This is pretty good news. The Fifth Circuit is not filled with liberals so when the full court takes up this case they will most probably make this permanent. Of course, the slime balls in the administration will probably revise the rule by adding a comma or something to the text file so the same thing will have to be done over again. But this is a very good sign that we may have already reached the high water mark for COVID madness and are now seeing the flood waters subsiding.
Month: November 2021
A Fistful of Dollars (1964) – A Movie Review
“A Fistful of Dollars” was Clint Eastwood’s first spaghetti western with director Sergio Leone. As it turned out it was an unauthorized western remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 samurai film Yojimbo. These spaghetti westerns were produced in Europe and cost only a fraction of Hollywood movies and so could make a profit with a much lower box office. Leone featured Eastwood as “The Man with No Name.” He was an anti-hero who drifted from place to place and although of ambivalent morals he always ended up on the side of the less powerful.
In this story the stranger (Eastwood) shows up in the Mexican village of San Miguel and learns that two criminal gangs, the Rojos and the Baxters are in competition for control of the town. The stranger offers his services as a gun fighter to both gangs and by playing them off each other he slowly whittles away both gangs. There is a sub-plot about a family that is being victimized by the Rojos. The wife has been taken as a concubine by one of the Rojos while her husband and small child are hostages. The stranger manages to free the wife and aids the small family to escape San Miguel. For this he is tortured by the Rojos to learn where the woman has gone. The stranger manages to escape and the Rojos, assuming that the Baxters helped him, burn down the Baxters’ house and shoot down the whole gang as they flee the burning building.
The stranger is helped to escape the town by the undertaker hiding him in a coffin. He heals up and returns to save his friend Silvanito who is being tortured by the Rojos to find out where the woman has gone. The stranger faces off against all the remaining Rojos and with the help of a sheet of steel plate hidden under his poncho he shoots them all dead and frees his friend.
So, what’s the verdict? The acting is minimal, the characters are cartoons. The story is straight forward and transparent. But it is altogether an enjoyable hour and a half of pulp fiction. Good vanquishes evil. Violence gets splashed all over the screen and the stranger leaves town just as he entered it. A man with no past or future living by his wits and his gun.
As a final note, the film this was based on, Yojimbo, is a much different film because of the cultural and aesthetic differences between a Leone western and a Kurosawa samurai film. But it is a great picture in its own right. And if you enjoy Kurosawa’s films it is a good one. If you’ve never seen one before then start with his “Seven Samurais” first. It’s an excellent film.
“A Fistful of Dollars” is highly recommended for fans of the western and anyone with a simple taste for action.
13NOV2021 – Photo of the Day
13NOV2021 – Quote of the Day
I suffer the mortification of seeing myself attacked right and left by people at home professing patriotism and love of country who never heard the whistle of a hostile bullet. I pity them and the nation dependent on such for its existence. I am thankful, however, that though such people make a great noise the masses are not like them.
Ulysses S. Grant
What is BLM’s Mission?
It’s in the name, right? Black Lives Matter. That means that blacks have been illegally targeted by the police for no good reason. That’s been the narrative used since Obama’s regime was running the FBI. And yet, every one of the alleged victims was a thug. Treyvon Martin, Michael Brown, George Floyd and the rest of their less well-known associates. Each one was killed either committing a violent assault or resisting arrest.
What that tells me is that the goal is to make black criminals immune from arrest. This requires that the police will be prevented from using force to subdue dangerous criminals. So, if you commit a robbery or even a murder all you have to do is resist and fight your way out of the arrest.
And how do you make something like this happen? Easy. You do it in blue cities and you use the FBI to frighten the cops into laying down. After what happened to the cops who were involved in the Michael Brown and George Floyd cases it’s obvious that there will be no justice for police involved. They will be the criminals and the thugs will be the heroes.
And now that the police have been neutered, the looting and burning is a part of daily life taken for granted by the urban dwellers in places like Portland and Seattle. These activities are studiously ignored by the FBI. And the FBI is the branch of the federal government that was specifically created to deal with organized crime. But Antifa and BLM have a free pass. They’re ignored but a kid like Kyle Rittenhouse has helicopters following him to make sure the prosecution has all the evidence they might need to send him to jail for life for trying to stop the mob from burning down another city.
I read that Ron DeSantis has enacted new legislation to arrest and jail rioters. But he is one of few. In all the other areas of the country the cities are devolving into lawless free-fire zones. The woke black lesbian mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, who let the BLM riots devastate her city, even she has finally balked at the level of lawlessness that the even crazier black woman state’s attorney, Kimberly Foxx has unleashed on the city. Foxx refused to prosecute gangs involved in a murderous shootout. Her reason, because it was a mutually engaged in fight. So, no charges, not even littering for filling the streets with spent bullet cartridges. Gang war is now just part of daily life in Chicago. Basically, that is a return to the situation when Al Capone ran whiskey back in the 1920’s.
A friend of mine is convinced that this whole approach is a ploy to allow the police to be federalized. Maybe he’s right. But whatever the deeper motives may be there is no doubt that the destruction of law and order will lead to dire consequences. An obvious one is that the urban areas will become violent hellholes that all normal people will flee. But these areas will be centers from which the criminal gangs that inhabit them will range out to commit all manner of crime against the surrounding suburban and even rural areas. And that will be where the conflict will probably be resolved. Eventually the states will either have to step in and rein in this organized crime or vigilantism will become the policing of last resort.
Maybe the vigilantes will brand their organization White Lives Matter. It sounds like a concept whose time has come.
12NOV2021 – Quote of the Day
The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.
Ulysses S. Grant
12NOV2021 – Photo of the Day
BLM Warns NYC “Don’t Try to Stop Crime”
“A Black Lives Matter leader vowed there’ll be “riots,” “fire” and “bloodshed” if Mayor-elect Eric Adams follows through with his promise to bring back plainclothes anti-crime cops to battle New York’s surge in violent crimes.”
It’s wonderful to have such clarity. The vampires announce that if they aren’t allowed to suck the life out of the peasants they’ll burn down the city and massacre the peasants. Such honesty must be applauded.
Veteran’s Day – 2021
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
BY JOHN MCCRAE
Mystery Street (1950) – A Movie Review
“Mystery Street” is a 1950 black and white film noir that I decided to write about because it’s one of very few old Hollywood movies shot in the Boston area. The plot is the story of Vivian Heldon, a girl who works at a low-class bar called the Grass Skirt. She’s gotten pregnant by a married man and is trying to get him to pay for her child. She calls up the father Joshua Harkley who lives down on Cape Cod and tells him to meet her at her bar. When he doesn’t show up and leaves his phone off the hook, she convinces a drunk to let her drive him home. But instead, she drives sixty miles to Harkley’s town, Barnstable and calls him to force a showdown. Because the drunk (Henry Shanway) is starting to sober up and complain she abandons him on the side of the road and drives off with his car to the rendezvous with Harkley on a lonely road. Harkley shoots her and dumps her naked body in the ocean and drives the car into a canal.
Three months later Heldon’s skeleton washes up on the beach. The local police Lieutenant Peter Morales, played by the inimitable Ricardo Montalban, goes to the Harvard Medical School’s crack forensic expert, Dr. McAdoo to try and discover whose bones were found and how she died.
Using estimated date of death and a photograph of the skull on a transparency they superimpose it over each photograph of a missing woman from that time period and are able to determine that Vivian Heldon was the probable victim. Also, they find the bones of her unborn child and a broken rib that showed traces of the metal from a bullet and they deduce that Vivian was murdered. Next, they find from the bar patrons that Vivian left the bar with a man driving a specific color and model car. Looking into stolen car records for that date they find Henry Shanway. Once the bar patrons identify Shanway in a police line-up he is arrested for the murder. Also, Shanway’s car is pulled out of the water sealing his fate.
After that there is a whole bunch of interaction between Vivian’s landlady and the murderer culminating in her stealing the murder weapon, a service .45 automatic that she found in his office desk drawer. Meanwhile Dr. McAdoo figures out that based on which rib was hit, it was possible that the bullet was still embedded in the car. Finding the bullet they then try to find the gun to cinch the story. But Shanway doesn’t have a gun. This disturbs Morales who then starts checking the rest of Heldon’s contacts to see if any of them had a gun. Of course, when he checks Harkley’s desk the gun isn’t there. But this alerts Harkley that the landlady has stolen his gun. He goes to her home and chokes her until she agrees to tell him where she hid it, a storage locker at the train depot. But just then the police show up and to keep her quiet Harkley hits the landlady on the head, knocking her out and eventually killing her. Harkley escapes but Morales finds the key to the locker and decides to stake out the depot and find out who tries to get the gun. After a lot of running around a train yard Morales catches Hartley and Shanway is saved from false conviction. Three cheers for forensic medicine and Ricardo Montalban.
This is a solid B movie. The acting is pretty good and the forensic science was state of the art in 1950. But I have to take off points for lack of local authenticity. At one point one of the “locals” pronounces Barnstable as if it sounded like the two words barn and stable. Now admittedly I’m a refugee here in New England with my Brooklyn accent and all, but even I’ve picked up more of the local names than that.
I’ll recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys both old movies and police procedurals.