A new era in movies. The Super PAC and changes to campaign financing mean more of these ideological, propaganda style movies will be made. However, it is evident that America is heading to a divorce of sorts; the division between GOP and Democratic vision are seemingly not compatible and could potentially force a split in America, a break-up of what has been the greatest and grandest civilization of all time. Maybe not as bad as Northern Ireland, but the current dark vibes do not bode well. No one wants to be in the middle here absorbing the cross-fire even though there is common ground on the the idea that American do not like deficits, but sure love those entitlements.
—Walter Mead Russell:The growing federal government hired a lot of white collar college graduates, and even today Washington DC and its suburbs are unusually rich and the median educational level there is unusually high. There will be no shortage of thumb-suckers and chin strokers backing up the president’s talking points and demolishing Romney’s.
There are other constituencies with a stake in the status quo. African-Americans benefit from both government hiring and government spending.—Read More:http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/08/12/the-shape-of-the-presidential-campaign-part-one/
The new Obama documentary is shades of Michael Moore in 2004, the same snake-oil salesmanship here cashing in before an election with a very shaky thesis, almost a narcissism of small differences. In fact “trickle down” exists equally well in the Obama version, just that it passes through a massive governmental apparatus before a few drops touch the parched lips of those who really need it, and not the Yuppie bureaucrats, our modern versions of the Ugly American in the la-la land of the West Wing. In the end, its still normative democracy based on property law. But, when you think of it, these types of movies are less dishonest than Hollywood in that there is no product placement and the films are not disguised vehicles to drive publicity and promotion. Who knows, maybe they can make a sequel in four years about how the GOP allowed him to squeeze in and continued permitting Islamic fundamentalists a free reign and Iranian nuclear warheads….
( see link at end)…A low-budget documentary critical of President Barack Obama surprised Hollywood by beating out several new studio titles during a typically slow late-summer weekend at the North American box office.
“2016: Obama’s America,” co-directed by conservative author Dinesh D’Souza and based on his books “Obama’s America” and “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” earned $6.3 million over the weekend after expanding to 1,091 locations, according to early estimates.
Titled “The Hope and the Change,” the anti-Obama film was jointly financed by Citizens United and Victory Film Group — the production company helmed by conservative filmmaker Stephen K. Bannon.
This is the first presidential election in which Citizens United was able to produce a film about a candidate after the conservative advocacy group’s lawsuit to air a 2008 campaign movie about Hillary Clinton made it to the Supreme Court in 2010.
The court’s momentous 5-4 decision that year led to the birth of super PACs and the overhaul of the campaign finance system.
“This film, in my opinion, is the definition of what the Reagan coalition was,” said Citizens United President David Bossie. “The Reagan coalition was obviously Republicans, but it was Democrats and independents, too, who wanted American exceptionalism and wanted to believe and have hope.” —Read More:http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57497785/film-spotlights-voters-who-have-turned-on-obama/ image:http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/world/obama-in-egypt-20090604-bx5l.html
Distributed by Rocky Mountain Pictures, the $2.5 million documentary has now grossed $9.2 million after seven weekends in theaters.
The results put “2016” at No. 7 for the weekend, and on par with “Premium Rush,” a brand-new action film from Sony Corp.’s SNE +0.86% Sony Pictures. That film also earned $6.3 million over the weekend, but from 2,255 locations.
Documentaries rarely crack the top 10, unless they’re from a well-known director such as Michael Moore, noted Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com’s box-office division.Read More:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444230504577613560531023548.html
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…’What’s happening is that people are really hungry for new information about Obama. There really is this sense that he remains an elusive figure,’ D’Souza said. ‘Then there’s a second sense that the American dream is in the balance, the American dream is at stake, and that gives people a sense of anxiety about where the country is going.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2193968/Anti-Obama-documentary-challenges-Hollywood-blockbusters-weekly-taking-6-2-million.html#ixzz24iPyPIbM
Walter Mead Russell:(see link at end)…On the one hand, President Obama and Vice President Biden stand foursquare for the growth of what I’ve been calling the blue social model. In terms of government policy, they want to continue to grow the mix of interventions, guarantees, entitlements and programs that FDR launched in the New Deal, that Lyndon Johnson extended in the Great Society, and that various presidents (of both parties — think of Nixon and the EPA and W and the prescription drug benefit) have extended since.
This is a bolder stance than the Clinton approach. Bill “the era of big government is over” Clinton was a small ‘c’ conservative: he aimed to conserve the bulk of the entitlement state by trimming a few of its less popular features like welfare payments not linked to work. President Obama, who succeeded at passing health care where Clinton failed, has bigger ambitions, and intends to press ahead with the characteristic direction of American politics in the last two thirds of the twentieth century — towards a more powerful, more purposeful and more intrusive federal state.
Beyond that, Obama and Biden will be running on the blue social model as a way of life. …
…The Republican challengers will be attacking this vision head on. They will be arguing that the blue social model is driving us all into the poorhouse. The costs of the entitlement state are relentlessly escalating. Regulatory capture means that the federal agencies supposed to protect the public from the plutocracy end up serving the plutocracy: crony capitalism rather than enlightened public administration is what happens when the state becomes too powerful and too large. They will be arguing that the way out of our present economic stagnation is to unleash the powers of enterprise and competition….Read More:http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/08/12/the-shape-of-the-presidential-campaign-part-one/
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