wilpharm Loc: Oklahoma

we saw movie 2016 yesterday ( 2nd attempt...1st time sold out)
I believe this was the 1st time I have ever seen a movie get a standing ovation from audience....Take a liberal friend (if you are unfortunate enough to have one)...very informative movie about Obama....will make the lefties squall foul, Im sure...

PrairieSeasons Loc: Red River of the North

Hmmm - I think I'll pass. I have to wash my hair or something that night.

Gnslngr

Nope. We'll be crying for our laughter to stop as we look at you and realize what a moron you must be to buy that pack of bullcrap.

Here: The film is written and narrated by conservative Dinesh D'Souza, who argues that Obama was heavily influenced by what D'Souza calls the "anti-colonial" beliefs of his father, Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan academic who was largely absent from the president's life.

To document that claim, D'Souza travels to Kenya to interview members of Obama's extended family as well as to Hawaii and Indonesia, where Obama grew up. He also cites several actions and policy positions Obama has taken to support the thesis that Obama is ideologically rooted in the Third World and harbors contempt for the country that elected him its first black president.

The assertion that Obama's presidency is an expression of his father's political beliefs, which D'Souza first made in 2010 in his book "The Roots of Obama's Rage," is almost entirely subjective and a logical long stretch at best.

It's true that Obama's father lived most of his life in Kenya, an African nation once colonized by the British, and that Obama's reverence for his absent father frames his best-selling memoir. D'Souza even sees clues in the book's title: "Notice it says `Dreams From My Father,' not `of' my father," D'Souza says.

But it's difficult to see how Obama's political leanings could have been so directly shaped by his father, as D'Souza claims. The elder Obama left his wife and young son, the future president, when Obama was 2 and visited his son only once, when Obama was 10. But D'Souza portrays that loss as an event that reinforced rather than weakened the president's ties to his father, who died in an automobile accident when Obama was in college.

D'Souza interviews Paul Vitz, a New York University psychologist who has studied the impact of absent fathers on children. In Obama's case, Vitz says, the abandonment meant "he has the tension between the Americanism and his Africanism. He himself is an intersection of major political forces in his own psychology."

From there, the evidence D'Souza uses to support his assertion starts to grow thin.

D'Souza says Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, shared his father's left-leaning views. After living in Indonesia for several years, D'Souza said, Dunham sent the younger Obama to live with his grandparents in Hawaii so he would not be influenced by her second husband, Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian who worked for American oil companies and fought communists as a member of the Indonesian army.

"Ann separates Barry from Lolo's growing pro-Western influence," D'Souza says in the film. Obama has said his mother had sent him back to Hawaii so he would be educated in the United States.

In Hawaii, D'Souza asserts with no evidence that Obama sympathized with native Hawaiians who felt they had been marginalized by the American government when Hawaii was becoming a state. D'Souza also asserts – again with no evidence – that Obama had been coached to hold those views at Punahou, the prestigious prep school he attended.

"Oppression studies, if you will. Obama got plenty of that when he was here in Punahou," D'Souza says, standing on the campus in Honolulu.

In Kenya, D'Souza interviews Philip Ochieng, a lifelong friend of the president's father, who claims the elder Obama was "totally anti-colonial." Ochieng also discloses some of his own political views, complaining about U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq and saying the U.S. refuses to "tame" Israel, which he calls a "Trojan horse in the Middle East." D'Souza seems to suggest that if a onetime friend of Obama's late father holds those opinions, so, too, must the president himself.

D'Souza then goes through a list of actions Obama has taken as president to support his thesis. Many of them don't hold water:

_ D'Souza rightly argues that the national debt has risen to $16 trillion under Obama. But he never mentions the explosion of debt that occurred under Obama's predecessor, Republican George W. Bush, nor the 2008 global financial crisis that provoked a shock to the U.S. economy.

_ D'Souza says Obama is "weirdly sympathetic to Muslim jihadists" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He does not mention that Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and the drone strikes that have killed dozens of other terrorists in the region.

_D'Souza wrongly claims that Obama wants to return control of the Falkland Islands from Britain to Argentina. The U.S. refused in April to endorse a final declaration on Argentina's claim to the islands at the Summit of the Americas, provoking criticism from other Latin American nations.

_D'Souza says Obama has "done nothing" to impede Iran's nuclear ambitions, despite the severe trade and economic sanctions his administration has imposed on that country to halt its suspected nuclear program. Obama opposes a near-term military strike on Iran, either by the U.S. or Israel, although he says the U.S. will never tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran.

_ D'Souza says Obama removed a bust of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill from the Oval Office because Churchill represented British colonialism. White House curator William Allman said the bust, which had been on loan, was already scheduled to be returned before Obama took office. Another bust of Churchill is on display in the president's private residence, the White House says.

wilpharm Loc: Oklahoma

not a surprising response, since you have bought into all of Obamas BS the last 4 years or so..I suppose you are a disciple of the wonderful Rev Wright, also,,,, I knew the piglets would start squealing.....kind of hard for you to accept his communist mentors also, isnt it???

the_imaginist Loc: St. Louis, MO

What's the price of admission?

PrairieSeasons Loc: Red River of the North

There are at least three noteworthy things in Gnslngr's post. The first is another example of a leftie making ad hominem attacks when they can't argue the facts of a matter. They second is that he is apparently willing to plagiarize the Associated Press review of the movie without assigning any credit to them.

The third is a bit more subtle, but a huge problem in today's political debate. That is the fact that so few politicians or opinion givers are willing to be candid on a subject. They will cherry-pick the facts and half-truths that support their argument and ignore the rest. It truly makes for boring reading.

Gnslngr

"Ad hominem" is a phrase you apparently don't understand. And that is not an Associated Press review (?). As to your third point, that is a candid assessment of "2016".

wilpharm Loc: Oklahoma

maybe one could say the price of admission is about 16 trillion bucks....that doesnt seem to affect a good lefty much nowadays...OH crap...I forgot its all W's fault...

PrairieSeasons Loc: Red River of the North

Are you saying that your calling OP "a moron" isn't an ad hominem attack?

Maybe it isn't an Associated Press review, but the New York Daily News attributed to the Associated Press. And it is an opinionated assessment, not a candid one.

I'm not defending the movie as being candid, but pointing out that the assessment of it is not. Much like most of the political speech and writing today.

the_imaginist Loc: St. Louis, MO

Well W. was actually handed a budget surplus, but Oh Crap... I didn't say it... you did.


(Source: Congressional Budget Office)

Kit Lens

So as I understand this movie it submits the theory that Obama is intentionally making decisions that are against the interest of America or directly opposed to its interest.
However, it fails to offer any proof of this and in the end is merely the opinion of one professor who is obviously not a fan of Obama.
Unfortunately, many of the people watching this move don't read newspapers, watch or listen to any news media that is in conflict with their opinions and will swallow this conjecture as truth.
Bear in mind that all biographies are slanted. When writing one you can make someone appear evil or angelic and certainly this, "biography" has gone to the dark side.

wilpharm Loc: Oklahoma

Well FWIW Clinton was "handed" the tech boom & W was "handed" 9/11....Oh crap...

the_imaginist Loc: St. Louis, MO

No doubt 9/11 was the most tragic event to happen to this country in our lifetime. But W. started a war in Iraq that was unfounded. That war added to our budget shortfall by billions, and billions every month. At a certain point he should have said as unpopular as it is, I'm going to rescind my previous tax cuts to keep us from sliding further and further into debt, to help fund both of these wars..... And the American people would have understood. But he didn't.

Kit Lens

Let's face it Bush screwed up the economy and everyone knows it. Even the RNC didn't have him or Cheney there and that wasn't an oversight. He was looked at as toxic by romney/ryan and I can understand that but why are they trying to re-instate his failed policies?
It didn't work then and it won't work now.
The main thrust of the Republican Party is, we handed you a mess but you didn't fix it fast enough when we wouldn't let you do anything in Congress.
Now we want you to elect us so we can screw it up some more.

BW326 Loc: Boynton Beach, Florida

I just had a chance to see the movie "2016" and although I did find it somewhat interesting, my overall opinion was that it failed severely in several major categories, which for brevity I will list here. I'm not a professional movie critic by any means so please take these comments and critiques as my humble effort, as an enthusiastic movie goer, to provide honest feedback.

It is painfully obvious to even a neophyte that the movie "2016" makes no serious attempt whatsoever to provide as transition plot device between itself and the original movie "2012" that it was based upon.

Both films can properly be classified in the category "Science Fiction" but I am afraid that is where the similarities end. It's understandable that none of the big screen names, John Cusack, Danny Glover, even Woody Harrelson might not be available for this followup to "2012" but that is no excuse to totally ignore entirely the original premises on which the original was based.

The first question that immediately pops into this reviewer's mind is, "What the Hell does any of this have to do with the Mayan Calendar anyway?" and "What happened to all the cool action scenes we saw in 2012"?

Perhaps, in an attempt to keep this "Low Budget Sequel" in a position that it might still squeeze some profits from the earlier film's success the writers turned what could have been at least a modestly interesting action/catastrophy movie in something that seemed, to me at least, nothing more than a hackneyed political commentary.