Two items on today’s agenda before I lapse into a comatose state doing a tax return that I’ve been pushing aside for days:

One, I put up a post yesterday called “Marijuana and tyrants” I think. It is a subject I want to address in-depth soon, but wrote that late in the day, and I am never pleased with my writing late in the day and deleted it. It will be back, as I think that the only reason why a basically harmless substance like marijuana is illegal is that its use is so widespread that it allows law enforcement the luxury of selective enforcement, and that this explains the huge disproportion of African-Americans in our prison system. This also tips into the War on Drugs, which I believe evidence shows to be a cover for counterinsurgency abroad and attacks on civil liberties and use of selective law enforcement at home. I’ll give it another shot later this week.

Second, I seriously considered banning a certain well-known person yesterday and this morning, as I don’t want this place to be anything like Cowgirl. But then I thought of a better way: If you use the expression “dude” or “you see” your comment will be queued for moderation. This, I thought, would allow us the opportunity to talk about him using his name, while he would think that he is banned because his comments don’t appear.
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PS: In updating the moderation section to include those phrases, I found the word “Kailey.” I was not aware it was still there, as neither of them are banned. Sorry boys.

I saw the movie Wolf of Wall Street yesterday. At three hours, it is too long. Scorsese could have made a better, shorter movie. But to the issue at hand, some relatives of ours, very nice and conservative in outlook, were troubled by both the sex scenes and the manner in which Wall Street is portrayed as a drug-infested psychopathic amusement park.

This is not a movie review. There are hundreds of them out there for you, and man do I miss Roger Ebert at times like this. I either sought his opinion out before deciding what to see, or after a movie just to see what I missed.

Scorsese bases the movie on the book of the same name. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill are over-the-top throughout. Wall Street brokers are portrayed as boiler-room hucksters, and are all getting high not only on Quaaludes and cocaine, but also conquest. Every now and then someone in the movie has a legitimate moral qualm. But there is really only one rule: they do not rat on each other.

There is full frontal female nudity throughout, and Skinemax-like simulated copulation. That is a nice relief from the intense psychological violence of the boiler room scenes. For that reason alone I would put the movie on our TV screen as I play Angry Birds on the iPad. I have excellent side vision, and instantly know when those scenes are on.

And here is my backdrop, which I did not share with our relatives: The psychopathic personality is not satisfied with the ordinary joys of life – making things, working daily toward long-term goals, love and relationships or even caring about others in general. Consequently, life for them is pursuit of thrills, adrenalin rushes. They do not know fear, and so are found climbing mountains, sky diving, preaching from a high pulpit – anything that gives them a rush. They are drawn to the world of finance for the quick score, laughing when their victims realize they’ve been had. That’s conquest, the ultimate thrill.

I think Scorsese went for the jugular here, as he has probably seen it himself throughout his career. But there is very little physical violence, unlike his mobster films. Instead, he’s going after the real criminals in silk suits and Italian loafers.

No major Wall Street investment firms were harmed in the making of his movie. After the most recent bubble, no one went to jail. They are now busy re-inflating our next nightmare.

More fun below fold, right out of Scorsese’s world.
Continue reading “Dwarf tossing on Wall Street” →

No disrespect intended towards Liz at all. I just don’t do this sort of thing, but liked what I ran across this morning from the author of Red Badge of Courage. The man had unusual insight even in his twenties (he died at age 28):

The Wayfarer
Stephen Crane
The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
“Ha,” he said,
“I see that none has passed here
“In a long time.”
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
“Well,” he mumbled at last,
“Doubtless there are other roads.”

Selwyn Bromberger, a professor of philosophy at MIT, was shown convincing evidence of conspiracy around JFK’s death in 1969. Impressed, he said

“If they are strong enough to kill the President, and strong enough to cover it up, then they are too strong to confront directly … if they feel sufficiently threatened, they may move to open totalitarian rule.”

No word, to this day, on who “they” are.
Continue reading “Better left alone” →

Every year in the northern hemisphere the sun appears to move south on the horizon. The last day of this apparent movement is the one we call December 21st, or Winter Solstice. It appears to rest in place for three days, and then begins its journey back. That is, on the third day it rises again.

While all of this is going on, the constellation Virgo (virgin) is apparent in the night sky. So it might be said that the sun is born of a virgin, since Virgo is the constellation symbolizing of fertility.

Later in the year the sun will nurture the growth of plants that sustain life, including grapes with which we make libations. Indeed, the sun turns water into wine.

There are twelve months, twelve apostles, twelve tribes of Israel, and twelve signs of the zodiac.

Of course, most of the ancient myths that we still celebrate today happened during the Age of Pisces, symbolized by the fish. I still see some of those on the back of automobiles.

And most amazing to me, the ancient Sun God, even with the multiple languages on earth and thousands of years having transpired, is still referred to us in english-speaking culture as “The Son.”

Merry Christmas, everyone. Myths are important. I do not denigrate them. We even have people in government who supervise our popular myths, among them Oswald, 19 Arabs, cherry trees and rail splitting, and virgin birth. As far as I know, the only virgin ever to give birth to a child was Doris Day.

I would like to add some order to the matter of conspiracies, a topic for which an ordinary person can be ridiculed and led to confounding arguments far from the matters of importance. To wit:

• The term “conspiracy theorist” is a CIA invention, and a bit of a PSYOP even of itself. It is meant to separate those who do not believe official truth from those who do, and cast them in a negative light.

It’s clever. Before we ever get to evidence or perps or motives, we have to overcome the presumption that our thought processes are corrupted. In fact, once at that point, most people never bother to look at evidence due to fear of ridicule. Orwell called it Crimestop.
Continue reading “Forecast for tomorrow: Much like yesterday” →

I mentioned over at Intelligent Discontent that the level of corruption we now face in this country can only be overcome by massive and peaceful resistance, and that a dumbed-down (spell-check wants me to use “numbed-down” there, perhaps more descriptive) public isn’t ready for that. I also mentioned Occupy Wall Street, and how efficiently it was crushed by the Obama Administration.

This brought to mind an incident in American military aggression in the Mideast known as the “Highway of Death,” or more accurately, the “Turkey Shoot.” The “war,” such as it was (a barbaric onslaught on the Iraqi civilian infrastructure) was pretty much over in February of 1991 when the Americans gave the Iraqis permission to return to their home country on Highway 80, which runs from Basra to Kuwait City.

Once exposed, the Americans blew up the vehicles on either end of the convoy, blocking escape, and then systematically destroyed every vehicle and human in between. It was called a “turkey shoot” because there was no opportunity for resistance, so that brave American pilots could dump their loads without any fear of being taken down by missiles or gunfire. Pilots returning to aircraft carriers were reported to be orgasmic swelling with patriotism.

The reason this came to mind is that it is an long-practiced military strategy to get the enemy to expose himself in order to destroy him. This was the effect, if not intent of Occupy. Internal resistance in the US exposed itself, and was crushed and demoralized. (The state also took names, which combined with dictatorial TSA authority effectively makes it possible to prevent future travel by any participant.) We know that the movement was infiltrated. The question is, was it instigated by the same forces that did so? If not, it would have been a good idea anyway.