Month: February 2022

Bullitt (1968) – A Movie Review

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Bullitt is a 1968 crime drama starring Steve McQueen as San Francisco Police Lt. Frank Bullitt.  He is assigned to a case where he will be responsible for keeping a Chicago mobster, Johnny Ross, safe while he awaits testimony in front of a US Senate panel on organized crime.   The politician who has set up Ross’s testimony is Walter Chalmers, played by Robert Vaughn.  He is an unpleasant manipulative political operative who rubs Bullitt the wrong way.  When Ross is critically wounded during a late-night mob hit, Chalmers blames Bullitt even though the attack occurs while Bullitt is off-duty.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The remainder of the movie is the aftermath of this attack.  Ross dies shortly after the hit and Bullitt keeps his death a secret in order to lure the killers back in order to catch them.  The two hit men escape Bullitt at the hospital but he finally finds them while they are staking him out.  What follows is one of the most famous and still one of the best car chase scenes in American film history.  Bullitt chases the killers through the streets of San Francisco and onto an expressway.  The finale is a fiery crash and explosion when the gangsters plow into a gas station.  The fire burns both of their bodies beyond recognition.

When Ross’s girl friend is found strangled Chalmers demands that Bullitt be held responsible for the ongoing disaster and be punished by his superiors.  But Bullitt has found very strange evidence in Ross’s girlfriend’s luggage that proves that the man they thought was Ross was a plant named Albert Renick who was working for Ross but whose death was the work of Ross to fake his own death to escape from mob retribution.  And now it is believed that Ross will be leaving San Francisco by jet to Europe using Renick’s name.  Eventually Ross is found to be on a plane taxiing down the runway.  The airliner is recalled and Bullitt and his partner are waiting as the passengers disembark.  But Ross forces his way out of the rear door of the plane and jumps to the tarmac and runs off into the night with Bullitt in hot pursuit.  Ross takes several shots at Bullitt with a pistol but eventually after a long chase Bullitt corners Ross as he attempts to escape the airport by shooting an airport security guard.  Bullitt finishes off Ross with a couple of bullets to the chest and Ross crashes through a glass door and dies.  Chalmers sees his plans in ruins and departs in disappointment.  Bullitt returns home to find his girlfriend Cathy, played by Jacqueline Bisset, sleeping in his bed, apparently having forgiven him for the sin of being a policeman.  The final image is Bullitt staring in a mirror at his own reflection as if to say, “What kind of life is this?”

I left some stuff out of the summary because it wasn’t that important.  Bullitt’s girlfriend Cathy is upset with him because she barges into a crime scene and sees a woman who has been brutally murdered.  She feels that if Bullitt can deal with this type of violence, he can’t be the cool laid-back character who listens to jazz music with her that she thinks he is.  This seems moronic to me so I always ignore it when I watch this movie.  I hope you will too.

I recommend this movie on the strength of the car chase scene.  Sure, the police drama is pretty good and the conflict with Chalmers is okay, I guess, but the car chase is worth the cost of watching the rest of the movie and then some.  It’s two late sixties American muscle cars running amok on crowded roads at high speed.  If you’re an American male you’ll enjoy it.

 

A Little Fun Music

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Tyler over at the Portly Politico in one of his music posts has a link to the William Tell Overture (but better known to non-musical types like myself as the theme song to the “Lone Ranger”).  I enjoy classical music but I have to be in the mood.

And just to show that I like me some classical music here’s a little opera.  Figaro, Figaro, Figaro.

“Largo al factotum.”  I’ve always liked this bit of opera because it allows me to revel in one of the few character traits of the Italians that seems positive, the irrepressible love of life.  Here’s a peon in the lowliest of professions but in his mind he’s a king.  He’s an absurd braggart but his unjustified confidence and swagger allows him to make his life a compelling adventure (at least for him).  The irrepressible clown prince.  And truth be told that kind of attitude is contagious and can be responsible for outbreaks of unbridled enthusiasm when it’s least expected.

Guest Contributor – TomD – 18FEB2022 – A Woke Thought Experiment

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Tom | Flickr

TomD

I sometimes run a purely mental “what if”: What if I time traveled back to my 1966 Senior high school class and tried to get them to understand the future. First, I’d really wow them with a few examples of 2022 technology, the phones, flat TV’s, GPS, the cars, etc. But then I’d say that the average vehicle costs in the mid-$40K range on average. In the-mid 60’s in north Metro Atlanta, that was the cost of a far above average house, on Riverside Dr, where the current lots, if you can find one, go for the millions. The specter of a 10:1 monetary inflation would be the first clue.

I’m not sure if or how I could create the image of the dystopia that this nation has become. About a tenth of the way through the multiples of insanities, I would lose them to sheer overload and disbelief. How many statements on the order of “In the 21st Century, you can decide what sex you will be that day” or “Prepubescent children can be counseled to sex change surgery by school workers without parental notification.” How about “the borders are unprotected, and millions are pouring into the welcoming arms of the government offering them free everything”. Try offering an hour or two of that and see what sort of reception you get. Just try to explain LGBTQIA2S+. I dare you. Or the democratic party publicly embraces socialism/communism, that they propose the elimination of police and jails, months long elections with no controls at all, the demonization of white people, that all the guaranteed constitutional rights can be eliminated at the whim of a governor or even mayor for whatever length of time they wish, the national media as a wholly owned arm of one political party.

Even if I could, that would be terrible thing to inflict on anyone.

What Have They Wrought?

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Since the early 1970’s I have been a witness to the devolution of the United States of America.  By all measurable objective standards, the cultural, intellectual, moral, financial and psychological well-being of this once great nation has declined.

Unsurprisingly there are some aspects of life that have shown innovation.  We have computers and cellular phones.  And that’s about it.

This process has proceeded in waves.  The first big wave was in the 1960’s and ‘70’s.  During this period the youth culture rebelled against all the moral and social norms and introduced such wonders of modern progress as widescale drug addiction, mass produced pornography and drug resistant STD’s.  It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius or something.

As the 1970’s waned the counterculture became passe and the hippies became yuppies and went to work on Wall Street to catch up on the decade they spent stoned.  But the contingent of hippies that were too lazy to work for a living stayed on campus and became the next generation of academia.  And there they stayed to inculcate the following generations in such useful pursuits as post-modern analysis, deconstructionism, various waves of feminism, liberation theory, queer theory, Africana studies, Non-Western Cultural studies and whatever other nonsense they could make up on the fly.

And now the seeds that those cretins planted in the minds of our children have sprouted and we now have the woke generation.  And they have inherited the earth.  They are the target audience for all the tendrils of the on-line community.  Their sensibilities determine what YouTube and Facebook and Twitter will allow to be said and heard.  And it is this sensibility that has driven the changes that we have seen in the last fifteen years.

Over the course of the last sixty years or so we’ve seen the world get steadily crazier.  Illegal aliens have sanctuary cities and states where federal laws aren’t obeyed and where these people are given government assistance of various kinds and even allowed to have a driver’s license and allowed to vote.  Generations of families live on welfare payments and never work.  Anti-constitutional programs like affirmative action and laws for things like hate speech exist in defiance of the basic rights of Americans under the Constitution.  Whole groups of people have been proclaimed “protected classes” and provided with administrative regulations and laws that ensure that they are advantaged over everyone else.  These are the things we’ve grown used to over the decades.  They’re outrageous but they have become the baseline that we expect.

But let’s look at what has happened in the last few years:

  • Marriage has been redefined to include two men or two women. This includes the right for these people to adopt and raise children.
  • Men can declare themselves women and women can declare themselves men (transgender). And anyone who denies these declarations will be punished, sometimes criminally, for these beliefs.  Even failing to refer to these people by their preferred “pronouns” is grounds for arrest in some jurisdictions.
  • Children as young as toddlers can be coached by teachers to say that they are transgender and this alone will be enough for a court to mandate that the child be started on drug regimens and surgery to transition this child into the other “gender.”
  • Because George Floyd, a violent black career criminal, died while under arrest, the police across the country are no longer allowed to arrest black criminals for almost any reason. As an example, the Manhattan district attorney has declared that no crime less serious than murder or violent assault will be prosecuted.  Theft, simple assault, carjacking, sexual battery and almost anything else you can think of will be ignored by the prosecutors and the perpetrators will be released back onto the streets.  Shoplifting at a ruinous level is bankrupting all types of retail stores in cities.
  • During the George Floyd “protests,” local, state and federal law enforcement allowed mobs of violent rioters to loot stores, assault and even kill innocent people and burn down property with complete immunity.
  • Local, state and federal governments have propagandized the populations in a mantra that declares that “Black lives matter” (BLM). This maxim has been clarified to mean that it is incorrect to assume that all lives matter.  And basically, since we see that black lives are being lost on the street every day to black criminals, what BLM means is that black criminal behavior against non-black people is fully protected.
  • The normalization of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in not only colleges but even K-12 history and social studies programs.
  • The universal adoption of equity, diversity and inclusion principles in corporate and government organizing structures and practices. This is the abandonment of equal protection guarantees under the Constitution.
  • Election fraud by Democrats is protected behavior.
  • Government authority in “emergencies” like COVID is unlimited in both scope and duration even when it contradicts constitutional rights.
  • Government surveillance of US citizens is as a practical matter unchecked.
  • Social media and e-commerce companies can and will exclude anyone who does not comply with “woke” requirements around speech and behavior even if these events occur off of their platforms. This extends to virtual exclusion from banking and other necessary accommodations of modern life.

Looking at the scope and severity of these latest changes and how they violate the spirit and the substance of all the important norms of our society previous to these last few years I have to say that we have now reached a point where if there isn’t a substantive reaction that not only halts but reverses all these changes then I’ll have to conclude that the United States is a lost cause.

Any nation that negates all of its principles and even despises the identity of its majority population is no longer a nation.  It is a slaughterhouse of its own people comparable to what Stalin and Pol Pot unleashed on the Russian and Cambodian people respectively.  Only in America it is done subtly.  Instead of the gulag and the death camp, it is cancel culture.  We don’t murder you.  We indoctrinate you to murder your own descendants through cancellation.  No families, no children no future.  You hate your ancestors because they were racists and misogynists and polluters of the earth.  As penance you agree to forego family, careers and any future.

We’ll be able to see very easily if this will turn around.  If any state successfully reverses all of these things despite the attacks by the federal government, then that would be a sign of hope.  If some geographic area inside the United States becomes a haven for normal Americans to live their lives the way their parents and grandparents did then that would be a sign of hope.  If not then we’re done.  And those of us who care might as well start looking for a new place to live.

17FEB2022 – Dunwich Complainer

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Last night I attended the monthly meeting of the Dunwich Republican Committee or as we call it “The Pentaveret.”  The meeting was sparsely attended as many are recovering from a winter bout of Dunwich demonic possession.  First Selectman Cthulhu was under the weather after having eaten some bad “seafood,” which is what he calls people living on the coastline.  So he wasn’t in attendance, which was kind of a relief.  He is a big personality and what with stepping on people and drooling all over the place and dribbling bits of man-flesh when he speaks it is a distraction.

The agenda included a report from the Treasurer that showed a net liability of about ten thousand dollars in the account.  The explanation for this was the cost of repairs to the “old Bishop place” after an interdimensional portal opened up in the kitchen and swallowed up the newly renovated appliances.  And the cook.  Apparently the First Selectman’s cousin Dagon got the address mixed up in his GPS and instead of arriving at the all you can eat buffet at the Dunwich Red Lobster, he materialized in the Bishop place and ate the cook and the contents of the refrigerator.  Luckily the cook was a Democrat and an illegal alien to boot, so after a little hand waving by the First Selectman with the State Police and a fifty-dollar “gratuity,” things were smoothed over.  It really helps to have a way with the common people.

During the Q&A I stood up and asked whether the COVID restrictions mandated by the state legislature and other unpopular decisions by the Democrats would provide a chance for the Republicans to make gains in the legislature this year.  Our State Representative happened to be at the meeting.  He was there to beg us to set up a fundraiser and meet and greet with his constituents.  He fielded this question saying that earlier in February most politicians had agreed that the Republicans would make significant gains this year.  There was even talk of the Governor’s mansion being in reach.

But last week Yog Sothoth was quoted in the larger circulation papers in Arkham stating that if the Republicans retook the legislature and the Governor’s mansion that he would be appointed attorney general and he intended to dispense with all criminal justice functions and immediately round up the democratic voters and have a luau.  He figured the Great Old Ones, once assembled for the feast could eat their way through the Evil Party in about forty-eight hours.

For whatever reason this seemed to spook the voting populace.  The consensus opinion was described as, “Yes the Democrats are inhumanly cruel and a terrible governing elite, but they’ve never clearly stated that they intend to eat their opponents alive.”  When Yog heard about this reaction, he complained that he had been taken out of context.  The Committee agreed that it was most regrettable that Yog had couched his answer quite so specifically.  Leaving a little wiggle room when talking about eating people alive is probably a good idea when dealing with those unfamiliar with the Cthulhu clan.  Well Yog is known for his honesty and candid speaking style.  I’m sure he can win over the crowd in time.

The final order of business was the Green Energy Initiative.  The town had been provided with $600,000 by the state and federal governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Dunwich.  The Republican Committee had been approached by the First Selectman to create a team to draft a proposal for the town.  He told us to make sure we stayed within the budget but he encouraged “creative solutions.”  As an example, he mentioned that his cousin Azathoth owed him a favor and for almost no cost he could rearrange the very fabric of space-time so that only elements below carbon in the periodic table could still exist in our space-time continuum.  When the Republican Chair mentioned that all life as we know it not to mention all solid planets would cease to exist the First Selectman was heard to say, “That kind of nit-picking isn’t going to get you anywhere in this town.”  So, we’re still fielding ideas.  The committee is thinking maybe some solar panels on the abandoned church.

Ukraine?  Really?

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In the classic Seinfeld episode, those two morons Kramer and Newman are playing Risk on the subway.  Kramer taunts Newman on the feeble nature of his position and he states that the Ukraine is weak.  Where upon a Ukrainian émigré takes offense and smashes the board sending Kramer’s armies flying in all directions.

If you look at a map of Europe Ukraine is a large country pressed between Russia and the former Soviet block countries.  It has over 40,000,000 people living in it and among European countries only Russia has a larger area.  It has also been a part of the Russian civilization in one form or another for a thousand years.  Thinking that the Russians in their current revitalized nationalism would allow the Ukraine to join NATO is a bit daft.  The Russians can bring to bear enormous military pressure on the Ukraine.  In addition, there is a very strong Russian minority living in the Ukraine.  And NATO consists of countries that are not willing to send their armies into the Ukraine to fight the Russians toe to toe to save it.  That leaves one other alternative.  The United States would have to launch an all-out thermonuclear strike against Russia.  Whether China would have to be nuked too is debatable.

So, Dementia Joe is going to blow up the world for Ukraine.  I think not.  All that is going on is Biden is trying to distract the country from runaway inflation, COVID fascism, rampant crime in the cities and critical race theory being taught in the schools.

I doubt that anyone takes this seriously other than the Neocons.  They’re probably practically orgasmic just contemplating Ukraine (and sure why not Belarus) joining NATO.  But they’re dopier than Newman and Kramer.

To be totally honest twenty years ago when Russia was on the ropes with the Chechnya revolt in full swing, it might have been possible to consider a scenario where Russia collapsed into the arms of NATO and joined Europe as a client state.  Those days are far behind us.  A more likely future might see the Eastern European countries balancing their interests between the EU and Russia to get the best of both worlds.  Western Europe has proven itself much more problematic in terms of intellectual and cultural freedom than these eastern countries imagined.  With the Soviet Union gone, places like Hungary and the Czech Republic find threats to their freedom and cultural heritage coming from Brussels not Moscow.  In fact, Russia’s pro-Christian, anti-woke orientation is more inviting for these recently freed states than Western Europe’s post-religious, pro-immigrant stance.

And even the much wimpier claim that the West will employ trade and monetary sanctions against the Russians rings pretty hollow when you realize that Europe depends on natural gas to keep it from freezing in the winter and the Russians can increase the price of that commodity very easily.  In fact, Germany is waiting very patiently for the Americans to wake up and realize that Russia is about to become Europe’s energy provider with the Nord Stream 2 about to come on line.  At that point, Germany will become a client of Russia and knowing the Germans they will prove very cordial neighbors.

So, not that it really needs to be said but Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine is just noise.  And that noise can’t be heard over the screaming about the real problems that the Democrats have caused in this country.  That tail just won’t wag that dog this time.