Went to see Farenheit 9/11 at the new Angelika at Legacy (in Plano) yesterday. First of all, the new theater is very nice (leather seats!), but I personally think the layout isn’t that great, I prefer the one down on Mockingbird by far.

As for the movie, I really enjoyed it. I think Moore pushes his agenda fairly hard in his ‘documentaries’. But, apparently the film is doing well in theaters. I think with the way the media in the last few years has kowtowed to the Bush administration combined with the fact that I believe this administration has been the most devious in recent history, it’s good that people get a dose (even if it might be too large and sour of a dose) of another perspective on the current administration. In a few places Michael Moore grasps at straws (every administration puts on makeup before a tv appearance and every one of them shake hands with foreign dignitaries like Saudis) and is a little too sensationalistic. But the fact is, the Bush administration plays the good ol’ boy network game, and they’re more than willing to pull off the gloves and play dirty (revealing CIA secret agent identities to shut up noisy agent’s spouses) to get what they want.

More than anything that is why I’m ABB (anybody but Bush). Surprisingly, in the last few years in my personal musings and ’self exploration’, I’ve become more moderate. I’m glad people have different viewpoints and I’m eager and willing to hear ideas on fiscal and other policies from moderates, liberals, and conservatives (and any other group). Personally I don’t think any of them have the one right answer, I think different policies will work well in different situations. But at the current time, I have two major problems with the Republican Party:

1) The complete cold shoulder to gay rights. If they even came to the table and the president said on national TV that gays need certain rights (in the speech he made encouraging a constitutional amendment to make gays second class and deny them rights he never once used the word gay or anything like it, denying we even exist) or the party worked with us to compromise on slowly giving us rights, then I’d be willing to talk to them and consider them as candidates based on other issues (other than gay rights/equal civil rights, I’m actually fairly moderate, and personally I consider equal rights for all shouldn’t really have to be called a ‘liberal’ view) and

2) The current administration’s underhandedness and lack of working with the global community. Clinton did a few inappropriate acts with one girl. Yes, it was wrong and bad. Bush has backed out of the Kyoto treaty, went to war with Iraq for extremely questionable reasons when few other nations wanted to, made a laughingstock of the U.N., revealed CIA agent’s identities to shut people up, and much more.

Ok, this turned into a rant. Guess my point is, get Bush out of office and put in an administration that works with honor and completely above the table, and get the Republicans to publicly work with the GLBT community on equal rights, and I would love to listen to Republican candidates views on other issues and evaluate them on an equal par with any other candidate. Until then, I’m ABR (anything but Republican). Which I guess makes me a Democrat.
The one last thing I want to say (somewhat hypocritically I suppose after ripping into the Republican party, but Republican does not always equal ultra-conservative), is I’m saddened these days by the bipolar nature of our discourse in this country. People are titled liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat. In politically-aspected polls, votes continually end up 50/50 or 40/40/20 undecided, which says to me we’re all really torn on a lot of things these days. So many people have moderate views on a number of things. I wish we could lay down the hositilities, cross the ‘line in the sand’, and work on solutions together, that take elements from both sides. Some people have joked about a Kerry/McCain ticket and how ridiculous the idea is to have a cross-party platform. I think it’s a great idea, moderate, with views that represent a large portion of America in the form of two people (who as far as I know), seem very honorable and reasonable.