At 16 weeks, Whitney Watts' pregnancy was still perfectly normal. It wasn't until 23 weeks in that doctors noticed abnormalities and put her on bed rest. Courtesy of Whitney Watts hide caption
ties that bind full movie 13
But this time Fonda is a father: his own. Almost wordlessly, in a way that also suggests Clint Eastwood or even the John Wayne of "The Searchers," he conveys stubborn bitterness along with the inner strength of a man described by another of the film's characters as "an old-fashioned, ties-that-bind kind of guy."
The ties that bind Fonda's Ulee (short for Ulysses) Jackson have him in knots as the film matter-of-factly begins. Ulee is still mourning his wife, who perhaps shouldn't have been named Penelope in Nunez's occasionally blunt screenplay. Ulee devotes too much solitary attention to those bees. And he keeps himself mostly hidden from the two granddaughters, the schoolgirl Penny (Vanessa Zima) and rebellious teen-age Casey (Jessica Biel) whom fate has left on his small-town Florida doorstep.
"Ulee's Gold" ties its loose ends a bit too neatly with a new neighbor named Connie Hope (Patricia Richardson), who winds up representing the redemption that her name suggests. Even the film's most obvious characters are played with honest intelligence and directed by Nunez with a rare, stirring respect for real life.
Of the many possible safety precautions gun owners could take when they live with children in the home, three receive majority support from both non-owners and those who currently own a firearm. Nearly all gun owners (95%) believe that talking to children about gun safety is essential, followed by 66% who say all guns should be kept in a locked place when there are children living in the home, and 59% who say gun owners who are parents should take a gun safety course. Majorities of non-gun owners also say these are essential measures for gun owners with children in the home.
Americans see many factors as playing a role in gun violence in the country today. Fully 86% say the ease with which people can illegally obtain guns contributes to gun violence a great deal or a fair amount; more than half say the same about family instability (74%), lack of economic opportunities (65%), the amount of gun violence in video games (60%), the ease with which people can legally obtain guns (60%), and the amount of gun violence in movies and television (55%).
While Meredith's voice over talks about ties that bind people defying time, space, and logic, Izzie enters her bedroom. She closes her eyes and leans against the door. When she opens her eyes, she's startled to see Denny sitting on the bed. Izzie says she said goodbye and burned the sweater. Denny says he loved the sweater. Izzie starts freaking out and starts repeating he's not real. Denny asks her to look at him. She turns around. He asks her to touch him. She puts her hand on his chest and he puts his hand over hers. He told her he was real. She can't believe it. He leans in and kisses her. While Meredith's voice over says some ties are just meant to be, Izzie answers the kiss.
Seventy-four delegates were appointed to the convention, of which 55 actually attended sessions. Rhode Island was the only state that refused to send delegates. Dominated by men wedded to paper currency, low taxes, and popular government, Rhode Island's leaders refused to participate in what they saw as a conspiracy to overthrow the established government. Other Americans also had their suspicions. Patrick Henry, of the flowing red Glasgow cloak and the magnetic oratory, refused to attend, declaring he "smelt a rat." He suspected, correctly, that Madison had in mind the creation of a powerful central government and the subversion of the authority of the state legislatures. Henry along with many other political leaders, believed that the state governments offered the chief protection for personal liberties. He was determined not to lend a hand to any proceeding that seemed to pose a threat to that protection.
The sessions of the convention were held in secret--no reporters or visitors were permitted. Although many of the naturally loquacious members were prodded in the pubs and on the streets, most remained surprisingly discreet. To those suspicious of the convention, the curtain of secrecy only served to confirm their anxieties. Luther Martin of Maryland later charged that the conspiracy in Philadelphia needed a quiet breeding ground. Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams from Paris, "I am sorry they began their deliberations by so abominable a precedent as that of tying up the tongues of their members."
This nationalist position revolted many delegates who cringed at the vision of a central government swallowing state sovereignty. On June 13 delegates from smaller states rallied around proposals offered by New Jersey delegate William Paterson. Railing against efforts to throw the states into "hotchpot," Paterson proposed a "union of the States merely federal." The "New Jersey resolutions" called only for a revision of the articles to enable the Congress more easily to raise revenues and regulate commerce. It also provided that acts of Congress and ratified treaties be "the supreme law of the States."
On June 18 Alexander Hamilton presented his own ideal plan of government. Erudite and polished, the speech, nevertheless, failed to win a following. It went too far. Calling the British government "the best in the world," Hamilton proposed a model strikingly similar an executive to serve during good behavior or life with veto power over all laws; a senate with members serving during good behavior; the legislature to have power to pass "all laws whatsoever." Hamilton later wrote to Washington that the people were now willing to accept "something not very remote from that which they have lately quitted." What the people had "lately quitted," of course, was monarchy. Some members of the convention fully expected the country to turn in this direction. Hugh Williamson of North Carolina, a wealthy physician, declared that it was "pretty certain . . . that we should at some time or other have a king." Newspaper accounts appeared in the summer of 1787 alleging that a plot was under way to invite the second son of George III, Frederick, Duke of York, the secular bishop of Osnaburgh in Prussia, to become "king of the United States."
Most delegates were well aware that there were too many Royall Tylers in the country, with too many memories of British rule and too many ties to a recent bloody war, to accept a king. As the debate moved into the specifics of the new government, Alexander Hamilton and others of his persuasion would have to accept something less.
On August 31 a weary George Mason, who had 3 months earlier written so expectantly to his son about the "great Business now before us," bitterly exclaimed that he "would sooner chop off his right hand than put it to the Constitution as it now stands." Mason despaired that the convention was rushing to saddle the country with an ill-advised, potentially ruinous central authority. He was concerned that a "bill of rights," ensuring individual liberties, had not been made part of the Constitution. Mason called for a new convention to reconsider the whole question of the formation of a new government. Although Mason's motion was overwhelmingly voted down, opponents of the Constitution did not abandon the idea of a new convention. It was futilely suggested again and again for over 2 years.
On October 5 anti-Federalist Samuel Bryan published the first of his "Centinel" essays in Philadelphia's Independent Gazetteer. Republished in newspapers in various states, the essays assailed the sweeping power of the central government, the usurpation of state sovereignty, and the absence of a bill of rights guaranteeing individual liberties such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion. "The United States are to be melted down," Bryan declared, into a despotic empire dominated by "well-born" aristocrats. Bryan was echoing the fear of many anti-Federalists that the new government would become one controlled by the wealthy established families and the culturally refined. The common working people, Bryan believed, were in danger of being subjugated to the will of an all-powerful authority remote and inaccessible to the people. It was this kind of authority, he believed, that Americans had fought a war against only a few years earlier.
Against this kind of Federalist leadership and determination, the opposition in most states was disorganized and generally inert. The leading spokesmen were largely state-centered men with regional and local interests and loyalties. Madison wrote of the Massachusetts anti-Federalists, "There was not a single character capable of uniting their wills or directing their measures. . . . They had no plan whatever." The anti-Federalists attacked wildly on several fronts: the lack of a bill of rights, discrimination against southern states in navigation legislation, direct taxation, the loss of state sovereignty. Many charged that the Constitution represented the work of aristocratic politicians bent on protecting their own class interests. At the Massachusetts convention one delegate declared, "These lawyers, and men of learning and moneyed men, that . . . make us poor illiterate people swallow down the pill . . . they will swallow up all us little folks like the great Leviathan; yes, just as the whale swallowed up Jonah!" Some newspaper articles, presumably written by anti-Federalists, resorted to fanciful predictions of the horrors that might emerge under the new Constitution pagans and deists could control the government; the use of Inquisition-like torture could be instituted as punishment for federal crimes; even the pope could be elected president.
One anti-Federalist argument gave opponents some genuine difficulty--the claim that the territory of the 13 states was too extensive for a representative government. In a republic embracing a large area, anti-Federalists argued, government would be impersonal, unrepresentative, dominated by men of wealth, and oppressive of the poor and working classes. Had not the illustrious Montesquieu himself ridiculed the notion that an extensive territory composed of varying climates and people, could be a single republican state? James Madison, always ready with the Federalist volley, turned the argument completely around and insisted that the vastness of the country would itself be a strong argument in favor of a republic. Claiming that a large republic would counterbalance various political interest groups vying for power, Madison wrote, "The smaller the society the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party and the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression." Extend the size of the republic, Madison argued, and the country would be less vulnerable to separate factions within it. 2ff7e9595c
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