Free Republic

What a girly-man! I never got the whole mad love for Fred T anyhow; guy gets into the race mid-way, runs half-way, quits early on - hardly even bothered to show up, for pete’s sake! And yeah, he talked a good game - but if talk was all there is to it, I know a lot of good talkers. Fred let down his supporters, let’s move on. And on the whole, even though I don’t agree with half of what he says, I’d rather have MCC than Romney. At least I know what I’m getting, not another well-groomed windsock.

NO, Hillary is NOT a strike breaker. Letterman’s production company cut an interim agreement with the Guild, so that he could return to the air WITH his union writers. Leno and NBC did NOT make an agreement with the Guild so
Huckabee IS a strike-breaker. Which should have been very clear, since he had to cross a picket line to get into the studio. And the pickets were carrying signs that said, “HUCKABEE THE SCAB”. So ignorance is less than no excuse.

Mel Gibson is known in the business as a deeply decent guy; invariably kind to EVERYONE on the set, from his costars to the lowliest person on the crew. He loves his family, supports his church, refuses to malign his appalling father because of the Biblical injunction about honoring him, and struggles with a lot more demons than I've had to face - the price of being raised by such a father, the booze that becomes a kind of poisonous self-medication. He means that apology. Anyone who's known a drunk -- a real drunk -- has seen that person do and say things that would never come out if they were sober. Actually a personality change under the influence is one of the markers of a real problem drinker, as opposed to an over-enthusiastic social drinker. Hate the sin, people, not the sinner. And for heaven's sake, keep him away from Moonshadows.

I posted something from this writer earlier, went and Googled him, and found this. Again, as the mother of a son, this just makes me smokin' mad. Fair is fair, and this isn't; the University hung itself with its own statistics. Where's the ACLU when you need them?!

As the mother of a son, I have to tell you, this guy nails it. The educational system is totally skewed towards girls, and our boys (and men) are paying the price for this out of control gender politics.

Hello, since when is saying something - anything, when the stakes are this high -- excuse enough to act like a total a-hole, let down your team and your nation, not to mention destroy your own highly buffed-up "legacy" -- an excuse for something as clearly unsportsmanlike as a head butt? So WWF, isn't it? Interestingly there's a strong element of damage control already going down, suggesting that the Italian said something nasty about Muslims, and that this was a racist issue. No dounbt if the French can' make THAT stick, they'll blame it on Bush...Cos it's all about how mean we all are to Muslims, right? And that excuses ANYthing, from head butts to subway bombs.

Breaking news out of Duke, regarding the time line of the alleged rape. Cops were there, at the scene of the possible crime, minutes before the victim called in her report (from some distance away) investigating a 911 disturbance call, in which a woman claimed that she and her friend were walking by the place and were called nasty names by white guys. The 911 caller's version of the story of this name calling changed several times in the telling, in important ways. The cops on the scene were there for eleven minutes, found no evidence of anything untoward going on. And it's worth noting that the DA is backtracking on the importance of the as-yet unreleased DNA evidence, saying that a lack of DNA evidence doesn't prove that the guys she's accusing didn't rape her; after all, we used to prosecute rape without DNA evidence, didn't we? Which seems a somewhat specious stance, to say the least; a statement from a guy standing on a seriously leaky raft. Anyway. While I'm second to none in my contempt for rapists, this whole thing is beginning to smell like a Tawana Brawley situation. A number of innocent men were destroyed in that little fiasco, if you care to look it up.

CRASH was by no means an unexpected victory, nor did its win have anything to do with its message, or BROKEBACK's gay cowboys being too - er - hard for Hollywood to swallow. CRASH won because its makers sent out a gazillion "screeners" - free DVDs - of the film, to every member of every union with voting rights in guild or academy awards. These guilds and members are mostly middle aged or older and not into going out to see movies all that much, just like everyone else. So they voted for the one they'd seen, CRASH. It might also be a backlash against the discontinuation of sending out screeners when piracy concerns (and cheapness) became an issue for the studios. But that's what won the award, and I'm hoping this leads to an avalanche of freebies next year.

Myself, I wonder if it might have something to do with the rank and file Pakistani's joyous street dancing Sept. 11th? Or maybe the generally-accepted assumption that they're hosting Osama in some cozy cave? Just asking...

Couldn't agree more. Free Republic is an odd little community, isn't it? -- a heady cocktail of Libertarians and Christian conservatives. We're all at the same party - but we're still trying to figure out what in the world the host was thinking to have invited the OTHER guy...

I couldn't agree more, and I'm well over 40. Homosexuality has existed through the ages, and in all societies. It's been variously tolerated and condemned, but neither social attitude seems to have affected its incidence in the population. I don't like having it hard-sold as a political proposition, either by "in your face" (self-proclaimed) Queer activists, or by witch-burning conservatives. Mainly I'm just tired of people of either persuasion being so endlessly self-righteous and immoderate.

I second that emotion, Dogz. Can we possibly get a moritorium on the use of the word "Nazi", and comparisons of non-party members (I'm thinking of Greer here, but it happens a lot) to actual Nazi thugs? It's so lame, it's so predictable, it's somehow so - choke - liberal - all this name calling. Not to mention all this burn-in-hell-if-you-disagree-with-me Christianity. I don't know what church these people attend, but it ain't mine.

Thank you! And I love the earlier posters who suggest that "this" could have happened to any of us. Any of us, that is, who posed in extremely flagrante photos on gay porn websites. Those are conservatives we can do without.

Good taste in moviemakers, baseballfan. Have you seen THRONE OF BLOOD? Whew. DREAMS is a departure, painterly, brilliant, moving. He's a lot of top-flight filmmakers' director of choice.

How can one not love this guy? He's so refreshingly real. Thanks for the link - I'd been wanting to see this moment.

Absolutely, Cold Heat. Nice to see some good sense posted.

Wom, if you or any other clever Freeper out there knows how to post those listed email links that were put to such good use before in contacting affiliates and the network, this might be a place and time to do it. Nothing like some good hard pressure.

Has anyone heard a peep out of the much-ballyhoo'd investigation into the 60 minutes fraud perpetrated by Dan Rather and Mary Mapes? Please, folks, let's not let this one die without a fight. There are limits even in the rough and tumble of election time, and they crossed the line. Can we put pressure on the network to follow through?

They may well know some conservatives - but they certainly wouldn't have them sitting on their furniture. Not without plastic covers. And even if they know them, they don't respect their intelligence. It's occured to me more than once lately that self-described Liberals, aren't.

Rudy G. and Colin P. Hey, let's run on principles, not "skew"; The Boston Cod and the Breck Girl looked good re demographics. Rudy's a hero to all Americans, and Southerners aren't reflexively stupid about people with vowels at the ends of their names. That sounds like a left coaster's POV on fly-over "hicks". I give them more credit than that. Rudy's got what Bush has; a backbone, a brain, real principles and a clear view of who the good guys and the bad guys are in the world. He might actually deliver New York and New Jersey, too.