Month: February 2020

Who Can the Dems Find to Inject Some Hope into the Race?

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Here we are at the end of the third week of relentlessly bad news for the progressives.  The Impeachment was a nothing burger.  The State of the Union Address was great optics for President Trump and a disaster for Nancy “the Ripper” Pelosi and her handmaidens in white.  Every primary, every debate, every news story has embarrassed the candidates and demoralized the progressive voters.  Bernie has surged in the polls and the party leadership are running out of options to stop him from getting the nomination.  They know if he goes into the convention with a plurality of the delegates and they appoint someone else in a smoke filled room that the Bernie Bros will freak out and either stay home on election day or vote for Trump out of revenge.

But even if they did anoint someone else who could it be?  All the other candidates are hopeless misfits that only appeal to one strand in the liberal coalition of the offended.  The Buttigieg voters hate Warren and Klobuchar.  The black voters only want Biden because of his link to Obama.  If he seems unelectable they’ll have to switch horses in mid-stream.  But which one?  Buttigieg and Warren won’t interest them.  Could they buy into Klobuchar?  Maybe, but it’s not a natural fit.  All in all, the present situation is racking the nerves of the Dem electorate.  The path forward is unclear.

This actually matches up with the outcome a lot of the contrarians were speculating about last year.  They were saying that Hillary would be plucked out of the air as the candidate or Michelle Obama or Oprah.  Would the Democrats do that?  I think they would if they thought they had a unifying savior.  I don’t think Hillary is an option.  Her loss in 2016 has tarnished her too badly.  she is a spent force.  I think Michelle Obama is a possibility.  She would energize the black voting block.  And the lure of the Obama years would fascinate a lot of the other progressive groups.  But it does seem unlikely.  I think the Obamas think 2024 is the right time to re-emerge.  They probably are hoping that a downturn in the economy will allow them to insinuate themselves back onto the national scene.

For these reasons I don’t think there is a viable alternative to Bernie Sanders.  Bloomberg has the money and the moderate credentials but he just got his head handed to him in the first debate.  He is not the right profile to inspire the Left to electoral victory.  So it will be Bernie.  Good.  Bernie has a loyal following of millenials.  They will vote for him.  He will get the loyalist Dem voters who will hold their noses and pull the lever.  But he won’t get the independents.  These libertarian types will listen when Bernie says he is going to take their money and redistribute it to the poor and they will believe him.  And they’ll think, “I like my money, it’s my best friend.  I don’t want to give it all to Bernie.”  And they will vote for Trump or stay home.  So I think the Dems are screwed.  They all got on board the green new deal and free college and free healthcare and free everything and because of that people who work and can count are going to give them the thumbs down.

So here’s to nine more months of Democrat depression followed by the election night despair.  I hope their healthcare plans include free anti-depressants.  They’re gonna need them.

Shakespeare in Film – Part 2 – Julius Caesar (1953)

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This version of Julius Caesar is interesting to me because it contains two contrasting acting types.  With John Gielgud as Cassius you have a British Shakespearian actor steeped in the conventions and knowledge of the traditional theater.  With Marlon Brando as Mark Antony you have a great American method actor who approaches his performance as a process of absorbing the soul of the character and living the part.  And because Mark Antony’s part is so bound up with a revenge motive, he is able to bring the set speech, his “friends, romans, countrymen” speech, to life.  Gielgud’s Cassius is a more intellectual character and it requires a great deal of nuance to render the part interesting.  His character is of an angry disappointed man who is motivated by fear, jealousy and spite.  The fine British actor James Mason is Brutus and does a masterful job of portraying the honest, intelligent patriot who slays his friend for the good of his country.  Louis Calhern another American actor has the pivotal but relatively minor part of Julius Caesar.  Greer Garson as Calpurnia and Deborah Kerr as Portia are Caesar’s and Brutus’s wives respectively.  And there are several other good performances but essentially the main action consists of Cassius and Brutus on one side and Mark Antony on the other.  Cassius draws Brutus into a conspiracy against Caesar and Mark Antony stirs a popular rebellion against the assassins.

The play is cut in half by the murder, with the first half concluded by Brando’s funeral oration for Caesar.  It is one of Shakespeare’s most memorable speeches and Brando plays it to the hilt.  His voice is saturated with emotion, by turns, sorrow, scorn then anger.  He plays the Roman crowd and stirs them to mutiny against the “honorable men” who slew Caesar.

For Brutus and Cassius, the speeches are smaller but they still allow the characters to display their personalities.  Cassius shows us his pettiness and his genuine feelings of affection for his friend.  Brutus is a more austere character.  Intelligence, integrity and a slightly cold persona is displayed.  But at the end when his whole world starts to collapse, he allows his personal feelings to emerge somewhat and these do him credit.

This play is a study of personalities.  The battle scenes are short and stylized so there isn’t a dynamism as you would see in a modern rendition of this story.  Instead you have what Shakespeare would show on a stage.  I don’t think Julius Caesar will appeal to everyone.  It’s not exciting enough for many people.  They will find it boring.  But for those interested in seeing how a dying world drove friends against each other in a civil war this gives a flavor of it.

Personally, I like the play and this version of it.  I’m not the biggest Brando fan but I like what he did with Mark Antony, especially the big speech.  And I’m always glad to see James Mason in a production.  His presence and the remarkable sound of his voice were perfect for this part.  So, there’s my first Shakespeare review.  That wasn’t so bad after all.

Hall Monitor Pete

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What can you say about Pete Buttigieg that doesn’t make him out as a jerk?  During the debate in Las Vegas, some Telemundo reporter calls out Klobuchar for forgetting the name of the Mexican president and, right away, Hall Monitor Pete chastises her for being a bad senator.  Now far be it from me to defend Klobuchar, she is just as toxic as all the other Dems on that stage.  They pander to illegal aliens and espouse insane policies that throw around multi-trillion dollar price tags like they were trinkets.  But I just want to reflect on the rodent-like quality of Petey Boy’s character.  Klobuchar at least correctly characterized the gotcha, trivia, Jeopardy aspect of this non-event correctly.  Memorizing the names of Latin American puppet leaders doesn’t really prove anything about leadership.  Now granted when you’re pandering to the large Hispanic population of Nevada and grant an interview with Telemundo you probably could expect that they will try to ambush you on some Latino advocacy question.  And so she got what she deserved.

But it takes a particularly petty individual to jump on that gotcha moment and try to make it into something meaningful.  I’m trying to select the best varmint to compare to it.  Weasel?  Rat?  Skunk?  Let’s go with weasel.  It takes an especially weaselly critter to try and churn something as meaningless as forgetting the name of the President of Mexico into a disqualifying event.  I can just bet that prior to this debate Petey Boy was in touch with Telemundo ensuring that the debate question about this was going to be used.  And probably he stayed up all night memorizing the names of all the Latin American leaders from the border of Texas down to the tip of Argentina.  And I’m sure he would have relished trilling his r’s and pronouncing the tilde on the letter n.  This is the annoying kid that everyone had in his class that preened for the teacher and answered all the ridiculous trivia that gets away from the point of whatever lesson is being learned.  He’s someone who just grinds it out and accumulates those extra credit points without ever becoming proficient at something useful.

Can you imagine if this guy actually ever became president?  We would be the laughing stock of the world and it wouldn’t be long until some fifth rate nation like Venezuela started kidnapping Americans and forcing Petey Boy to pay ransom and apologize for anything they cared to specify.  It really reflects just how low we’ve sunk when a specimen like Buttigieg is even considered a possible candidate for President of the most powerful nation on the face of the Earth.  Klobuchar has more spunk than that little doofus even though half the time she looks like she’s having a nervous breakdown.  At this point it’s pretty clear that Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Warren and Biden are not getting the nomination.  But it is still possible that Petey Boy could end up as running mate for the Dem candidate.  Even that possibility should bring shame to every American male.  To think that someone as weird, petty and dysfunctional as Petey Boy is deemed the crème de la crème of American manhood is just a crying shame.

Shakespeare in Film – Part 1 – Introduction

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I enjoy a cross section of Shakespeare’s work, comedy, tragedy, history.  I enjoy reading the works, live performances and film versions.  On the other hand, I haven’t studied Shakespeare or even theater in any formal way.  I just like what I like and dislike what I don’t.  For that reason I don’t have a technical vocabulary to make my critiques sound authoritative or learned.  So I’ll use the same style that I use for all my other reviews.  I hope Shakespeare doesn’t mind sharing the stage I’ve populated previously with the Twilight Zone, Captain Kirk and Plan 9 from Outer Space.

And just to go a little further with my preferences for these plays on film, I prefer the traditional presentation of the plays in the garb and surroundings that match the story that Shakespeare provided.  Also I prefer the male characters to be played by men and the girls to be girls.  So I’m probably not going to be interested in seeing Dame Judy Dench playing King Lear or a man prancing around as Titania.  I’ve seen a production of Richard III set in WWII era London.  It wasn’t terrible but I didn’t see the point.   So this should be fun, for me.  Hopefully some people will be interested.

Debating Bernie

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With all the talk about Bloomberg coming in and being handed the nomination I thought about which scenario was better for us.  Honestly I can’t rightly say.  Bloomberg is maybe a little less crazy but he has plenty of faults that will make him a big target in November.

But putting aside questions of tactics I keep coming back to how much fun it would be if Bernie were the nominee.  Imagine a debate between President Trump and him.  If asked about healthcare he would tout his Medicaid for All.  When he was forced to admit it, he would confirm that it would eliminate all the private insurance in the country and throw us into an awful government system like the Canadians and British.  These are systems where you might have to wait years for an expensive test or treatment.  In fact some cancer patients have died waiting for such tests.  Can you imagine what President Trump would do with an opportunity to reply to a Bernie answer on health insurance?  It would be devastating.

And how about the rest of Bernie’s agenda?  He believes in eliminating border controls.  He wants free college for all.  He wants to provide free medical and education benefits to all illegals.  He’s on board with the pipe dream plan in the “green new deal.”  The shock and horror of moderates and independents when Bernie admits that he’s going to ramp their taxes exponentially to pay for all these absurdities will lose him every sane voter in middle America.  In such a situation we can probably win Colorado, and Nevada on top of all the states Trump won in 2016 along with the likely addition of Minnesota.

And the best part of the whole thing will be all those progressives wailing and gnashing their teeth on Election Day night.  Miley Cyrus whining and crying, again, about how it was Bernie’s turn.  Rachel Maddow telling us, again, that this is no nightmare, this is our lives.  Without a doubt the “ragin’ Cajun,” James Carville’s head will explode out of frustration that his warnings about Bernie were ignored.  The Young Turks will be swearing continuously again.  Every single word will be bleeped out.  I wonder if Russia will be blamed again.  Of course, it would be better to blame the Soviet Union than Russia.  that will be the actual cause of the loss.  Because when you come right down to it, less than half of Americans are crazy enough to prefer socialism to capitalism.  Not that capitalism has been doing a bang up job lately but even the semi-delusional will look into Bernie Sander’s apoplectic face and recognize a lunatic when they see one.

Of course 2020 will be much better than 2016.  we wont have to wait for months for President Trump to be sworn in and then assemble a cabinet.  He’ll already be there.  And with no more campaigning in his future he’ll be unconstrained.  His Justice Department can use his next four years to frog-march the likes of Comey, McCabe, Brennan and Clapper right into the big house.  My won’t that be fun.