Hoo Boy Comes The Wonderful Life

 Is It Wonderful This Life?

By I. Rabschinsky

(This is now annual reprinted Blog thing made just for you. Make enjoyment of holidays.)

George Bailey Guy Understanding How We Are To Being Completely Screwed

This is now standard hoo boy holiday good for you Internets Tradition. You should enjoy, since next time it may be costing you -- because in our Big Huge Nation there is becoming no room for opinions such as these. Peoples may go to the Gitmo for having such opinions. Ha ha ha. But, of course; if you have the money, you can move to the Canada. If you are with the huge money, you can have opinions. How fast the Freedom goes, because Freedom. Ha ha ha!

Great-Uncle Yehudi (In The Front) In The Berlin, 1945

Great-Uncle Yehudi, who is older, still, but strong enough to want to be hit by telephone book until falling down, refuses to be watching the television news. Little Rupert Fox, he never watched, but now he will not watch See Enn Enn, Big Mouse News, or Joe Scarborough network (though he has secretive desires involving the Rachel Maddow ["Nice Jewish girl -- you should find way to meet her," says Great-Uncle Yehudi] ). 

He will not even watch BBC or the PBS Very Balanced. "I am angry, Isidore," he says from the big chair which reclines. "I would spit, if I was not in my own house, sitting."

Great-Uncle Yehudi Today, Without Book Of Phones

But what if you are not watching, I say; you will be not the informed! Great-Uncle Yehudi says, "You are watching what somebodys are wanting to teach you. And their lesson is always, 'You have no power! You are betrayed! Love the Hitler! You cannot be fighting the Bosses! Obey the Cossacks! Shut your mouth and convert to be Christian kind of Gentile!' "

So what do we do? Yehudi makes a sour face. "I will be watching watch The Mister Ed." But what do we do if the Cossacks come? I ask, and Great-Uncle Yehudi laughs.

"Izzi, you are my favorite Great-Nephew (I am only great-nephew, I remind), but Cossacks are already here. You have to choose between learning the lesson They are teaching now, or not learning. And if you decide not to learn, then when time comes, be ready to fight."  

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So we make this the annual offering of the Funny for you, hoping that it can remind of the Time Before and make a smile.

I, Rabschinsky, say this say this -- to Moldavish Guy; you also.

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So always in the America there is at this time the fooding, and also the Sports Produkt on the television. Many people filling themselves with Holiday as if they about to be told, "Next year, you cannot eat!". I am thinking they are the hostage of their Hindbrain, which is still Neanderthal and wishes to fight with Mastodon. But, still.

And, I am noticing specific films which is only appearing on Amerikanyets television at these months between like maybe September and the time of your New Year.

My examples: At Passover, some of the television is showing The Ten Super Big Mitzvah Rules, with Charlton Heston Guy -- you know, movie where Moses stop making fooling around to pretend he is Big Guy of the Egypt, and decides to get real job saving People Of Israel.

This requires lots of people walking around, always saying "Oh, Moses, Moses, Moses" -- like, if they say this three times, they will be teleported by magik into better movie. Navarone Kind Of Big Guns, maybe, or Socialist-Colored Panther.

Place Which Is Gone Forever: Amerikanyets Driving To Movies:

"Moses, Moses, Moses -- What is happening with our Drive-Ins?"

At another time in year, they are showing same Heston Guy what is Moses in Big Mitzvah Rules in another movie, Ben Of Her. However this is basically film of Jewish guy who becomes like early Jesus guy, but by accident.

Movie is good; he is Number Forty-One guy in slave ship, rowing like animator for the Disney; there are becoming big boat battle, and he gets to be some kind of honorary Goyim. Later, there is an exciting thing with horses and carts -- but it is not the porn film, so too bad for you. Go to web sites where they have not blocked you.

Charlton Ben Heston Making The Ramming Speed, 1959

At finally, with the Christmas, every year since somebody discover the Secret Of Fire there is this broadcasting this movie, It Is Wonderful This Life, made by Frank Capra Guy in 1947, showing the kind of place which everybody wanted to believe was the Amerika. Small town, everybody knows everybody; values is good and everybody work hard and knows their places.

Just like village in the Moldova, except animals do not leave defecation in the street, everyone is speaking English, and most people have job. Plus concrete used in apartment buildings is better quality.

Every single year they are showing this film. It is now a classic also, like Wizard Of Odd and Potemkin Kind Of Battleship and Mister Hulot Goes To Beach Place. It is as big movie as The Tanks Know The Truth (Very popular Great Patriotic War movie made in the Russia. My Great-Uncle Yehudi claims he is in this film as Extra, but still we love him).

Big Scene From Tanks Knowing The Truth: Are They Knowing?

Well, They Are Tank; You Are Person. You Want To Be That Sure?

It Is Wonderful This Life story is maybe simple: Guy, George Bailey Guy, living in small town wants to die, because he thinks his life is shit. And there are the angels, who show us life of this Guy in the little town, and how he is The Good, and there is the Rich Guy who is The Bad. And George Bailey Guy never gets to do things in the Life because the Fate is not for him.

Then there is mistake with money (a problem made from the Rich Bad Guy), for which he is blamed, and he runs from family and goes to place of Publik Alkohol; finally he goes to bridge to jump in freezing water so his family will get small piece of Insurance money. Very Sad (There is also squirrel in another scene which is sad, but never mind). Also very Petit-Bourgeois.

So, Angel Guy comes to the Earth and shows this George Bailey Guy his life is maybe kind of okay, not so much the shit; and boom boom boom, problem with the money goes away in big scene at end when everyone gives him their money, and everyone sings. So happy, little bells on tree and big bells of church ring; America wins the World War Two and future is filled with television and freeway. The End.

But this is too simple, my friend. No way is actual life like this. So, maybe some of me thinks this is kind of the Propaganda about America, to keep us from seeing the Truth of the Things.

And, there is forbidden version of this film, which is other kind of the Propaganda. Please -- allow me to introduce.

---

борьбе за построение социализма во время Угнетение
(также называется "Любовь и революция" после 1991)
("Love And Revolution", Directed By Frank Kapronovich [1949]; Starring Pytor Chost, Gravnik Bolodorin, Irina Valutin. Special appearances by the Spirit Of Revolution, also Che Guevara, Samuel Beckett, and entire 12th Guards Motorized Infantry Regiment)

SO, movie opens with Guy, Georgi Edwardovich Bailey Guy, at the Bridge. He is unhappy, this Guy; boy oh boy he is like making the panic. He goes to public alkohol place and tries to think, but he only finds himself between the forces of dissent and confusion!

TROTSKYITE GUY: River not so bad, after five minutes.

EXISTENTIAL GUY: Wait, but no one comes. No one cares.

Hoo boy; Georgi is in big fix. This guy has family with SmallChilds, and tiny Policy Insuring The Life -- and he is believing everybody would be better off if he would jump and get it over with, already.

GEORGI: My life is steaming pile of animal things,

because the Rich Guy will always win. Now I am jumping.

But, Georgi is being watched at Bridge. Not by some angel Guy (none of this reliance on things which cannot be proven by good Socialist science!) -- but even better -- is Spirit Of Revolutsya!

(Spirit Of The Revolution Watches Georgi)

And, The Spirit saves Georgi! He takes him to place where they can speak of things, of the Truth -- and slowly, Georgi's eyes are opened to not only the forces of historical determinism, but the inevitability of struggle against the oppressor classes!

GEORGI: So you are saying that when the consciousness

of the People is raised sufficiently, that armed struggle

is not only necessary but inevitable?

SPIRIT: You got it, Comrade.

So, Georgi, now with eyes opened thanks to the words of the kindly Spirit, is seeing that the world is filled with inequality and criminal things so big your head feels like kicked soccer ball. It is like understanding that, not only are you living as Dog, lapping up the vomit of the Rich Guy, but you work in factory to make guns to force others to live like this (Also, the Rich Guy pays you in fake dog vomit and those X-Ray glasses which do not work).

For Georgi, this is whole bunch of dried fish to eat in one night (Like story by that Guy, Dickens Guy, Carol Burnett Christmas, or something). This is the Life? He is asking himself.

A World Of Things For Them, But Not Food For Children

Economy And Bad Fate For Peoples Means Nothing To Them

While The Many People Lose Everything To The Illegal Foreclosure

So now Georgi is filled with indignant and bad feeling for The State Of These Things. He feels the pain of the oppressed, working masses, and is being filled with Revolutionary Fervor -- and he goes to talk with the People in his little village, to tell them what the Spirit had revealed to him -- and the Spirit sends along friend, Che Guevara Guy, to help.

GEORGI: We don't have to live under the heel of Potter's boot!

He's just some, bloodsucking animal! Feeding on all of us -- and I'm

tired of living on fake dog vomit! We have to run things!

CHE GUEVARA SPIRIT GUY: Ay, Yi Yi! You listen to this guy.

The People, moved by Georgi's words, march with him to the place of the Bad Rich Guy, to demand Justice, the chance to make something other than guns, and to be paid in actual money instead of rubber dog vomit and X-Ray glasses which do not work.

BAD RICH GUY: You realize that the manufacture and sale of

weapons around the globe is the backbone of our nation's industry?

GEORGI: You don't understand -- the days of taking your rubber

dog barf are over, Potter! We're going to run things!

MOB: No fake dog barf!! No fake dog barf!!

BAD RICH GUY: My family has run this town for fifty generations.

All I have to do is close the factories. How long will it be before

your little rag-tag mob starts to starve? They'll come crawling back

to work -- and for half the rubber dog barf I gave you before!

Then, Georgi takes the Big Step -- the one which all oppressed people are taking in these movies when faced with Oppressors who pay them with rubber dog vomit: He crosses line from intellectualizing his oppression to active revolutionary.

Otherwise, we would have no resolution of all this rising action; and only ending for this film possible is that everyone would go for Pizza. This is unsatisfying from view of the Socialist imperative.

GEORGI: You're wrong, Potter -- you, and people of your

class are finished. Now you're going to face Justice for your

crimes -- because the People own the means of production!

And so The Bad Rich Guy is taken away by the People; his house later becomes hospital, day-care center, and place where revolutionary theater troupes practice before going into the streets.

And, of course, there is a proper celebration at the Georgi Bailey house, with the Revolutsia Spirit and the SmallChilds.

GEORGI: Gosh, Spirit, I don't know how we can thank you.

SMALLCHILD 01: Spirit, can't you stay and have some Fair

Trade™ coffee with homemade whiskey with us?

SPIRIT: No, SmallChild; I must go. There are so many oppressed

peoples in a world beset by unspeakable monsters of Capital.

But I will take a shot of that whiskey -- neat, please.

Finally, after long discussion between Rich Bad Guy and the Organs Of State Security, he faces Revolutionary Justice and the verdict of The People.

RICH BAD GUY: Long live International Capitalism!

PEOPLE'S MILITIA LEADER: Fire!

And, of course, Georgi and his lovely wife are pausing in their labor to build a New Socialist Future to share a moment's reflection on the plight of The Peoples, and also to suggest some hygienic sexual activity between them which may occur later.

...and in the background, The Internationale swells on the soundtrack, sung by the Sad Vlad Orphans Choir Of Greater Moscow! Please to show the credits!

This film has not been shown since its original release; big shame, also, because it is at least as good as movie with Bert Landcaster in it but of the name, just now, is escaping me.

Great-Uncle Yehudi likes Revolutionary Love. He thinks it is wonderful comedy, but still we love him. If you can find this film on DVD, then okay. If not, well then it is big world out there! Be That Guy -- go find!

I, Rabschinsky, say this -- to Moldavish Guy; you also.

Welcome To Your Crude Societal Metaphor Weekend

Imagine This

Q Believers Featured On 'Nightline'; August 2018

______________________________

Let me tell you a story. It won't be short -- but it's a good story, and it has a point. You may even Get It before the end. 

_______________________________

In 1994, director John Carpenter released In The Mouth Of Madness, his take on one of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories. Carpenter's career includes films like Carrie, Starman, "Big Trouble In Little China", They Live, "Assault On Precinct 13"; Escape from New York and "-- From L.A.".

Madness was the final film in Carpenter's 'Apocalypse Trilogy' -- The Thing (1982), "Prince Of Darkness" (1987 -- whose posters should state: "This film will not just frighten you; it will fuck you up for life"), and ended with In The Mouth of Madness. 

Its script was written by Michael DeLuca (Fright Night; Moneyball; Captain Phillips), and its cinematography by Gary B. Kibbe (Robocop 3; Village of the Damned; Escape From L.A.). 

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 58% rating. In the years since its release, Madness has achieved cult status.

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It's worth an aside to note that almost at the same time as Mouth of Madness' release, a new cable network began broadcasting in the United States. It used the twelve-year-old, Ted Turner / CNN news-as-entertainment model, and also offered coverage of sports, even a new 'cartoon for adults' program on Sunday evenings.

It was the brainchild of an Australian media boss who aggressively managed a fleet of tabloid newspapers on three continents. He claimed the network would be "fair and balanced" in its presentation of news (a swipe at the "liberal bias" of the other networks), and it would be known as Fox News.

_______________________________

John Trent (Sam Neill) is being transferred into a huge mental asylum outside New York City. He's admitted by a Dr. Sapperstein (John Glover) and struggles with a pair of attendants, shouting "I'm not insane!!"  In the background, a radio report of "an epidemic of violent psychotic behavior spreading across the country and indeed the world".

Trent is placed in a padded cell, still wearing a straitjacket, still shouting that he is Sane. As other residents of the ward shout back ("Yeah! I'm not crazy either!"), music begins to play on the PA system: The Carpenters' We've Only Just Begun.

Later the same day, a Dr. Wrenn (David Warner) appears to interview Trent, and may work for the government (Sapperstein says nervously, "It must be getting serious out there, if they're sending you guys in").  Did Trent ask for anything? Wrenn says. Yes -- only a single, black crayon.

Wrenn finds Trent has decorated his cell with thousands of crosses -- drawn on the walls, floor, his institutional jumper, and himself, with the crayon. Telling Trent he "wants to help", Wrenn sits down to listen as Trent begins to tell his story.

_______________________________

Trent is a Phillip Marlowe style, freelance insurance investigator in New York City -- cynical, watchful; always suspicious. After exposing the victim of a warehouse fire as an arsonist looking for a payout, he lunches with the insurance attorney -- who makes a pitch to assist with another client, a publishing company.

Trent accepts -- just as a bald man with an axe (Conrad Bergschmeider) smashes through a restaurant window and stands over him. "Do you read Sutter Cane?" he asks; looking up at the man's face, Trent can see he has two irises in each eye. The man raises the axe; police appear and shoot him down.

Trent meets the publisher, Jason Harglow (Charlton Heston). His company's multi-mega-hit horror writer, Sutter Cane, has disappeared, and blown a deadline to produce his seventh, final book in a series. No one knows where he is. Near-riots have occurred at bookstores across the country over the delay in publication.

Cane's editor, Linda Styles (Julie Carmen) joins the meeting. His six previous books had sold nearly a billion copies, been translated into eighteen languages. Harglow wants Trent to find Cane and bring the manuscript back; Trent agrees.

Styles tells him there's something different about Cane's writing -- it's "been known to have an effect on less stable readers... disorientation, memory loss, a paranoid reaction... 

A year ago, Styles says, Cane's work became erratic -- "More bent, more bizarre than usual. He became convinced his work was real, not fiction."  Trent chuckles; This shit really sells? "Are you surprised?"

Trent responds, "Lady, nothing surprises me. We fucked up the air, the water; we fucked up each other -- why don't we finish the job by flushing our brains down the toilet?"

So where is Cane? The manuscript? "I don't know. His agent was the last person to see it."  Then let's talk to the agent, Trent says. "You already met him," Styles replies. "He attacked you with an axe."

_____________________________

Styles convinces Trent to actually read Cane's novels. At a bookstore, Trent sees a man staring at him, whose face seems -- bruised; he's wearing plastic-framed glasses repaired with adhesive tape. "Do you read Sutter Cane?" the man asks Trent, then says, "He sees you."

At home, Trent reads the novels, while a TV commentator asks: "Horror writer Sutter Cane: A harmless pop phenomenon? Or a mad prophet of the printed page?

"... Police believe recent riots started because stores could not meet the demand for advance orders of Sutter Cane's latest novel, 'In The Mouth Of Madness'. When does fiction become religion?"

Trent dozes, dreaming he's walking home, posters advertising Sutter Cane horror novels on nearby walls. He sees a cop in an alley, viciously beating a kid who had been tagging a wall. The cop sees Trent and barks, "You want some too, buddy?"

_________________________________

Trent realizes each Cane novel has a shape, outlined in red over the cover art. Clipped into puzzle-pieces, they form the shape of New Hampshire -- where Hobb's End, fictitious setting of Cane's novels, is located. 

Hobb's End isn't shown on any map of the Live Free Or Die state -- but Trent convinces Harglow and Styles that it may be real, "another vanished town in America". Harglow agrees to allow Trent, and Styles, to travel to New Hampshire, locate the town, the author, and the manuscript. 

________________________________

Trent again has the dream of the cop, beating the kid in an alleyway -- only now, a crowd of people appears behind Trent, with axes, blocking any escape. At its center is Cane's agent. 

"He sees you," the agent says; the crowd hacks him into pieces. The cop stops beating the kid long enough to look at Trent -- his face mottled, diseased, malignant; "You want some too?" he bellows.

... and, Trent wakes up at home, having fallen asleep on his sofa over one of Cane's novels, relieved to find it was just a dream... until he turns to see the diseased cop sitting next to him, and wakes up, again; a dream within a dream.

_________________________________

Trent and Styles drive on two-lane roads through endless late-Summer cornfields; Trent singing "America The Beautiful". Night falls. Styles tells Trent she's attracted to Cane's fiction because it scares her. And she likes being scared. Trent is amused. "What's to be scared about? It's not like it's real." Styles says:

"It's not real from your point of view -- and right now, reality shares your point of view. Reality is just what we tell each other it is. What scares me about Kane's work is, what happens if reality shared his point of view? ...Sane and insane easily switch places if the insane were to become the majority. You'd find yourself locked in a padded cell, wondering 'What happened to the world?' "

"It wouldn't happen to me," Trent says. "Oh, it would, if you realized everything you knew was gone," said Styles. "That'd be pretty lonely, being the last one left."

After an unsettling encounter with a kid on a bicycle - who becomes an old man on a bike ("I can't get out," he moans. "He won't let me out") - Trent lets Styles drive while he sleeps. On the radio, a talk show host asks, "Doctor, what are you saying? That there's this disease spreading across the country?"

_________________________________

As Styles drives, the yellow centerline in the road disappears. Below the car, she makes out thick  clouds illuminated by lightning -- then, suddenly, she's driving over the road planks of a New England covered bridge and out into late afternoon daylight.  A sign nearby announces: Welcome To Hobb's End / The Heart Of New Hampshire / Enjoy Your Stay. 

The town has a Pepperidge Farm-style quaintness, but seems completely deserted. Trent and Styles drive to a rustic hotel, which features in Cane's novels, run by a Mrs. Pinkham -- who figured in Cane's novels as an axe murderess. They check in.

Trent keeps looking for the con. If it were a Cane novel, they should see a huge, black church from the hotel ... and they can. They drive there. Trent reads from one of Cane's novels, 

" 'This place had been the seat of an evil older than mankind and wider than the known universe... pain and suffering beyond human understanding. ... [inhabited by] a murderous race of creatures whose vile existence contaminated time itself, affecting history..."

Suddenly, cars roar up; a group of men with shotguns climb out -- one demanding Cane release his son from the church. Its doors open to reveal a little boy, then close. When they open again, a man stands just inside -- Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow). 

The boy's father comes forward, but the doors bang close. A large pack of Dobermans appear, and attack. Styles and Trent are able to get to their car and flee back to the hotel.

Styles finally admits Trent was being played in a publicity game. "Only, you and I weren't supposed to find Hobb's End, but we didn't stage any of this. It's all in Cane's book. That's how I know it's real."

What's the new book -- 'In The Mouth Of Madness' -- about? Trent asks. "It's about the end, to everything," Styles says. "And it starts here, with an evil that returns and takes over, piece by piece... It's about people turning into creatures that aren't human anymore."

_______________________________

Styles runs off, taking the car and driving to the church, where she finds Cane typing the last page of manuscript. "It's funny; for years, I thought I was making all this up," he says. "But They were telling me what to write -- giving me the power to make it all real. And now it is. All the Things, trying to break into our world." 

Cane holds her head over the title page of the manuscript. "See the instrument of their homecoming -- the new bible -- that starts the change... helps you see..."  He slams her head forward; she absorbs the entire book in a few seconds. Her eyes bleed.

_______________________________

Styles returns to the hotel; Trent can see she's clearly altered -- "I'm losing me!" she shouts. Power in the hotel flickers. Trent is barely able to get to the car; he tries to leave town, but can't. Knocked unconscious, he wakes up in one side of a confessional at the Black Church. On the other side is Sutter Cane. "Want to know the problem with religion?" Cane asks.

"No one's believed enough to make [a new reality] real... My books have sold a billion copies; I've been translated into 18 languages. More people believe in my work than are reading the bible... When people begin to lose the ability to know the difference between fantasy and reality -- then The Old Ones can begin to make the journey back. The more people who believe, the faster the journey." 

Cane tells Trent he wants him to deliver the manuscript for "In The Mouth Of Madness" "You take it back to the world," Cane says. "This town wasn't here before I wrote it -- and neither were you. I made all this. I made you. I am god now !"  Trent tries to run, chased down a long tunnel by a pack of Old-One monsters...

-- and, Trent suddenly finds himself back in The World, on a gravel road in the middle of somewhere, New Hampshire. He drops the manuscript as if it were a box of plutonium, hitches a ride to a town, takes a motel room.

The next day, an unnamed someone has delivered a package for him. A large envelope. "But nobody knows I'm here," Trent says; the motel clerk smiles. "Well, somebody does." In the envelope is Cane's manuscript. Trent burns it in the bathroom sink of his motel room, a page at a time.

Back in New York, he meets with the publisher, Harglow, and describes everything that had happened to him and Styles over (what to him have been) the previous ten days.  Harglow says, "That's a hell of a story" --  But Trent already located Cane and the manuscript, and delivered it -- a month ago. And Linda Styles? "I've never heard of her". 

Trent, who knows Cane's novels are altering reality -- that Trent himself may be nothing more than a character in Cane's imagination -- is horrified that Madness has already been published; Harglow shrugs. "The movie comes out next month," he says.

Trent becomes increasingly paranoid. Finally, he appears at a bookstore, where huge lines of customers wait to buy Madness. He's dressed identically to Cane's agent, earlier, and carrying an axe. He asks a man in line, "Do you read Sutter Cane?", kills him with the axe, and is taken into custody.

_________________________________

In the asylum, Trent has come to the end of his tale. Declared mentally incompetent to stand trial, he's been institutionalized -- "and, it's safer, these days, being in here," Trent tells Dr. Wrenn. "In ten years, maybe less, there will be no people. The human race will just be a bedtime story for their children. Nothing more."

Wrenn walks out of the cell. Dr. Sapperstein asks if he believes what Trent has been saying, and Wrenn slowly walks away without a word.

Conditions in the world outside the asylum begin to break down. Then, some Things begin rampaging through the wards; Trent can't see them clearly, hiding in his locked cell. The next day, his cell door magically opens, and Trent walks away from the asylum and into a world as deserted as Hobb's End had appeared.

A radio in an abandoned ambulance announces: the world appears to have been overrun with monstrous creatures, including mutating humans, and that outbreaks of suicide and mass murder are commonplace. Trent walks into a nearby urban area, sees a theatre showing the film version of Cane's novel -- the marquee mentions him, specifically, by name -- and goes inside.

Trent finds a seat in the empty theatre, carrying a super-sized tub of popcorn. The movie is precisely the film that we've all been watching, so far, and Trent begins laughing hysterically. He has ended up exactly as Styles had said ("That'd be pretty lonely, being the last one left"). 

Trent starts laughing as he watches himself self on screen, insisting he isn't a puppet, and that reality is concrete, knowable; the Truth. But Cane's version was believed by enough people to make Styles' description come true -- "Reality is just what we tell each other it is." There is no concrete truth; everything can be altered, with enough collective belief. 

Cane allowed The Old Ones to break through into this dimension and destroy it, just for the pure gibbering delight of destruction. Was Trent ever an actual person, or just a character in Cane's novel?  What is real? As the end of humankind sinks in, all Trent can do is laugh.

The central plot of In The Mouth Of Madness is the social construction of reality -- what we collectively agree is real -- and Magical Thinking: if enough people surrender to a belief in artifice and fantasy, can unbelievable things be made concrete and real, just from a sheer act of will?

What the film does not do is show what happens when that kind of magical thinking is translated -- from the personal to the societal and political. 

__________________________________

Reprint Heaven: Nadir

 Bottom Of The Batting Order

(This, from December 20, 2011, almost a decade ago. These were the Things happening, five years before the rise of the waddling, lying grifter. 

(How far you feel we have moved on as a society from the issues reported in 2011 is subjective. But it is the anniversary of the assumption of the waddling liar's unrequited love, Kim Jong Jong-Jong.)

 

This Chart Answers The Musical Question, "What Percentage Of All U.S. Corporate Profits Is Generated By The Financial Sector?" Answer? "Their Satanic Majesties Request", Or 26%.

   

...And This One Tracks Financial 'Industry' Profit As Percentage Of Overall GDP. (Source: Arbor Research, via Big Picture) Tonight at sundown (aside from its being the second night of Hanukkah), the Winter Solstice will begin. This is physically the longest night of the solar year, the Nadir, the lowest point in a cycle of one orbit of the planet around the sun. As a result, you'd expect the kind of mutant freakshow we're seeing these days.

• Republicans Continue Countdown To Self-Detonation: Bob Schaeffer, CBS News Washington correspondent since the Late Cretaceous Period, noted in last night's CBS Evening News that the current (i.e., most recent) impasse in Congress is a result of "both sides trying to undermine each other". On the BBC's American version of the evening news, Clinton-era Labor Secretary Robert Reich (and former BFF prior associate of Citicorp) commented in a segment on the effect to those living on unemployment of having benefits suddenly removed or slashed, "I try hard not to be partisan, but the Republican party seems to be the one" creating the current deadlock. Some Left Blogistan sites (e.g., TPM) report that, as a result of the refusal of the Rethug-dominated House to pass a Senate bill that would extend (by two months) both a Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, President Obama's job approval ratings have become more positive. TPM reported 46.6% Approval vs. 48% Disapproval -- "There’s now a lot of evidence that the President’s approval numbers are rising after bottoming out at the end of the summer after the debt deal debacle," Josh Marshall wrote. "But they’re rising toward an almost total polarization.

• "50% for, 50% against. Very little middle ground." 

• Your New Stratoliner: The One Per Cent, And Their Hats One interesting note: Little Rupert's Wall Street Journal, the "Tits 'n Tattle" scandal sheet of Rupert's empire for the financial class, ran an editorial criticizing Republicans for blocking the two-month extension in the House -- and mostly criticizing it as a poor tactic, rather than for the effect it would have on taxpayers and unemployed Americans. Heaven forbid that Little Rupert or Fat Roger would give a damn about the people they treat with such barely-disguised contempt. Rupert, that crafty ol' Aussie, is sending America's Rightist politicians a message: I Am Not Amused. Get Your Shit Together. 

• But as much as he criticizes them, he has to support the Rethugs, and his NewsCorp will have to get behind whichever candidate, drooling, brain-dead and barking, it hoists for president in 2012. So, whatever scribbles are published on the editorial page of the WSJ tabloid don't really matter. Little Rupert is as much a hostage of a self-destructing political party as the Rethugs are hostage to their addictive love for Little Rupert's propaganda. 

•   MEHR: Not that long ago, the House Minority Whip, Stenny Hoyer walked to the floor of the House Of Representatives, and asked the Speaker Pro Temp, Michael Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania (standing in for President Boner), to grant "unanimous consent" for an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill the Rethugs deep-sixed yesterday. House Republicans on the Hill were with Speaker Boner at a photo-op. Meanwhile, as Hoyer made his request to the Speaker's chair on the House floor, Fitzpatrick simply ignored Hoyer and walked away... all broadcast on CSPAN. "As you walk off the floor, Mr. Speaker," Hoyer said to Fitzgerald's back, "You’re walking away, just as so many Republicans have walked away from middle-class tax payers, the unemployed, and very frankly as well from those who will be seeking medical assistance from their doctors — 48 million senior citizens.” In and of itself, business as usual in the United States Congress. But, providing the Democratic party with a telling image of Rethugs who don't give two hoots about The People, and which can be rebroadcast over and over and over? Priceless.

• Global Banking Structure Aims Free Money Nozzle At European Banks: The European Central Bank has loaned a massive 489 billion Euros ($639 billion US) to over five hundred European banks, at one per cent interest, for what the War Criminal Post reported as "an exceptionally long period of three years" in the ongoing attempt to keep the EU from dissolving into a bad fusion between "Apocalypse Now" and "Mr. Hulot Opens A Hedge Fund". It was the biggest infusion of credit by the European Central Bank in the 13-year history of the Euro; in a response I think is best termed 'irrational exuberance', the DJIA rose over 330 points. The ECB's move allows its client banks to borrow money, essentially, for free: 1 Billion Euros borrowed can become loans, and any interest charged on those loans above one per cent is pure profit. The problem is, these loans will act as life support for some financial players whose books are sagging with toxic debts that these ECB credit lines can't repair; the amounts of debt are too huge. It's just another means of postponing the Day O' Reckoning, kicking the can down a road paved with good intentions. But, hey; Little Angela's happy. So, s'all good. Right?

• Rethugs Say, VOTE FOR PLAYER TO BE NAMED LATER! Replicating the internal epic battles within the Rethug, Red-State World (something like Rodan vs. Monster Zero), it appears that Thugs will nominate Mitzy Perry Grand TurtleBear Ru Paul Mitzy Randyman Perry Ru Paul "Somebody Else" as their candidate for president in 2012. No kidding; a poll recently reported by CBS showed Republicans pretty evenly split between three potential candidates, so far: Romney and Gingrich, and "Somebody Else". It's a ringing, star-spangled endorsement of -- well, somebody. A write-in candidate who embodies true, conservative principles, like Lil' Bernie Madoff, or William Stafford, or the Zombified Ronald Wilson Rayguns-ah. The ever-tasteful Alicublog reports that the Special Bus Kidz at RedState are enthusiastically arguing in favor of... a Rick Perry candidacy.

Fellas, there's probably a robot somewhere that would govern in the most consistently conservative fashion -- it wouldn't be hard to program; just get it to yell "More tax breaks for the wealthy!" and "I hates me a faggot!" at intervals, and to fart loudly when France or higher education is mentioned -- but it doesn't mean anything unless you can get people to vote for it. 

 ...Perry makes George W. Bush look like Pericles. Nobody, but nobody, is praying, "Oh Lord, send us someone just like George W. Bush, only stupider." Just the other day... Perry misread Kim Jong Il as "Kim Jong the Second". That's like something out of a Cheech and Chong movie. Most observers... have moved on to wondering if Perry can tie a shoelace without coaching.

I enjoy flailing, particularly when it reinforces stereotypes I have of conservatives as retrograde, Troglodyte morons, beating each other bloody with Wal-Mart shopping bags filled with The Collected Works Of Ronald Rayguns: "They fought so fiercely because the stakes were so small". Keep it up!

• Tubby Twentysomething Becomes New Leader Of Starving, Heavily Armed North Korea: A few days ago, this short, pudgy guy with weird hair and glasses died -- some say on a train: Kim Jong Il, ruler of the upper half of the Korean peninsula and a leader of a totalitarian, repressive state... and was reportedly someone who loved dogs and western porn, and really in his heart was kinda, sort of, a good guy. "The Kim Nobody Knew". His twenty-something son, Kim Jong Fat Boy, short, pudgy, with a very bad haircut who reportedly likes dogs, food and western porn, and in his heart is kind of a good guy, replaced him. 

• The CIA apparently had no idea that Kim Jong 2 had passed away until it was announced by North Korea's official media (there is no other kind). There immediately commenced massive (and in the last Stalinst, cult-of-personality culture on the planet, we mean massive) shows of public grieving. Thousands gathered publicly to cry and cry and rend their hair and fall weeping on the pavement, each attempting to outdo everyone else to show how sad they are that a totalitarian freak, who wore shoes with three-inch lifts and created policies resulting in starvation of his people and nuclear weapons, was dead. Kim Jong Well went to see his father lying in state, bowed without much expression, then reportedly went for pizza and some XBox action.

There's one other thing about The Winter solstice to keep in mind. This is the last of the old solar year, the bottom of the wheel, the Appogeian, farthest point out in Earth's orbital motion. The planetary pole is tilted back; this is the longest period of darkness in a full turn around the sun. 

 And from midnight tonight, the Days will become incrementally longer, the nights shorter. From this long night we will all enter what I like to think of as The Season Of Rising Light -- from one point of view, the darkness being reduced a degree at a time, each day forward, until the top of the wheel, the Apex, next June. And while waiting for someone to start singing "Here Comes The Sun", in the meantime, we'll still have the unfolding, everlasting clown show to watch.

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Twenty Years

Nine-Eleven

(An earlier version was posted originally in September, 2010)

On November 22, 1963, I was on the playground for 10:00AM recess at my elementary school when teachers called classes back inside prematurely. We were told to sit quietly in our desks. When asked, our teacher told us nervously that President Kennedy had been shot.

After a few minutes, the school's public address system was broadcasting CBS' radio network, announcing the shooting of JFK in Dallas and, ultimately, the audio portion of Walter Cronkite on CBS television announcing the President's death.

Where were you when JFK was shot? was a standard question a large number of Americans (now referred to as 'Useless Boomers') asked each other, due to the magnitude of the event and because it was shared in real-time by the primary media of the early 1960's -- radio and television.

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So, September 11th, 2001: Where were you on 9-11? I had gotten up to go to work around 5:30AM here in California, and turned on KQED-FM's NPR news. After stepping out of the shower, I heard a report that a "plane" appeared to have crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. I lived briefly in Manhattan in the late 70's and had seen just how huge those buildings were -- and to me, "a plane" meant an aircraft like a Cessna or something similar.

Getting ready to shave, I remembered a 1945 newsreel about a B-25, flying through dense fog over Manhattan and plowing directly into the Empire State Building. A similar incident at the WTC would be tragic, I thought; but it was an accident, and on the other side of the continent, distant. I sighed, and I shaved.

Not long after, NPR updated its report; I heard the words "jet airliner", which moved the entire event from 'Cessna-off-course' to the category of Well-This-Was-No-Boating-Accident; Did-You-Call-The-Coast-Guard-About-This?

Turning on CNN, I sat on the edge of an armchair, watching an image of the WTC towers from the roof of CNN's Manhattan headquarters, roughly two miles away. One tower looked like a chimney, a boiling cloud of black smoke drifting away into an otherwise cloudless sky. 

Aaron Brown was reporting, taking phone calls directed from witnesses in the vicinity -- only one of whom, the doorman at the World Trade Centers Marriott, was close enough to report on anything immediate and consequential. 

A CNN-affiliate local news helicopter, hovering over the Hudson, provided a closer perspective of the damage. One extended telephoto shot was of the façade of the Tower on fire; I was looking at the pattern of the cladding of the building, a huge, black gash angled across it. I saw occasional clouds of small white shapes fluttering in the smoke, like flocks of birds, swirling -- and realized they were sheets of paper, reams of it, drifting out of the building's broken windows. 

Just as that thought registered, at the right-hand edge of the screen, I saw a darker object drop quickly, straight down and out of frame, for just a moment. I didn't know it then, but I had just seen one of roughly two hundred people that morning who fell or jumped from the Towers' upper floors.

The Falling Man: Photograph By Richard Drew / AP

Images Like This Were Broadcast And Published

In Europe, But Not In America (Photo: UK Telegraph, 2001)

A few minutes later, I watched as the second airliner slammed into the other WTC tower. Aside from profane shock, the only thing I recall thinking was, This is what standing at the curb in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, watching the Archduke Franz Ferdinand being shot, was like. This is what living through history is like. 

I've seen large-scale explosions and been in crazy environments, for real, but the scale of what I was watching made it all seem unreal; special effects. I sat in the armchair, watching, as first the South, then the North towers collapsed (Wikipedia's timeline of the events puts that at 6:59 and 7:28 AM PDST, respectively). News of a third plane crashing into the Pentagon was broadcast; I began flipping back and forth between networks for coverage. 

Finally, I left to make my way to work on mass transit. On a BART train, I was amazed at the languid attitudes of the crowd of commuters -- reading books and newspapers, a few tapping on laptops and Blackberries -- as if it were just another Tuesday morning. People were subdued, but not because anyone appeared stunned; there was no conversation about what had just occurred.

Finally, I turned to a woman sitting opposite me, reading a folded copy of the (pre-Little Rupert) Wall Street Journal, and asked if she was aware of what had happened that morning. "Yes," she replied, adding in a deadpan, matter-of-fact voice, "There are supposed to be more of them [i.e., airliners] in the air to hit other targets." Had anyone estimated how many? "No," the woman shrugged, and went back to her WSJ. 

At work, everyone was released to return home after Noon. I went to a friend's house, where we sat watching CNN. Clips of the second Tower being struck, and of each one falling, replayed endlessly, interspersed with hourly updates and commentary by subject matter experts.

I made a few phone calls, primarily to The Last Of The Old Unit ("Fuckin' glad we're not eighteen right now," one observed). My friends and I sat, watching, barely taking a break. We were expecting more information, something to allow everything we had seen to make sense.

We also knew we weren't going to get it -- the dice had been rolled, and we wouldn't find any clarification until they had bounced off the back of the craps table and come to rest. They're still bouncing; they haven't stopped yet. They never really will. That's how history works. 

_____________________________

That was September 11th -- a red line on the American calendar, the culmination of so many threads in our history going back to 1898 and 1917, the choices successive administrations have made since America decided to follow an Imperial course.

The attack on the Trade Center towers could have been another kind of defining moment for America. Our government and institutions could have taken it as an opportunity to press for a solution of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy; we could have opened a dialog with others, rather than dictate to them.

Lil' Boots, 2004 Republican Convention: Feared And Bigger Than His Daddy, At Last

I'm not suggesting a Kumbyah moment; it was a crossroads moment, and our choices mattered. But, the government was run by men who had no interest in anything except power (personal, partisan, and financial) and policies that meant the use of force in furthering that power. 

The people "Lil' Boots" surrounded himself with were Project For A New American Century neo-imperialists. After Bush's inauguration on January 20, 2001, they were discussing how to invade Sadaam Hussein's Iraq. What else could we have expected from the likes of Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld? From Fat Karl Rove, Little Tommy DeLay, and Lard Boy?

September 11th: Simply An Excuse

And, they believed it would be simple, 'Roses All The Way', 'Greeted As Liberators' ... so no one planned for occupation, or fighting an insurgency for seven years; or for the effect on the U.S. military of multiple redeployments and 'stop-loss' denials of separation. They never conceived of failure; therefore, it wouldn't happen.

What followed from 9/11 shouldn't have been a surprise: An utterly unnecessary, even illegal invasion of Iraq, supported by intelligence about WMD's invented by right-wing operatives to create a causis beli, and pushed by sociopathic egos 'journalists' like Little Judy Miller, and pundits like David Brooks and William Kristol, and Little Tommy Friedman, to name only a few.

Palettes Of $100 Bills, Baghdad, 2003 (Photo: UK Guardian)

And let's not forget the $12 Billion in cash (at least; no one really knows), piles of U.S. currency shrink-wrapped and paletted and airlifted to Iraq. Some $9 Billion in cash cannot be accounted for. And all the cool new powers used by that dry-drunk, Frat-Boy younger son of an American ruling-class family; or all the power available to President Cheney. 

There was plenty of money to put in C530's and airlift it: 363 Tons of it. There was plenty of money being made from the war, and tax breaks to the wealthy, which reduced tax income to the government. It was a good time to be part of the Carlyle Group.

But, Lil' Boots wanted to cut health care, privatize Social Security; cut any social programs continuing the pact between government and citizens that was at the heart of FDR's New Deal... because, he claimed, there was just no money to pay for that. Because of the war, you see.

And there was Guantanamo, CIA 'black airlines' flying suspected terrorists to secret prisons, and the extra-legal, secret program of 'renditions'. Let's not forget Abu Ghirab. Let's not forget people like John Woo, whose written opinions created what he still claims is a "legal" basis for torture as national policy.

Civilian Casualty Of Baghdad Suicide Car Bomb, 2007

And what followed wasn't just prisons and a lack of due process for terrorist suspects, but developing a matrix of information [see Edward Snowden's revelations about the extent of surveillance performed by America's intelligence agencies], based on the unprecedented data-mining of domestic email and cellular telephone traffic, of banking records and public record databases; a government/corporate State surveillance and intelligence apparatus that outstrips the wildest dreams of the Gestapo and the KGB.

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Being Interrogated At

Undisclosed Location By CIA In Middle Of Blog Rant

And, very little seemed to be about defeating Al-Qaeda, capturing or killing Bin Laden and Al-Zwahiri -- otherwise, we would have finished the job in the mountains of Tora Bora in October of 2002. Iraq would never have mattered. We would have kept promises to the Afghans about rebuilding their country, instead of ignoring it -- at least half the reason the Taliban were eventually able to come roaring back.

The 'Go-Go', Lil' Boots Bush years were about a larger Rightist agenda; it was about deregulation, defense contractors, profits; and it was about Fat Karl's dream of rigging elections for permanent Republican rule of the United States. Victory, to these assclowns, had a very different meaning. The portion of it that was military was just a backdrop for Bush and his cronies: Mission Accomplished.

_______________________________

We've had an economic collapse in 2008; eight years of neoliberal nothing, followed by four years of proto-Fascism; we're still wading through the swamp of a two-year pandemic; an attempted coup; and roughly 37% of America's adult population claiming to believe that bulletin-board posts by an anonymous fraudster are more real than mathematics, science, or common sense. 

This blessed 37%  refuse to accept the vaccines for SARS-CoV2. They refuse to wear masks. They do this to "Own The Libs". They are injecting themselves with special magic pony blessed horse juice, or screeching that the Blood Of The Jezus is all they need.

These are the same unvaccinated persons crowding into ED's, taking ward beds in hospitals; filling the ICUs. As I write this, America is losing roughly the same number of people to Covid-19 as were killed on September 11th. Every - Single - Day.

Frequently, since September 11th, 2001 a quote by Bush (whom we are supposed to think well of now; let the healing begin) comes back to me:

We are not deceived by their pretenses to piety. We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions -- by abandoning every value except the will to power -- they follow in the path of fascism, and Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: In history's unmarked grave of discarded lies. (Applause)

-- George W. Bush, Address To Joint Session Of Congress

Is that appropriate as an epitaph for those who wish to do America harm? Or, does it speak to how we have allowed ourselves to be lied to, and led; will it end up being our epitaph, a closing quote for the United States Of America?

There is no ‘populist’ version of a world where some few are born booted and spurred, and the many are born saddled, and ready to ride, and that's precisely the world which conservatism is trying to preserve.

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MEHR, MIT DIE WITZEN:  As usual, What Digby Said (or Dennis Hartley, in this case).

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