Topic: Commentary

Our Most Important Voice: My Letter On S1487

By Debbie Boen | July 24, 2007 |

I am providing testimony or comments for submission into the record of S1487 hearings. Debbie Boen, Clarksville, TN 37040

After the election of 2004 mainstream media would not research or publish the following accusations about electronic voting. Along with no mainstream media attention or public outcry, these facts still exist.

• 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
• There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
• The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
• The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”
• Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

«Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Opinion, Politics | 3 Comments

The End of the World on Drive-In Saturday Night

By Christine Anne Piesyk | July 6, 2007 |

The Apocalypse. Nuclear Holocaust. We cold-war babies grew up with the concept. In fourth grade it was “duck and cover” and survival skills that included wiping nuclear fallout off canned good before opening and consuming them. Right. Okay. Got it. Then there was the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, when teachers had us write our names in our clothes so that if we were nuked while walking home from school our bodies could be identified (we lived at the bottom of a hill, less than a mile from a strategic site). Yup. Got that too.

It all seems so silly now. But those times spawned a generation of classic films, some a lot better than others, but all eminently entertaining (and some still downright scary)!

At the top of my list is Testament. It didn’t get wide play, so I am continually surprised at how many people know this film.

Testament is understated. It doesn’t have the huge explosions, the mushroom clouds and the flattening of buildings. It’s much subtler. Ordinary people, ordinary families, going about their lives. It all changes in a flash. Literally. A quick burst of emergency warnings, a brilliant light, and the world changes forever.

«Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Arts and Leisure | No Comments

Journeys on Drive-In Saturday Night

By Christine Anne Piesyk | June 29, 2007 |

We’ve traveled to outer space already this summer. How about inner space now? With Pat Boone as a headliner, how could this version of H.G. Wells’ Journey to the Center of the Earth be anything but a lightweight sojourn. James Mason is the dedicated Professor Lindenbrook, who believes another explorer, Arne Saknussen, has already reached the earth’s core. He’s got a rock with marking to prove it. Entering the earth through an Icelandic volcano, he is accompaned by a stocky Swede, a white duck, the widow of another explorer, and a student (Pat Boone). Along the way, they encounter prehistoric creatures, have a close encounter with a salt mine, and battle their way through a magma flow. Outrageous? Of course. That’s the fun of it. (1959).

«Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Arts and Leisure | No Comments

Burkhart Termination Hearing Will Haunt City Coffers

By Turner McCullough Jr. | June 5, 2007 |

The recent appeal hearing of former Asst Fire Chief Jeff Burkhart is likely to be costly to the taxpayers. A wrongful termination lawsuit can be expected to land on City Hall’s doorsteps. A review of the proceedings would give even Jose Feliciano the chills. Insubordination- not in a coon’s age or a horse’s derriere. Hurricane Katrina would have steered clear of this farce. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: News, Opinion, Politics | No Comments

The Gods visit Drive-In Saturday Night

By Christine Anne Piesyk | June 1, 2007 |

Drive-In Saturday Night will be posted weekly on Fridays through Labor Day. May the Gods be kind to those who celebrate a little bit of yesterday in films now showing in your living room.

My first pick is a film that made it’s debut at the end of the drive-in theater era. It’s an award-winning but far-from-mainstream “what if” flick called The Gods Must be Crazy. Written, directed and produced by James Uys, the story is set in Africa, where a Sho in the Kalahari comes face to face with modern technology in the form of a Coke bottle (back when such bottles were glass) that falls from the sky.

It is a wonder, a “gift” from the Gods that becomes the treasured possession of the tribe, used by all for many things. But greed steps in, and the members of the tribe begin to fight over the treasure, so it is decided the bottle must be thrown over the edge of the earth. So begins one man’s journey to save his people from this now unwanted “gift.”

«Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Arts and Leisure | No Comments

Perchance a Pirates IV?

By Christine Anne Piesyk | May 25, 2007 |

In the beginning there was Errol Flynn. Then Tyrone Power in The Black Swan. And always, a fiesty, pretty woman. A generation ago. Our next swashbucklers were intergalatic — the light saber play between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. Father and son. With pretty woman Princess Lea in between.

Today Johnny Deep swooshes and swaggers (more swoosh than swagger) across the big screen in Pirates of the Caribbean III: At World’s End, another theme-park-ride swashbuckler that is better than Pirates II, but a long way from the charm and manic humor and first run surprises of the original film.

(Photo: Barbossa (Rush), Will Turner (Orlano Bloom), Jack Sparrow (Depp), (Elizabeth (Knightly) and Sao feng (Chow-Yung-Fat)

In the audience on opening night (5/24), fans decked out in Sparrow regalia were at least as amusing and swaggering as the on-screen original, and seemed to be having as much fun as Depp & Co did making this movie in the Bahamas. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Arts and Leisure | 2 Comments

“B” movies for Drive-In Saturday Night

By Christine Anne Piesyk | May 25, 2007 |

It’s summer (or close enough) and for those of us who are old enough to remember, Saturday night in summer meant one thing: drive-in movies. Stuff the car with friends, food and even a few folding chairs, and settle in for a triple feature under the stars. With the onslaught of Imax theaters, air-conditioned stadium seating, and surround sound, most of the drive-in theaters have been relegated to the realm of fond memories and the reality of strip malls. No more sultry summer nights before a big outdoor screen; forgotten is the scratchy sound from the little black boxes that hung on the car windows, or the camaraderie of sharing the contents of an ice-filled cooler, oversized grinders and semi-stale popcorn with the friends parked next to you on “$5.00 a carload” nights.

The movies that we watched live on, though, some offered for rental, some order-able on online, and others now living in “public domain” and available for free downloads. Over the course of the summer, I’ll be taking a look at some of them. Might not be a bad idea to have your friends “drive” to your home on a Saturday night, pop up some fresh popcorn, order a pizza, and kick back for the best of the “B” (and a few “C’ and “D”) movies. «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Arts and Leisure | 1 Comment »

Not so long ago in a theater near you …

By Christine Anne Piesyk | May 24, 2007 |

Once upon a time there was a handsome young man from a broken family, living on a planetary wasteland with an aunt and uncle…he races around his lunar-like landscape on a landspeeder, running errands for his uncle — things like buying androids and robots from very short creatures wearing inter-galactic versions of monks robes — but in one violent afternoon, he finds himself en route to becoming an inter-gallactic hero …

Welcome to world of Luke Skywalker, Director George Lucas’s ground-breaking fantasy that would rev up the imaginations of millions of moviegoers. That was 30 years ago (May 25, 1977). Where were you when Star Wars changed the face of movies? «Read the rest of this article»

Sections: Arts and Leisure | 1 Comment »