps we would be better off as a nation if we cut and run in Iraq and focused our efforts on this War on Christmas. Here perhaps Fox has found a war we can win.

Bush's new plan for Iraq

As Bush meets with top aides to discuss a new plan for Iraq, the rest of us scratch our heads and as the obvious question, "New?" The vast majority of us are surprised only because these meetings send the unbelievable message that the president had a plan at the outset of this adventure. Oh sure, there was that rather vague plan that involved the waving of flags and the Iraqi people welcoming us as liberators. But after you wage a bombing campaign that you call, SHOCK AND AWE, you don't honestly expect the folks who have just endured the best shock and awe the world's lone superpower can muster, to pull out their blood stained flags and waive them at you as you goose step through their streets.

I am not the first to recognize how silly the war rhetoric has become. Some folks inside the beltway have already decided that the time has come to fight the war rhetorically, since the military option has long been over. These folks insist that it is now time to release the lawyers and spinners upon Iraq, craft a careful series of speeches that proclaim our victory, manhood, and honor (image the American flag waving in the background with the God Bless America playing softly). We must artfully blame all failure on the Iraqi people themselves, who as the president regularly reminds us, hate freedom. We tried to give it to them, but they wouldn't take it. Like a bum refusing food, wanting money for wine instead, the Iraqi's refused freedom, choosing violence instead. After a month of blasting the airwaves with this all-American message, we pull the troops out in a cascade of red, white and blue, build a big war memorial in DC to the fallen in Iraq, and call it a day.

Iraq - Baker

I want Baker's job. You get to head up a commission designed to tell the president where and when he has gone wrong in foreign policy. They had over 70 recommendations. I might have had a few more. Funny, there was a time when Republicans were viewed as more effective on foreign policy than domestic.

Anyway, seems it would be great fun to have a national audience as you dress down the president.

The bright side of all of this is that the USA will probably get out of Iraq sooner than later. If I was a betting man, I would say before Xmas 2007. Certainly before the 2008 elections, because Republicans know that our presence in Iraq will throw the election to the Democrats, just as it did last November. The Republicans will force Bush out of Iraq by then.

And the sooner we get out, the cheaper it is for us. This war has cost us 10 billion a month, not counting the initial run-up costs. That's real money, and it has created a debt that my great-grand children will have to pay off.

I don't like to speak for other folks, so I wont speculate on how the military folks will feel about the departure. I will leave that to them.

Now the only question is rhetoric. How do we describe our exit so as to make it graceful? Winning or losing wont do. To win, you must have a loser. I suppose we might say that the insurgents lost, but the insurgents are mostly Sunnis and we don't want to tell the new Iraqi nation that we defeated the Sunnis. Nor can we declare that we defeated the Shiites, for they are the majority of the new Iraqi government. In fact, the war against Iraq was won when we captured Sadam. The invasion always was about Sadam. We probably should have declared victory and left then. But I wont critique Bush's bush league foreign policy. That is Baker's sweat-heart job.

Probably we could exit Iraq today if the Baker commission could just come up with the right words to describe our belated "victory". "Cut and run" wont do, though I kind of like it. And since Baker didn't come up with any good words, perhaps I will try a couple. Here are a few first efforts:

1. Got Sadam!
2. Blew some shit up and blew.
3. Wham, Bam, Democracy, scram.
4. We've done all we could. Now its time for Iraq to show her qualities.
5. Our soldiers done yeoman's work. It's time to bring them home.
6. Mission accomplished: the situation in Iraq is back to normal - everyone killing each other.
7. We said we would bring democracy to Iraq. Well, apparently Iraqi democracy includes car bombs.
8. Merry Xmas.
9. We are handing Iraq over to the Iraqis in better shape than we found it, just as we promised.
10.Victory!

Each suggestion has pros and cons. Bush has proven effective in bold faced lies, so #9 plays into his foreign policy strength. #6 & #7 are tougher because they involve too much truth. I also like #4 & #5 because they utterly ignore the reality in Iraq, focusing instead on what matters to us...us.