If you are familiar with the disasters movies of the 1970s, Airport, Airport 1975, Airport 1977, Airport 1979 with the concord and I would add Airplane! 1980 in with that because that is about what the 1970s was about, I think you’ll find where the inspiration for all of those movies came from. Those movies all follow The Crowded Sky that came out in 1960. Like the rest of those movies, The Crowded Sky features a lot of talented, intelligent, imperfect people who are all going through personal issues that affect in their jobs in the movie that comes out and plays a big part in the movie.
Like the disaster movies that follow, The Crowded Sky is a pretty funny movie with a lot of funny people and characters in it. It also has a lot of soap opera in it with people going through relationship issues, feelings of insecurity, family issues with their kids, like the captain of the commercial plane not getting along with his son. People on the commercial plane not falling in love, but getting romantically involve with each other. The navigator of the commercial plane who is a motormouth and can’t shut up about how bad his wife is. The captain and first officer hating each other’s guts.
The Crowded Sky is essentially a very funny soap opera for about the first hour and twenty-minutes or so, before the two planes collide in the air. But they collide in the air because the people on the ground who are supposed to be doing air traffic control, are overworked and not paying attention to the two planes until it is too late. A Navy jet and the commercial airliner. This is a very funny and entertaining movie with a very skilled pilot having to make up for his big mistake, which was flying the plane too high. Which is why he collided with the Navy jet.
“A widower, his son and a nightclub singer (abandoned by her husband), travel downstream for various reasons. En-route they begin to form their own surrogate family, which acts as a replacement for the broken homes they have left behind.”
Source:Amazon– Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum. Perhaps you can guess which one is which.
The River of No Return is certainly not a great movie. It is a good movie, an entertaining movie, a fairly well-written movie with a good cast and Marilyn Monroe looks great in the movie. This movie was also ahead of it’s time at least when it comes to women’s fashion.
This movie takes place in the late 19th Century or early 20th Century and yet Marilyn is wearing tight Lee denim jeans in boots for about half of the movie. In an era where that was almost never seen from women. Back then women wore long dresses for the most part and nothing that showed a lot of their physical body.
Marilyn looked great in this movie, her usual hot sexy baby-face adorable sweet self. And this movie was very real to me in the sense that it wasn’t about angels and devils. Robert Mitchum plays a single father in the movie who helps out a couple on the water having trouble with their boat. The man in this couple is a criminal or crook on the run.
His wife is Marilyn a sweetheart, but not someone without faults. But Mitchum is simply trying to help these people out and the guy screws them and takes his lone horse away from Mitchum and his son and his girlfriend stays behind with the man and his son. And now they are together trying to survive on the River of No Return with outlaws shooting at them.
I’m not sure that you can describe Republicans who’ve been in the GOP since the mid to late 1970s, people like former Senator Jess Helms of North Carolina as ‘New Republicans’. Well I guess of course you can, but it’s simply not true. I mean the fact is the Far-Right that is made up of the Christian-Right and Neoconservatives like Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann have been Republicans since the mid and late 1970s. Actually you can go back to the late 1960s with Richard Nixon’s so-called silent majority. That today would be called the Tea Party.
The fact is the Republican and Democratic Party has a nut house. A coalition of people who are more interested in their own political ideology and political movement and promoting it as much as possible, as they are on facts and information. Things that are considered old school by a lot of young people and elitist propaganda by the Far-Right and corporate propaganda by the Far-Left. At least when facts and information contradict their political ideology and partisan arguments. And that is assuming they are interested in facts and information at all. Which is not a safe assumption.
What Will McAvoy calls ‘New Republicans’ are people who live on their own planet or in a time capsule. Somewhere around 1955 or so when mom stayed home and raised the kids and dad went to work and said, “honey, I’m home” everyday at least during the week at around 7 PM. Where gays were trapped in a closet or basement like people who have been kidnapped. Where African-Americans were officially free, but still serving as servants to rich Northeastern and deep South Anglo-Saxon Protestant family families.
America has changed completely since the 1950s and doesn’t look much like it did sixty-years ago. The rest of the country has moved forward as well and modernized. The Tricky Dick Silent Majority, is now an extremely loud and obnoxious tiny minority, but with their own public microphones called FOX News and talk radio so their message and believes are always public. The so-called New Republican is an insult actual Republicans and republicanism. The New Republican is not much of a fan of the republicanism or the republic.
The so-called New Republican doesn’t believe in the federal republic or perhaps any other type of republic. Other than maybe some theocratic Christian republic. The Separation of Church to the New Republican doesn’t exist. The New Republican claims to love America, but doesn’t seem to like Americans, at least Americans who aren’t completely like them and agree with them somewhere around a hundred-percent of the time. The New Republican claims to love freedom, while at the same time puts down Americans for what they do with their freedom.
The so-called New Republican is not new at least when it comes to modern American political history. But they are real and a huge part of the actual Republican Party today. To the point that when actual Republicans, you know people who believe in the republic and republicanism has the balls to go against them and propose things that the so-called New Republican sees as Un-American, the real Republican puts their political careers in jeopardy. And I believe that is the type of Republican that Will McAvoy was talking about.
Here’s where I agree with P.J. O’Rourke when it comes to the economy. And why I don’t like big government when it comes to social issues or personal issues. When government taxes or spends money to the point that now the people don’t have that money to spend on themselves and their families, government then takes over responsibility for the people. It is no longer there to protect our national security and protect us from criminals and be an insurance system for when we are in need. But it then becomes the national parents of the country and makes people dependent on them.
As a Liberal I want government to serve as an insurer for the people. Not the insurer, but as an insurer to help people when they are in need. When they are robbed, lose their home, physically assaulted and other things. But not there to take care of people’s basic needs. Their housing, their food, their health care, health insurance, pension plan, job and every other thing that American adults have to decide and figure out for themselves everyday. We live in a federal state, not a nanny state, or a welfare state, and certainly not a police state. Which means there are limits to what government, especially the national government can do for the people.
Big government equals big problems especially when it makes people dependent on it for its basic survival. We don’t need Uncle Sam and is wife Aunt Mary or whoever his wife is to play mom and dad for a country three-hundred fifteen million people. We are not a country of genius’ either, just look at our pop culture where we have an unlimited amount of experts on what their latest celebrity had lunch or what type of smart phone they use or what is the cost of their house. But couldn’t tell you who their governor or U.S. Representative or Senator is, even if it meant a whole day at no cost for them with their favorite celebrity as grand prize. But most of us are capable of making our own basis life decisions and do that everyday.
I wonder if Bill Maher includes himself in the group “most Americans are dumb and uneducated”. I also wonder where he got those polls and numbers he was apparently quoting. Assuming what he does is a real job, he wouldn’t have the time go do those polls himself, or do all the research. Bill Maher again leaves me with a piece where I’m sort of with him, but not completely there. Are there stupid Americans, you might as well ask if their lakes in Minnesota, snow in Alaska, or water in Michigan. That is not a real question or debate. And to be completely truthful, I don’t believe “are most Americans stupid a real question and debate either”.
If most Americans were stupid, the country wouldn’t be nearly as developed as it is and far along and powerful across the board as it is. Why, because a country run by idiots and not just in the public sector and private sector couldn’t create that. Why, because they are idiots and what are idiots good for, well why are they called idiots, because they are experts on idiocy. I know Bill Maher is a comedian, at least technically so what he says should be taken with at least jar of salt every time he even tries to sound serious, but he’s simply wrong about that.
Now here is where I agree with Maher. And again no debate, too many stupid Americans, but why is that, one our education system, public for the most part isn’t as good as it needs to be for a country this size. Too many Americans either not finishing high school and even if they do not getting out of high school what they should’ve gotten that taxpayers paid for and as a result having to take high school courses in the junior college that would take them so they can finish their high school education and be ready for junior college.
But it is not just education, but it is also about values. And no I’m not a Religious Conservative, but things that people need to do well in America, aren’t valued as highly as what is considered hot or awesome at the time by too many young Americans. Which is how you get such a high percentage of Americans who couldn’t tell who their U.S. Representative is, even if it meant winning the latest smart phone with a year of free service. Why because they are too busy playing video games, watching so-called reality TV, what was the latest bar their favorite celebrity got kicked out of. Or what Kim Kardashian had for lunch in Beverly Hills on Saturday and what shoes she wore with her purse.
A lot of young Americans are more interested in these celebrity culture and technology stories, than they are in current affairs and politics. And forget about American history or the U.S. Constitution, “because that is like so yesterday and not awesome”. Actually for a lot of Millennial’s, what happened last year, “is like so ancient history”. American history and current affairs is being replaced by valley culture and valley pop. At least in the short-term, hopefully at some point they’ll grow up and become more serious and respectful of things and people who came before them. But right now they are making America look stupid.
In the piece I wrote about P.J. O’Rourke yesterday there was a piece that I left out, that I sort of wish that I put in. But hey, today’s a new day and I’ll be able to stick that in here, like you stick in ice cream that you can’t seem to live without in a very crowded freezer. But again I’m not a Libertarian and I don’t agree with O’Rourke on everything. And here is where he is wrong about not voting. What are the two biggest threats to corrupt politics and corrupt politicians? Educated voters and educated voters who vote on a regular if not every time they get a chance. And if they live in Chicago or perhaps anywhere in Illinois, they may get to vote for the same person twice in the same election.
I guess even if you’re dead in Chicago not only does your vote still count, but your votes in the same election and contest still count. And that is all the Chicago material that I have, for now. But the educated voter whether they are only able to vote once per-contest or not, (ha ha) is the biggest threat to a corrupt politician. Why I say that? I’ll tell you anyway, because the educated voter knows about the corrupt politician because they keep up with the news and the news that effects their representative or executive in their town, district or state. And they know who has that Senator, Representative, Mayor, Governor whoever in their back pocket and what those groups get for their investment.
As a Liberal I would never be in favor of compulsory voting. In English that means requiring people to eat their vegetables, I mean vote by law. Especially when our politicians are at best only as good as the people they are supposed to represent. And even if they were as good as the people they represent, they wouldn’t be good enough. That would just be big government nanny state “we’re going to force those vegetables down your throat for your own good. And if you still don’t comply, we’ll lock you up, which will be worst for you. But we’ll say it’s for your own good, so we can get away with it”. But imagine what an educated electric would mean for corrupt politicians? “I might have to clean up my act, or risk losing my next election, or worst going to jail”.
Imagine if we had politicians as good as the people or even better. People who don’t just get themselves a good education, but then use those skills to do something outside of technology, celebrity culture or entertainment and used that education to get involved in public service and current affairs. Not because they like politics and think it would be an easy way to earn a living at taxpayers expense and not have to work that much and just find enough special interest groups to keep happy so they never have to worry about losing. But because they hate the corrupt political system and the corrupt politicians in that system and want a better system that actually represents those people.
You match the educated good government candidates with educated voters, now the corrupt politician is out of a job. Why, because one thing that we know about educated voters is that they actually bother to vote and don’t just keep up with real news and current affairs. So now you have educated voters voting for good government candidates and those good government candidates become good public servants. And know I’m not an alcoholic and I’m not high on any illegal drug, right now and I know this might sound like a drunken fantasy or a pipe dream. Like dreaming about the Detroit Lions actually winning the Super Bowl or the Redskins having a good team again under Dan Snyder.
But if people just bothered to learn about the people who are running for office and are currently in office and keep up with the government that they are forced to pay for, they would be “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore” and take that anger out on the people who are in office. And vote for those people who were pissed off enough to run for office to change the system and give the country a government that is responsive to the concerns of the country and responsible. But I know that would mean watching less realty TV, not knowing what their latest celebrity wore to the last awards show, or what they are in jail for now. Or less time on Facebook and their smart phone. But wouldn’t it be worth that to have good government that we actually don’t mind paying for?
What they are essentially talking about is what became known as the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 that was a bipartisan bill in Congress between Democrats and Republicans that was negotiated with President Bill Clinton. But the law and pieces of it were already proposed in the late 1960s by people on the Right and even Progressives on the Left. That became proposed by law by the Nixon Administration that Chris DeMuth was part of in 1969 and the early 1970s.
What Welfare to Work says is that people who are mentally and physically able to work, will be expected to do that and not be able to collect Welfare indefinitely. And that people who don’t currently have the skills to get themselves a good job, they would get assistance to go back to school and finish their education so they can get themselves a good job. This law that the late great Senator Pat Moynahan and today’s Progressives called mean-spirited and that people would get kicked out of their homes and starve to death as a result, simply hasn’t happened because of the 1996 law.
I don’t feel any sympathy for anyone for Americans who claim to hate the dysfunction in Washington, especially in Congress, but at the same time vote for people who are responsible for that dysfunction. Its like hearing from a football player who played in the NFL for 10-15 years and now suffers from serious knee pain and always complaining about knee pain. Or the driver involved in a car accident who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and now suffers from serious back or neck pain. I mean, what do they have to complain about? They knew the consequences for the decisions they made that lived up to their injuries. And if they didn’t, they are too stupid, drunk or high a combination of all of those factors for me to give a damn about.
American voters all the time in poll after poll say they disapprove of Congress and yet they reelect the same representatives and senators to represent them. So maybe it is that American voters actually like gridlock, but if you look at poll after poll there’s clearly a feeling in the country that Congress needs to act on a series of issues for the country. Like the economy, infrastructure, immigration just to use as examples, but they elect and reelect people who don’t seem to have any interest in addressing those issues. If you want someone to do something for you and you’re talking about politics, you vote for people who are actually interested in those concerns.
If you want Gridlock, vote for Joe and Marry Gridlock running for U.S. House or Senate or reelection to one of those chambers. Because they’ll be more than happy to keep their election promises. I mean seriously how hard is it to do nothing. Even someone in Congress can figure how to do that. You don’t get action on issues by voting for inaction. I know that sounds as obvious as the Earth is round or concrete is hard or the Chicago Cubs won’t win the World Series. But apparently we have millions if not tens of millions of voters who don’t seem to understand that.
We have a lot of people in Congress, especially in the Tea Party Republican Party who are really only there for one reason. To stop President Obama from doing anything, at least anything constructive. If they actually want to do anything, it is to repeal and sit on their ass’s, another way of saying repeal and replace. So if that is what you want, you might have a hundred people on Capitol Hill who’ll do exactly that for you, which again is nothing. Again, how hard is it to do that and if you are still thinking about that, you are too dumb to follow along even for the ride. And then non wonder why what ninety-percent of the members of Congress get reelected.
But if you want people to actually do things in Congress and address your issues, whatever the issues and if you’re a Democrat or Republican, then you need to vote for the people who’ll address those issues. I know, this sounds like basic common sense, but that is a big problem with America and Congress in particular. It is not the budget deficit that is such a huge problem right now, but the common sense deficit up there. Which is why not a lot gets done up there, but why are they there in the first place? Because the voters sent them there to represent them.
I don’t expect to win any new supporters with Occupy Wall Street and the broader Far-Left in America to go along with my three other supporters that I have, Tom, Dick and Harry, from this movement with this post. But hey, life goes on, if there’s will, there’s a way and I promise I’m out of 1950s clichés. But that is not the purpose of this post. But the purpose of this post is to layout some facts about Occupy Wall Street and why they haven’t caught on. Hopefully in a way to explain to people who might be so high on pot or Starbucks coffee, even though they supposedly are against American capitalism and corporate, in a way they can even understand.
How do you lead a leaderless movement? The same way you put out fire with gas, or quench a first with dirt or satisfy a hunger with air or lead the Chicago Cubs to the World Series. Two words, you don’t, that is how, because it can’t be done. If you are familiar with this blog, you know it is not a fan of the Tea Party and I’m sure as hell not either. But they’ve succeeded because they have leadership and a message. Now that message might be so simplistic that a five-year old can understand. Which is why even Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin get it, but at least they have a message.
The Tea Party message is this,”The Federal Government is too big and spends too much money”. At least as it relates to the economy. If you can’t get that, than American politics is too complicated for you and why don’t you try to figure out how to shoot a basketball instead. What does OWS come back with, “rich people are too rich and perhaps shouldn’t be allowed to be rich in the first place and Wall Street and corporate America are evil bastards that should be stopped. Now you in Washington figure out how to fix these problems. Because we are a leaderless movement and we have no ideas of our own”.
An obvious rule in American politics is that a message always beats no message even if that message is a negative message. Look no further than the 2014 mid-term elections where the GOP had, “we hate Obama, elect us and we’ll stop him”. With Democrats countering, “hey we aren’t crazy about him either, but he’s the President”. The negative message beat no message again. The Republican Party vs. the Democratic Party is the same matchup as the Tea Party vs. Occupy Wall Street. Negative message vs. no message. But at least the Democrats have a leadership. How effective they are is the topic of another post.
There’s an old American saying that goes like this. “We get the government that we paid for”. Another way of saying that is that we get the government that we voted for. “Look buddy, you voted for those assholes in charge. What the hell do you have to complain about?” And for people who didn’t bother to vote, seek help please, but they get the government that other people voted for. Just because you were too busy on your iPhone or watching reality TV, or don’t think voting is worth it, you live in the same country as everyone else in that country and get government as well for good and bad.
I don’t feel sorry at all about people who voted for people that they now don’t like. They could’ve voted for someone else, or bothered to do their homework before they voted. And I don’t feel sorry for people who don’t vote and then later complain about the political system. When they aren’t doing their part to make it better. We live in a democracy in the sense that the people vote for the leaders and the candidates and incumbents who get more votes than their opponents are the people who win and assume office. That is what majoritarian democracy is about.
I like P.J. O’Rourke’s comment about personal responsibility and spending other people’s money. Great Danny DeVito movie about that by the way, but imagine if someone gave you a blank check of someone else’s money. How responsible would you be with that, or forget about the blank check, a check for ten-thousand dollars over a month or so, how well would you do with that money? If that money comes with no strings and no responsibility, you won’t spend that money very well at least compared with if you were to spend ten-thousand dollars over a month of your own money. And having to live with the consequences of every financial decision that you make.
I don’t want government to go away or disappear and I’m not a Libertarian unlike P.J. O’Rourke. But at the same time I don’t want government managing my life for me, or trying to manage someone else’s life. Why, because they aren’t trying to manage people’s affairs for them with government money. They are trying to manage the affairs of people with the people’s money, the taxpayers money. So of course they are not going to spend that money as well, because if they screw up, they can just tax us more to try to fix whatever problem they just created.
When Uncle Sam or whoever the government uncle is in whatever the country, says “I know you have a problem and I want to help you and I’m the government and it won’t cost you anything.” Your first question should always be, “how much will your help cost me?” After you tell Uncle Sam to get his big fat hand out of your pocket. Because anything that government does comes with a cost that is paid for by the people who live in that particular country. Of course it is not free if you pay taxes, because with those taxes you’re paying for those public services that you receive.
As far as freedom and fairness. You can’t have one without the other. If someone is not able to by law to be as successful as they possibly can base on their own work and production and the services they provided for others, because government has their hands down their pockets and in their piggy banks taking whatever they can away from that individual, then that person won’t be successful. They’ll say “why should I work so hard and be so good at what I do, when government just takes away most of what I created to give it to other people who aren’t doing well?” Oh by the way, government is doing that in some name of fairness.
As far as the Baby Boomers, I have mixed feelings about them. I love the individualism of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s that allowed for Americans to be Americans and what the Founding Fathers essentially wanted to create, a society for people to be free to be themselves. But at the same time while they did that, they went completely the other way when it came to economic policy and created a society where people now expected government to give them things. There was this Tom Jefferson liberal free society on one hand. While on the other hand there was this Tom Hayden or Bernie Sanders collectivist utopian society where people weren’t expected to act for themselves and take care of themselves.
The so-called Me Generation that Boomers tend to get labeled as, is me meaning “give me Uncle Sam! I deserve this, that and the other thing and you the government should give that to me at someone else’s expense. Because why should I as an individual have to do those things for myself?” And public education, again that is only as good as the people want to be and a lot of that has to do with the kids that are part of that system and the parents that they come from. If you raise their kids well and make education a big part of what you are trying to get across to them, chances are those kids will do well in either a public or private school. But if you don’t, unless they are a great bright kid perhaps smarter and more mature than their parents, they won’t do very well in school.
Government, education, politics and politicians are only as good as the people. Well at best they can only be as good as the people. The only thing worst than people not voting, are dumb voters who always vote or at least vote a lot. Because they are voting for people that they aren’t knowledgable about and perhaps do not even understand that. You want good politicians, public servants and educators, you need to do your part to make that happen and not expect others to do that for you. The two worst fears for crooked politicians, are educated voters and a lot of educated voters. You do your homework, vote for the people who’ll represent your best interests and hold them accountable, you’ll have the best government that you possibly can.
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