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I’d just like to brag that our 1-minute, feisty comedy video, ‘I Am a Liberal,’ seems to have foreseen the future. It’s all about the moral values issue that so many are calling a key to the re-election of GWB.
From Ann Coulter:
As we now know, the most important issue to voters was not terrorism, but moral values.
The Mercury News:
Voters who called moral values their top concern went for Bush by 4-1. Those who called terrorism their top concern voted for him by nearly 5-1. Among Protestants who attend religious services at least once a week, Bush won by 3-2, and by 2-1 for those who attend more than once weekly.
Voters focused on four issues: moral values, the economy, terrorism and the war in Iraq. The issue most voters thought was most important was moral values.
For those voters, the choice was lopsided: 79 percent went for Mr. Bush, and only 18 percent for Kerry.
The Star Tribune:
More than any other concern—not job creation, not Iraq—voters in exit polls declared “moral values” their top priority, and 80 percent of them backed the president. Those 20 million voters were at the heart of Bush’s reelection, which gave him new clout in pursuing his conservative agenda.
Check out the video here. A post about the making of it is here.
As I recently noted:
This is the whole Liberal playbook: 1) Say something absurd that has no basis in fact and slams Republicans. 2) Repeat until rank and file Dems think you believe it. 3) Rank and file Dems then figure since their leaders believe it, it must be true.
The Left tried to pass off all kinds of nonsensical statements on their followers. They told the people that we acted unilaterally in Iraq, even though “unilateral” doesn’t mean “us and 30 other countries.” They pretended it would be of great importance to have France contributing troops in Iraq, even though the last time France contributed troops to a coalition, (in the Korean war), French troops were just three-tenths of one percent of the total. And on and on and on.
They never would have dared to try this if they hadn’t had mainstream media in the tank, colluding with them, pretending that these absurd, ridiculous statements merited attention. With the collusion of big media, the Left thought they could fool enough of the people enough of the time to win the presidency.
The Left made a sustained and wrongful attempt to fool the public. But they fooled only themselves. Not only did they lose the White House decisively—they also lost substantial ground in both Houses of Congress.
The Democratic party is being marginalized out of existence by its fraudulent and deceptive tactics.
I hope this election will be the wake-up call they need. Their leaders just need to realize they’re going to have to work for a living. It’s not going to be enough to invent endless attacks on the President. They’re going to have to buckle down, do some hard work, and figure out ways to actually make a contribution, and make things better for people.
GWB’s re-election was a great good, not just for the Republican party, but for the whole world.
We are installing a Democracy in a nation in the Middle East—we’ll be able to stay the course on that.
We are taking the fight to terrorists and those who harbor them—we’ll be able to stay the course on that.
GWB’s policies, so far, have not only prevented another 9-11 from happening here—they have prevented the execution of even one other terrorist attack on our soil—something no one expected in the days immediately after 9-11 had taken place. Now those policies will continue to be implemented.
The good effects of this on worldwide events will be felt a century from now.
I watched the results at Level One restaurant, with a crowd of Conservatives. Here’s a picture from the scene.
That’s Clark, the Line Producer of ‘I Am a Liberal’ on the left, talking to Bob, my fellow RJC member. This is early in the evening—by 8pm the place was packed.
Our provocative, funny 1-minute video, “I Am a Liberal,” is now available online.
Making this was just a blast. I produced and directed. Producing is all about the team, and we had great people. I just want to go on and on talking about all of them, but I’ll try to be brief. Via Geoff Lancaster of production company Shoot LA, we found Director of Photography Christian Hurley. Christian was awesome. The lights, the colors, the camera moves—this show really looks great. On the second day of our 2-day shoot, Christian had a “real,” aka paying job, and he brought us Scotty Battle, who did fantastic stuff. The strip club we shot in on that day looks great.
Moxie did Assistant Producing. That’s right—many of you just read her, but I actually am friends with her. She was great. Everything she said she was going to do happened. She cast the really hard-to-cast part of the Activist Guy (see Cathy’s blog for more info—let’s just say Luke Ford wasn’t available.) In addition to Assistant Producing, she handled Costumes, Hair and Makeup—and took killer stills for publicity.
Our web site is being handled by Elliot McGucken, of the Jolly Roger web sites. As many of my readers know, these sites discuss great books and philosophy, and get 500,000 unique visitors a month.
Bob Gould was our location guru and gave an outstanding performance as The Professor. Bob’s been a professional Location Manager for many years, and has appeared as an actor in many films, including 9 for director Alan Rudolph. I can’t tell you how much Bob did for the show. The production values we got due to his locations are wonderful. He found us a parking lot to shoot the carjacking sequence in that was empty all day, and had the perfect seedy look. He recommended the strip club, which looks supercool, and the perfect place to shoot the Activist Guy scene, a street that was almost an alley where we wouldn’t get too much attention.
Our Line Producer was Clark Baker. Clark is a former Police Officer, and current Private Eye. He’d never done film before but he’s run many operations including up to 40 people, for both the police and for the military. He coordinated to make sure everyone had what they needed and was in the right place at the right time. You can’t even imagine how key this is until you do one of these. The entire day before the shoot Clark and I were the nerve center of the production, instant-messaging throughout the day and solving every question and tracking every detail. One of the biggest compliments I got on the shoot was when Clark told me he’d managed teams that had actually taken weapons fire—both in the military and with LAPD—and some of them weren’t as cohesive as the team I put together for this.
I wish I could go into this much detail about every single person. Brooke Dammkoehler handled our contracts, and made sure we did everything necessary to be fully SAG-compliant, which was key to getting our actors, many of whom are SAG members. Scottie brought Key Electrican Darryl, who made it possible to move quickly on lights and get the special camera moves we were looking for. Robert Light heard about what we were doing at the Ann Coulter event and decided he wanted to be part of it. Coming back to LA after 7pm the night before the first day of the shoot, he scored us some key equipment we needed for a cool shot in the carjacking sequence. It wasn’t exotic equipment but we needed it big-time for the shot. I’ll tell you what it is later after you see the spot.
And that brings us to the cast. I’ve already talked about Bob Gould. We were all just kind of in awe of what he was doing.
Casting Mike Kimmel as the Carjacker was inspired. I got so many compliments from people just for casting him. I’ve known Mike for years, and he’s a great comic actor. He does a lot of skits on Leno.
I wish I could go on in detail about all the actors. James Elden nailed the Activist Guy. Ed Dyer was so funny as the Driver in the carjacking scene. When Lance Frank showed up to be the Heroin Addict, he came straight from the set of JAG. He looked totally army—buffed, straight hair, etc. We thought, no way. He’ll never fit the part. But Clark had the exact kind of Pendleton shirt that addicts wear to hide the marks on their arms. Clark’s arrested quite a few of them, and he was able to train Lance in how to act like a real addict. Moxie did perfect makeup to give him hollow eyes and cheeks. Then Lance nailed the performance.
Paul Lauden and Kerry Stein came to the production via my friend Brad Heller, who teaches acting, and they both did us proud. Doris is a wonderful, sweet girl from Georgia, and nailed the part on the first take. Nia, our exotic dancer, had all the moves, and was a real trooper over multiple takes of the shot where she winds up upside-down. She’s acted in several TV movies and she did the part just right.
We found Paul McKellips on the East Coast near The Leadership Institute, a journalism school, that provided our news desk set. I’m on the West Coast, and I actually had to direct that shot—the performance and the camera move—long distance, by phone. I was on the phone listening all the time they were doing takes, talking to Paul and the crew. Amazingly, it came out great. Paul gave a perfect performance.
Then we were lucky yet again in finding our editor, David Harris. He knows Ann Coulter, and Ann recommended him. I had a rough assemblage of picked takes, and I called him up. At first we thought we wouldn’t be able to work with him, because we were cutting on Bob’s Final Cut Pro installation, and David’s an Avid editor. But I had learned Final Cut Pro the day before—astonishing both David and Bob, who’d never seen anyone learn it that fast. (I’m good at software.) So David came over, and told me what cuts to make. It was a revelation to me. Every cut he made was brilliant. I kept telling him that too the whole time.
We had a great time making it. We try to be funny, but we also have a serious point to make. It’s not that the people we show are representative of typical Liberals. It’s about poking fun at some of the pronouncements of the Left.
I hope you enjoy seeing it.
Per Dick Morris, who worked in the White House and reported directly to Clinton:
Our first shot at bin Laden came in Feb. 13, 1998, when President Bill Clinton’s aides scuttled a CIA plot that had been eight months in the planning to kidnap Osama, using local Afghan tribesmen and to ferry him to the United States to stand trial. Why did they torpedo the mission? Because they worried that bin Laden might be killed!
To quote the 9/11 Commission report: They worried that “the purpose . . . of the operation would be subject to unavoidable misinterpretation and misrepresentation – and probably recriminations – in the event that bin Laden, despite our best intentions and efforts, did not survive.” The kidnapping was blocked because the Clinton people worried that it might be perceived as “an assassination.”
The second chance came when we actually did launch cruise missiles to kill bin Laden on Aug. 20, 1998. (Apparently, if he died in an air strike that would not be an assassination). Clinton ordered the hit, but instructed that the Pakistani Army Chief of Staff be briefed right before the missiles overflew his air space so he would not think them to be Indian and order retaliation. Word leaked from Pakistan to bin Laden, who escaped right before the missiles hit.
The final missed opportunity came in May, 1999 when the CIA reported that bin Laden would be in Kandahar, Afghanistan for five days. The 9/11 Commission reported: “If this intelligence was not ‘actionable,’ working-level officials said at the time and today, it was hard for them to imagine how any intelligence . . . could meet that standard.”
One senior official told the commission, “It was in our strike zone . . . a fat pitch . . . a home run.” But still Clinton’s folks – the same guys on whom Kerry would rely if elected – said no. Why? Because we had just bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by mistake and they were worried about being accused of being trigger happy. (Officials were also worried that Republicans would echo the charges they made – totally irresponsibly and inaccurately – about the August 1998 strike and say Clinton was “wagging the dog.”)
...Under Bush, bin Laden has been reduced to sending in impotent tapes and wild threats. Under Kerry, the same geniuses that let him escape three times will be back in charge running things.
John Kerry has said “I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror…”
Clinton tried running a more sensitive war on terror. He was sensitive about what criticisms people would make about him if bin Laden got killed. He was sensitive about hurting the feelings of Pakistani Army Chief of Staff. He was very sensitive about everything except saving American lives. Cost: the 9-11 attack—3,000 lives.
Kerry’s approach to the war on terrorists is not well-suited to protecting our safety.
