Mitt Romney did well in a New Hampshire poll, showing up Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and the others--an impressive feat for a figuratively dead candidate.
Why Mitt? Could it be that his worst statements of 2012 weren't as bad as the current GOP office seekers' best? Romney's "forty-seven percent" comments, dismissing nearly half of American voters as not worth cultivating, showed him to be a wealthy elitist; in that way he seemed a typical rich man beholden to one-tenth of one percent interests. Mitt Romney lacked mystery. His mind did not come off as the rotting cheese filling the braincase of Ben Carson, or the cluster bomb occupying Trump's skull.
Trump's profile went underneath news media coverage of the Paris attack by ISIS. He may have spent a few days wondering how to break back into the attention he needs to survive as a political candidate, entertainer, and megalomaniac.
At a rally on Monday, three days after the Paris tragedy, Trump did two things that put him back where he's convinced he belongs. A black activist entered the rally with a "Black Lives Matter" sign and shouted true invective at the great orange man. Trump stopped talking and saw the source of the disturbance. The activist, surrounded by angry (white) Trump supporters, was subdued, kicked, and taken from the room, while Trump encouraged the violence by saying repeatedly, "Get him outta here! Get him outta here!"
Cameras on the floor showed the activist on the ground receiving blows, reminiscent of Brownshirt activity against Jews in the 1930s. Some surrounding Trump-supporter faces showed pure hate sculpted into anger, encouraged by their master at the podium, a man who, claiming to be worthy of the name leader, failed to even attempt what Mick Jagger attempted to do at Altamont when that singer urged Hell's Angels motorcyclists to stop fighting in an engagement that resulted in a death. Mick Jagger, unlike Trump, is civilized.
In Trump's world, dissent is unwelcome. He is right, and everyone else is not as right as he is. Would he like to be a dictator?
At the same event, Trump claimed that on 9/11 he saw "thousands" of Muslims in Jersey City cheering as the Twin Towers fell. There is no videotape of this occurring; the Jersey City Police Department issued a statement saying that it didn't happen. News programs did show images of Palestinians celebrating the 9/11 attacks, but that's far from Jersey. Trump has had two days to retract this lie, but hasn't. His chief adviser appeared on CNN today, offering the argument, "Can you prove that it didn't happen?"
Can you prove that I didn't see an elf stealing bread from my kitchen last night?
Trump has entered dangerous territory and doesn't seem to care. He's allowing his supporters to physically abuse people expressing their First Amendment rights. He's a liar. He commands the attention of American news networks even as he utters one falsehood after another, mixed with vague and unchallenged statements. He's anti-intellectual. He harkens back to a time when America was "great," and he'll make it "great again." He uses the reactive mindsets of supporters, telling them what they want to hear. He's turning into a fascist right before our eyes. The separation between his rhetoric and good old fashioned American prejudices against minorities and Muslims is a very thin membrane dividing celebrity Donald from someone destined to kill people and visit wrath on innocents, all the while pretending to be "a nice guy."
The GOP better figure out whether or not they want such a shepherd of humanity's basest instincts to represent them in a presidential run. Even obtuse, boring old Mitt would be preferable as president.
Vic Neptune
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
For a few days after the killings in Paris, I heard and saw very little on cable news about Donald Trump. Reports of mass brutality chase away, for a time, buffoons, but they return with, in Trump's case, stale nonsense masquerading as solutions.
Appearing from Trump Tower, a waterfall behind him flowing over a stepped golden structure, he spoke to Sean Hannity, his slavish Fox News interviewer, about President Obama's obtuseness when it comes to recognizing the threat of radical Islamic extremism. American right wingers are obsessed with the Obama administration's supposed inability to name the terror threat as being characterized by its Muslim component. This criticism ignores the administration's tendency to parse language in Orwellian fashion. They won't use the name ISIS, even though most Americans call it that (probably because that's the name that was used when we first found out about them only last year). Obama and his people say ISIL, the L standing for Levant, an old and outdated name for the eastern Mediterranean islands and surrounding countries. Daesh, an acronym using the name components of what ISIS actually calls itself, is also popular with politicians, especially after the Paris attacks, because ISIS doesn't want to be called that--they're against acronyms, apparently, and no, this is not a Monty Python sketch.
Trump, Hannity, and others who vent exasperation and contempt at Obama for not saying "radical Islamic extremism," or words to that effect, piss and moan about a man and his administration that can't even figure out what to call the enemy when they do call them something.
NSDAP is a German acronym that stood for, in English, National Socialist German Workers Party. Nazi shortens the term quite a bit, retaining only part of National and part of Socialist. Taken that way they almost sound like they may have been leftists.
Trump's problem with Obama's use or non-use of words hardly matters in the bigger scheme. What he said to Hannity about the massacre inside the Bataclan theater demonstrates his egregious lack of sensitivity, something he prides himself on, boasting often of his disdain for political correctness, and how he has no time for it (although he has lots of time to tweet).
"Twenty-five people in that theater carrying guns could've taken care of the problem," he claimed, offering twenty-five, I assume, as a non-scientifically derived number that would have overwhelmed the firepower (automatic weapons, grenades, suicide vests, as well as the surprise element) of the terrorists.
Alas, from Trump's viewpoint, France's laws lack our Second Amendment. To Trump, though, it would have been a fait accompli: the terrorists would've opened fire, but twenty-five intrepid ready-for-anything citizens would've drawn their guns, assessed the situation rapidly amidst the environment of a loud heavy metal concert, with stage lights flashing, and deployed toward the gunfire, heroes with the uncanny ability to coordinate their tactics telepathically, honing in on the killers with, perhaps, a tenth of the casualties from the actual non-Secondment Amendment-blessed outcome.
I recall Ben Carson's claim after a college shooting in Oregon not long ago that he would fight in such a situation. Does he believe the people murdered in the Bataclan should've put up a fight? American voters need to seriously consider the words of presidential candidates. Anyone like Trump or Carson or anyone else trying to be president, none of whom know what it's like to be in such a horrifying series of unfolding situations as happened in Paris on November 13, are talking out of their asses whenever they try to sound intelligent about these situations, or what they "would do if..."
Trump, with his golden shower behind him, provided no new ideas, no sane policy statements. He merely exploited Paris 11/13 and those murdered and wounded. He's a disgusting opportunist who shows how dark the Republican Party has become, in that he's their most popular boy.
Vic Neptune
Appearing from Trump Tower, a waterfall behind him flowing over a stepped golden structure, he spoke to Sean Hannity, his slavish Fox News interviewer, about President Obama's obtuseness when it comes to recognizing the threat of radical Islamic extremism. American right wingers are obsessed with the Obama administration's supposed inability to name the terror threat as being characterized by its Muslim component. This criticism ignores the administration's tendency to parse language in Orwellian fashion. They won't use the name ISIS, even though most Americans call it that (probably because that's the name that was used when we first found out about them only last year). Obama and his people say ISIL, the L standing for Levant, an old and outdated name for the eastern Mediterranean islands and surrounding countries. Daesh, an acronym using the name components of what ISIS actually calls itself, is also popular with politicians, especially after the Paris attacks, because ISIS doesn't want to be called that--they're against acronyms, apparently, and no, this is not a Monty Python sketch.
Trump, Hannity, and others who vent exasperation and contempt at Obama for not saying "radical Islamic extremism," or words to that effect, piss and moan about a man and his administration that can't even figure out what to call the enemy when they do call them something.
NSDAP is a German acronym that stood for, in English, National Socialist German Workers Party. Nazi shortens the term quite a bit, retaining only part of National and part of Socialist. Taken that way they almost sound like they may have been leftists.
Trump's problem with Obama's use or non-use of words hardly matters in the bigger scheme. What he said to Hannity about the massacre inside the Bataclan theater demonstrates his egregious lack of sensitivity, something he prides himself on, boasting often of his disdain for political correctness, and how he has no time for it (although he has lots of time to tweet).
"Twenty-five people in that theater carrying guns could've taken care of the problem," he claimed, offering twenty-five, I assume, as a non-scientifically derived number that would have overwhelmed the firepower (automatic weapons, grenades, suicide vests, as well as the surprise element) of the terrorists.
Alas, from Trump's viewpoint, France's laws lack our Second Amendment. To Trump, though, it would have been a fait accompli: the terrorists would've opened fire, but twenty-five intrepid ready-for-anything citizens would've drawn their guns, assessed the situation rapidly amidst the environment of a loud heavy metal concert, with stage lights flashing, and deployed toward the gunfire, heroes with the uncanny ability to coordinate their tactics telepathically, honing in on the killers with, perhaps, a tenth of the casualties from the actual non-Secondment Amendment-blessed outcome.
I recall Ben Carson's claim after a college shooting in Oregon not long ago that he would fight in such a situation. Does he believe the people murdered in the Bataclan should've put up a fight? American voters need to seriously consider the words of presidential candidates. Anyone like Trump or Carson or anyone else trying to be president, none of whom know what it's like to be in such a horrifying series of unfolding situations as happened in Paris on November 13, are talking out of their asses whenever they try to sound intelligent about these situations, or what they "would do if..."
Trump, with his golden shower behind him, provided no new ideas, no sane policy statements. He merely exploited Paris 11/13 and those murdered and wounded. He's a disgusting opportunist who shows how dark the Republican Party has become, in that he's their most popular boy.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Ben Carson, commenting on last night's atrocity in Paris, said we need to eliminate global jihadism. He spoke as if killing all existing Muslim terrorists will permanently annihilate the threat. Nothing he said wasn't believed by naive good versus evil philosophers like George W. Bush in 2001.
Eyewitness reports from inside the Bataclan theater, where concertgoers were gunned down, with few places to hide except underneath corpses, indicate that the killers looked like young men, "under twenty-five." That puts their birthdates in the early 1990s--they were under the age of ten when 9/11 happened, when Bush began bombing Afghanistan.
"Killers who hate our freedoms," "terrorists," whatever you want to call them, cannot be wholly eliminated, as Ben Carson believes, as long as the War on Terror pot keeps getting stirred by the U.S. and other first world powers as they continue to support, following long-standing policies, repressive regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Last night's terrorists in Paris were young enough to have grown into their roles, backgrounded by endless warfare, political and economic destabilization, and manipulation by outside governments and corporations.
A crime, any competent cop knows, should never be regarded as occurring in a history-free vacuum. Unfortunately, the crime of 9/11 was regarded in the United States, by most of its people and also its leaders, as a bewildering "What the fuck did we ever do?" bolt from the blue. The reaction was fairly swift, making sense only from the standpoint of helping war and security industries. Killing and displacing thousands of Afghan citizens who knew nothing of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, and in any case had nothing to do with him, but happened to live in the country run by the Taliban government which offered him sanctuary for a time, was as senseless as last night's God-obsessed young bastards slaughtering innocent civilians.
The logic of "I have been wronged, therefore I shall kill someone who did not wrong me, instead of those who have," only makes sense to people willing to become professional death dealers, rationalizing their violence with holy books or the memory of a day when "the whole world changed," as 9/11 is regarded. It certainly did change the world. It could be that 11/13, Friday the 13th, will be a major turning point in the War on Terror, the war against ISIS, but more violence will beget more violence, and those stirring the pot making up the War on Terror, terrorists and politicians alike, will only succeed at extending what Dick Cheney called "the long war," a gift to arms dealers and political opportunists.
Vic Neptune
Eyewitness reports from inside the Bataclan theater, where concertgoers were gunned down, with few places to hide except underneath corpses, indicate that the killers looked like young men, "under twenty-five." That puts their birthdates in the early 1990s--they were under the age of ten when 9/11 happened, when Bush began bombing Afghanistan.
"Killers who hate our freedoms," "terrorists," whatever you want to call them, cannot be wholly eliminated, as Ben Carson believes, as long as the War on Terror pot keeps getting stirred by the U.S. and other first world powers as they continue to support, following long-standing policies, repressive regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Last night's terrorists in Paris were young enough to have grown into their roles, backgrounded by endless warfare, political and economic destabilization, and manipulation by outside governments and corporations.
A crime, any competent cop knows, should never be regarded as occurring in a history-free vacuum. Unfortunately, the crime of 9/11 was regarded in the United States, by most of its people and also its leaders, as a bewildering "What the fuck did we ever do?" bolt from the blue. The reaction was fairly swift, making sense only from the standpoint of helping war and security industries. Killing and displacing thousands of Afghan citizens who knew nothing of the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, and in any case had nothing to do with him, but happened to live in the country run by the Taliban government which offered him sanctuary for a time, was as senseless as last night's God-obsessed young bastards slaughtering innocent civilians.
The logic of "I have been wronged, therefore I shall kill someone who did not wrong me, instead of those who have," only makes sense to people willing to become professional death dealers, rationalizing their violence with holy books or the memory of a day when "the whole world changed," as 9/11 is regarded. It certainly did change the world. It could be that 11/13, Friday the 13th, will be a major turning point in the War on Terror, the war against ISIS, but more violence will beget more violence, and those stirring the pot making up the War on Terror, terrorists and politicians alike, will only succeed at extending what Dick Cheney called "the long war," a gift to arms dealers and political opportunists.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
I've seen most James Bond movies. When I was a kid, they appealed to me as action-adventure tales, with Sean Connery playing the part, I thought then, to perfection. During the 1970s, Bond films were, like other theatrically released movies, shown on network television. Most people didn't have VCRs, so one had to watch the movie, with commercial breaks, as it broadcasted. This wasn't a bad circumstance--it planted the viewer's ass in front of the TV during specific periods. When Roots, the super-popular mini-series aired, toilet flushing across the country was at a highly elevated rate at certain times corresponding to that show's commercial breaks.
Decades after enjoying the Connery Bond films, I read some of Ian Fleming's Bond novels. I was struck by how little Fleming's Bond resembles Connery's. Eye color wrong, demeanor wrong, and Connery is a bit too warm at times, and glib. Fleming's Bond is cold, very English, his eyes stony and gray. This appearance fits with the most recent Bond, played by Daniel Craig. I can't write much about the Craig contribution to the series, having seen only Casino Royale, which I liked, as much for the presence of the most beautiful actress in the world, Eva Green, as for anything else in the movie.
Pierce Brosnan as Bond seemed wrong, his screen persona too Cary Grant-like to be convincing as a secret agent. I think Brosnan's a pretty good actor, given the right part, as he showed in the TV series Remington Steele, but the necessary Bond coldness loses out to his cool smugness.
Timothy Dalton did a better job as Bond, coming across as a man of action, if not portraying the role with much depth. When he had the job in the 1980s, the Bond franchise was faced with the imminent end of the Cold War, the central background of the series in previous films and in the novels. Dalton's two Bond films are straight adventure stories, one of them taking place in Afghanistan, with bad and dusty Russians providing targets for his bullets.
Someone asked, "Who's your favorite Bond actor?"
My answer surprised him: "Roger Moore."
Did I reply this way because I tend to be quirky? Moore had a long career in Hollywood and Britain before becoming Bond in 1973's Live and Let Die. He was the star of the TV series, The Saint, a role similar to his Bond performances, in which he seems breezily unattached to life's dark depths, even while delving into them.
He was most ready among the Bonds (though Connery did this, too) with clever quips and bad puns after killing someone or watching a henchman fall to his death. After Moore had made several Bonds, his quips had become expected, but this overlooks an important aspect of his performances, the very reason why he's my favorite Bond: he has the Bond coldness described by Fleming. His Bond's smoothness as a gentleman comes from the same source as his ability to cold-bloodedly kill his adversaries; the jokes he makes betraying the contempt he feels for human specimens who serve evil masters.
A stony look comes over Roger Moore's face at times when he plays Bond; the chill of that mask--the death dealer--harkens best to Ian Fleming's creation, a man who kills for Queen and Country, and does so feeling nothing from it because it's a habit. Moore's characterization of lightness--the bad puns, et cetera--covers the darkness propelling him, without which he has no purpose.
Vic Neptune
Decades after enjoying the Connery Bond films, I read some of Ian Fleming's Bond novels. I was struck by how little Fleming's Bond resembles Connery's. Eye color wrong, demeanor wrong, and Connery is a bit too warm at times, and glib. Fleming's Bond is cold, very English, his eyes stony and gray. This appearance fits with the most recent Bond, played by Daniel Craig. I can't write much about the Craig contribution to the series, having seen only Casino Royale, which I liked, as much for the presence of the most beautiful actress in the world, Eva Green, as for anything else in the movie.
Pierce Brosnan as Bond seemed wrong, his screen persona too Cary Grant-like to be convincing as a secret agent. I think Brosnan's a pretty good actor, given the right part, as he showed in the TV series Remington Steele, but the necessary Bond coldness loses out to his cool smugness.
Timothy Dalton did a better job as Bond, coming across as a man of action, if not portraying the role with much depth. When he had the job in the 1980s, the Bond franchise was faced with the imminent end of the Cold War, the central background of the series in previous films and in the novels. Dalton's two Bond films are straight adventure stories, one of them taking place in Afghanistan, with bad and dusty Russians providing targets for his bullets.
Someone asked, "Who's your favorite Bond actor?"
My answer surprised him: "Roger Moore."
Did I reply this way because I tend to be quirky? Moore had a long career in Hollywood and Britain before becoming Bond in 1973's Live and Let Die. He was the star of the TV series, The Saint, a role similar to his Bond performances, in which he seems breezily unattached to life's dark depths, even while delving into them.
He was most ready among the Bonds (though Connery did this, too) with clever quips and bad puns after killing someone or watching a henchman fall to his death. After Moore had made several Bonds, his quips had become expected, but this overlooks an important aspect of his performances, the very reason why he's my favorite Bond: he has the Bond coldness described by Fleming. His Bond's smoothness as a gentleman comes from the same source as his ability to cold-bloodedly kill his adversaries; the jokes he makes betraying the contempt he feels for human specimens who serve evil masters.
A stony look comes over Roger Moore's face at times when he plays Bond; the chill of that mask--the death dealer--harkens best to Ian Fleming's creation, a man who kills for Queen and Country, and does so feeling nothing from it because it's a habit. Moore's characterization of lightness--the bad puns, et cetera--covers the darkness propelling him, without which he has no purpose.
Vic Neptune
Friday, November 6, 2015
Ben Carson claims he was a violent boy. He tried to stab a friend, but the blade broke on the friend's metal belt buckle. After this incident, capping a boisterous career of rock throwing and trying to brain his mother with a hammer, Carson says he took the proverbial look in the mirror and changed course, resulting in the Christian helper of mankind he became--a Yale-educated neurosurgeon, the first doctor to successfully separate conjoined twins.
He wrote about his childhood violence in a 1990 autobiography. CNN researched his past, interviewing childhood friends and acquaintances, but none of them were able to substantiate Carson's tales of young teenage rage. Carson now fights back, verbally, scolding journalists for wasting time when so many problems exist in our great nation. Watching his falling eyelids and listening to his voice, which always sounds partially anesthetized, as he tries to own attacking his mother with a hammer and attempting to murder his friend with a knife, makes for a comical sketch in this most ridiculous presidential campaign season.
I imagine a more vociferous Carson, angry and showing it as he defends his past:
"I did try to kill my mother with a hammer! I did try to do a West Side Story knife thrust into my buddy's abdomen!"
The real anti-candidate Carson wants us to accept his violent past, while most politicians would try to conceal theirs. He says he's not a politician, but given the likelihood that the CNN investigative journalists did a good job and were unable to corroborate his stories after interviewing those who knew the young Carson, he's taken on one key political practice: lying.
Following up on the most recent post, Lieutenant Charles Gliniewicz, the "hero" cop who staged his death on September 1 of this year, tried to hire a motorcycle gang leader to kill a village administrator who was close to discovering evidence of his corruption. Gliniewicz, it emerges, was a total shit with thirty years of practice as a cop, using his position to facilitate unlawful activities.
Meanwhile, national news outlets that promoted his "tragic" martyrdom--before they knew the nature of the man--fail now to acknowledge their own past elevation of this base creep to the ranks of glory. They report about his crimes without once admitting they fell under the spell of a made-up truth--one manufactured by the creep himself, an embezzler who managed to screw the people of Illinois out of a further 300,000 dollars simply by making authorities, and news outlets, believe in the existence of fictitious murderers. Gliniewicz's last ploy, no doubt, was carried out so that he could, indeed, become a hero. It worked for two months. Now, a memorial photograph of the asshole displayed outside somewhere in Fox Lake, Illinois, has a black L drawn over his forehead.
Loser. But who won?
Vic Neptune
He wrote about his childhood violence in a 1990 autobiography. CNN researched his past, interviewing childhood friends and acquaintances, but none of them were able to substantiate Carson's tales of young teenage rage. Carson now fights back, verbally, scolding journalists for wasting time when so many problems exist in our great nation. Watching his falling eyelids and listening to his voice, which always sounds partially anesthetized, as he tries to own attacking his mother with a hammer and attempting to murder his friend with a knife, makes for a comical sketch in this most ridiculous presidential campaign season.
I imagine a more vociferous Carson, angry and showing it as he defends his past:
"I did try to kill my mother with a hammer! I did try to do a West Side Story knife thrust into my buddy's abdomen!"
The real anti-candidate Carson wants us to accept his violent past, while most politicians would try to conceal theirs. He says he's not a politician, but given the likelihood that the CNN investigative journalists did a good job and were unable to corroborate his stories after interviewing those who knew the young Carson, he's taken on one key political practice: lying.
Following up on the most recent post, Lieutenant Charles Gliniewicz, the "hero" cop who staged his death on September 1 of this year, tried to hire a motorcycle gang leader to kill a village administrator who was close to discovering evidence of his corruption. Gliniewicz, it emerges, was a total shit with thirty years of practice as a cop, using his position to facilitate unlawful activities.
Meanwhile, national news outlets that promoted his "tragic" martyrdom--before they knew the nature of the man--fail now to acknowledge their own past elevation of this base creep to the ranks of glory. They report about his crimes without once admitting they fell under the spell of a made-up truth--one manufactured by the creep himself, an embezzler who managed to screw the people of Illinois out of a further 300,000 dollars simply by making authorities, and news outlets, believe in the existence of fictitious murderers. Gliniewicz's last ploy, no doubt, was carried out so that he could, indeed, become a hero. It worked for two months. Now, a memorial photograph of the asshole displayed outside somewhere in Fox Lake, Illinois, has a black L drawn over his forehead.
Loser. But who won?
Vic Neptune
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Quentin Tarantino attended a rally against police brutality and criminality. Families of victims killed by cops were in attendance, the point being to show solidarity against police officers overstepping their legal limits. Tarantino called cops who've killed unarmed black people "murderers," a word offensive, apparently, to those who prefer to imagine that cops these days, post-Ferguson with its killing of Michael Brown by a white cop, are beset by hostility from the masses and don't know how to behave anymore.
The Fraternal Order of Police, with approximately 300,000 members, is supposedly planning "a surprise" for Tarantino prior to the release of his upcoming Western, The H8teful Eight. They claim they'll hit him economically, "where it hurts." The FOP executive director assured us that cops are dedicated to stopping violence, while Tarantino makes violent movies (but, I point out, so does Steven Spielberg).
Yes, we know that cops are not supposed to hurt innocent people, yet, as Tarantino pointed out at that rally, they do sometimes ruin and take lives without sufficient rational cause.
The cop in Fox Lake, Illinois, hailed for a time as "a hero," was supposedly shot and killed by two white men and one black man, right about the time a Texas policeman was murdered while pumping gas. These killings prompted an abundance of Fox News fulminations against those disparaging law enforcement in America. A thing called "the Ferguson Effect" was cited, the theory that, since the shooting of Michael Brown by a white police officer, cops nowadays fear to fully engage with their jobs, since they're under so much scrutiny from phone camera-holding citizens and under so much pressure to be far better than humanly possible.
The Fox Lake cop's death caused a large manhunt for the perpetrators, who were never found. A few days ago we heard the perps weren't found because they don't exist. The manhunt cost about 300,000 dollars. The dead hero cop staged his death, committing suicide. Authorities were close to discovering his embezzling of thousands of dollars from a police youth fund. He was a real asshole.
Quentin Tarantino, it seems to be lost on some, wasn't criticizing the police, but was condemning police brutality. The North Charleston cop who shot a fleeing black man in the back and planted evidence (captured on phone cam by a citizen) is a murderer. Calling cops who murder people murderers is simply proper use of the English language.
The Fraternal Order of Police plans to upset a movie director by using a tactic that rarely works: banning. Banned books (Slaughterhouse Five, Catcher in the Rye) end up selling far more copies when the stupid malice of self-appointed censors is expressed. These cops so offended by Tarantino's impassioned words against police injustice seem to believe they can economically hurt a director as popular as Quentin Tarantino. Do they realize his film Pulp Fiction is a revered cinematic gem illuminating American pop culture like few other films of the 1990s? Far more people, I'm guessing, give a shit about Tarantino's opinions than those of Joe Pasco, FOP's executive director, who displays his quality of intellect by announcing a "surprise" before the surprise pops.
A final note: The Department of Homeland Security has approved Secret Service protection for Ben Carson and Donald Trump. Among other things, this means that taxpayers will pay for the protection of a billionaire who can afford his own security. This should've been put to a vote.
Vic Neptune
The Fraternal Order of Police, with approximately 300,000 members, is supposedly planning "a surprise" for Tarantino prior to the release of his upcoming Western, The H8teful Eight. They claim they'll hit him economically, "where it hurts." The FOP executive director assured us that cops are dedicated to stopping violence, while Tarantino makes violent movies (but, I point out, so does Steven Spielberg).
Yes, we know that cops are not supposed to hurt innocent people, yet, as Tarantino pointed out at that rally, they do sometimes ruin and take lives without sufficient rational cause.
The cop in Fox Lake, Illinois, hailed for a time as "a hero," was supposedly shot and killed by two white men and one black man, right about the time a Texas policeman was murdered while pumping gas. These killings prompted an abundance of Fox News fulminations against those disparaging law enforcement in America. A thing called "the Ferguson Effect" was cited, the theory that, since the shooting of Michael Brown by a white police officer, cops nowadays fear to fully engage with their jobs, since they're under so much scrutiny from phone camera-holding citizens and under so much pressure to be far better than humanly possible.
The Fox Lake cop's death caused a large manhunt for the perpetrators, who were never found. A few days ago we heard the perps weren't found because they don't exist. The manhunt cost about 300,000 dollars. The dead hero cop staged his death, committing suicide. Authorities were close to discovering his embezzling of thousands of dollars from a police youth fund. He was a real asshole.
Quentin Tarantino, it seems to be lost on some, wasn't criticizing the police, but was condemning police brutality. The North Charleston cop who shot a fleeing black man in the back and planted evidence (captured on phone cam by a citizen) is a murderer. Calling cops who murder people murderers is simply proper use of the English language.
The Fraternal Order of Police plans to upset a movie director by using a tactic that rarely works: banning. Banned books (Slaughterhouse Five, Catcher in the Rye) end up selling far more copies when the stupid malice of self-appointed censors is expressed. These cops so offended by Tarantino's impassioned words against police injustice seem to believe they can economically hurt a director as popular as Quentin Tarantino. Do they realize his film Pulp Fiction is a revered cinematic gem illuminating American pop culture like few other films of the 1990s? Far more people, I'm guessing, give a shit about Tarantino's opinions than those of Joe Pasco, FOP's executive director, who displays his quality of intellect by announcing a "surprise" before the surprise pops.
A final note: The Department of Homeland Security has approved Secret Service protection for Ben Carson and Donald Trump. Among other things, this means that taxpayers will pay for the protection of a billionaire who can afford his own security. This should've been put to a vote.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Yesterday in Manhattan, Donald J. Trump, author, announced the release of his new book, Crippled America: How To Make America Great Again. The How To segment of the book's title has adorned his campaign baseball caps for several months, suggesting, to me at least, Trump campaign caps promoting Crippled America.
Trump likes to claim he has no time for political correctness. I think he just doesn't give a shit about it, like millions of other Americans. Still, combining the no longer accepted term crippled with the sacred name America demonstrates Trump's mastery of (self- and finance-promoting) propaganda. It was like 1977, when people formed lines extending far outside the venue to see Star Wars--Donald J. Trump and his new literary work, signings following a Trump Tower press conference preceded on cable news with the usual half-screen shot of an empty podium, and assurances of an imminent appearance by the man who makes the news media-entertainment complex gears move.
Four weeks ago, a Business Insider preview of the book referred to it as a "slim volume," a term applied usually to a poet's humble first release, or, in this case, a windbag's effusion of already-heard-many-times talking points, some of which Trump repeated during yesterday's press conference. I noticed that the first journalist Trump called on was MSNBC's Katy Tur, evolved apparently in Trump's estimation from semi-contemptible woman in his first interview with her to a favorite, working for an allegedly liberal cable news network.
Today's episode of MSNBC's Morning Joe featured the usual Trump coverage (fuel feeding and sustaining the monster), accompanied by the typical amusement of those on camera, acting helpless as they react to Trump's psychopathic self-confidence; smiling, laughing, and even admitting sometimes that their attention keeps him going. When news media workers analyze their own effect on the news, it's like the opening of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, when Alice, veteran of Wonderland, enters a flipped world through a mirror. Trump, like the weirdnesses encountered in Carroll's fiction, rules freak zones. In the world of today's real America, broken or not, it's important to distinguish the difference between the fantastic (that which stimulates the imagination, in political discourse, with flamboyant crazy talk) and the real world and its people affected by decisions that can put nutjobs into political office, or elect people who at least can do a fair job with the imperfect materials at hand.
A side note: My friend Rhombus, a filmmaker and collage artist, has just uploaded his first video to YouTube, under the title Bag of Confusion. It's a nineteen minute original film, with lots of music. Check it out if you're so inclined.
Vic Neptune
Trump likes to claim he has no time for political correctness. I think he just doesn't give a shit about it, like millions of other Americans. Still, combining the no longer accepted term crippled with the sacred name America demonstrates Trump's mastery of (self- and finance-promoting) propaganda. It was like 1977, when people formed lines extending far outside the venue to see Star Wars--Donald J. Trump and his new literary work, signings following a Trump Tower press conference preceded on cable news with the usual half-screen shot of an empty podium, and assurances of an imminent appearance by the man who makes the news media-entertainment complex gears move.
Four weeks ago, a Business Insider preview of the book referred to it as a "slim volume," a term applied usually to a poet's humble first release, or, in this case, a windbag's effusion of already-heard-many-times talking points, some of which Trump repeated during yesterday's press conference. I noticed that the first journalist Trump called on was MSNBC's Katy Tur, evolved apparently in Trump's estimation from semi-contemptible woman in his first interview with her to a favorite, working for an allegedly liberal cable news network.
Today's episode of MSNBC's Morning Joe featured the usual Trump coverage (fuel feeding and sustaining the monster), accompanied by the typical amusement of those on camera, acting helpless as they react to Trump's psychopathic self-confidence; smiling, laughing, and even admitting sometimes that their attention keeps him going. When news media workers analyze their own effect on the news, it's like the opening of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, when Alice, veteran of Wonderland, enters a flipped world through a mirror. Trump, like the weirdnesses encountered in Carroll's fiction, rules freak zones. In the world of today's real America, broken or not, it's important to distinguish the difference between the fantastic (that which stimulates the imagination, in political discourse, with flamboyant crazy talk) and the real world and its people affected by decisions that can put nutjobs into political office, or elect people who at least can do a fair job with the imperfect materials at hand.
A side note: My friend Rhombus, a filmmaker and collage artist, has just uploaded his first video to YouTube, under the title Bag of Confusion. It's a nineteen minute original film, with lots of music. Check it out if you're so inclined.
Vic Neptune
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