The Hollywood Media Goes After a Kid

Oh, if only it were as easy as David Axelrod and his propagandists tell us it is.  In the world of the progressive-liberal know-it-alls and their propagandists, every one fits into a slot.  They have a slot for each one of us.   Mostly based on, are you with us or against us?  Or, can we make a few bucks off you?

This essayist would be slotted as follows:  overall, a conservative – fiscal conservative – right wing nut – part of the vast Christian conspiracy – and toss him into the racist slot too.  That’s how easy it is – when you label people; even when you don’t know them, you slot them.

Some months ago, at the annual Notre Dame v. Michigan football contest, at the beginning of the game there was some hullabaloo about one of the Notre Dame ball players – this essayist was there but didn’t even give it a thought – when you are surrounded by 80,000 rabid Domer's even a mentally challenged fellow such as yours truly has the common sense to be making note of various escape routes.  The game was played – incredibly poor showing for the maize and blue – but, as usual, the sponsors prevailed and carried the day – thanks to normal time outs and an elevated number of commercial timeouts, we were out of there after three and one half hours.

Didn’t have a clue who Manti Te’o was then anymore than today.  He is obviously a kid – a 22 year old kid, but a kid, nevertheless.

Last December, this kid got caught up in a whirlwind of media hype and excitement having to do with an imaginary girl friend.   Kids do have imaginary friends.  Again, all we could think was – give the kid a break.  Why do we make such a big deal out of what kids do when kids don’t have a clue about what they are doing?  There was reason to question Notre Dame higher ups – whomever and wherever they may be.  Their job is to protect kids – not expose them to silliness.  Their mistake goes back to that game – when they chose to expose a kid to some promotional nonsense – in public – all for their silly marketing and advertising needs – to a media that will consume you as quickly as they will glorify you. It is not the job of college bureaucrats to expose kids to harm.  It is their job to protect kids – the concept is “in loco parentis” – they should never have hyped a personal situation about one player.  One or more adults should have lost their job over that debacle.

Now, the kid wants to play pro ball and they wonder if he is gay – he says no.  All because Notre Dame held the kid up to display and exploitation when they should have protected him – never expose a kid to the media – never.

We didn’t say it at the time but we do now – to this media machine – to this Hollywood media disaster – leave the kid alone.  You can destroy lives with your nonsense – you’ve done it before – your appetite is insatiable for destruction and it all begins with your meddling and your labeling – your never ending attempts to gather one more minute of momentary media meddling – one more dollar of sugar drink and fatty, salty snack promotion dollars into your Hollywood money machine.

There is nothing more disgusting in America today that the popular, Hollywood media and the culture it promotes.  The Obama’s are captivated by them – accessories before, during and after the fact.    

The media needs to leave this kid alone.

PS:  By the way, we see that one of the media machine’s stars – a 40 year veteran is on the outs with the Obama’s and the propagandists.  Too bad.  Sounds to us like one chicken coming home to roost.  We have said it before – history will not look well upon the Obama presidency.

Obama Drama

How did we end up with a drama queen for president?  We know; we know the history only too well but, c’mon, America has got four more years of a drama queen and even though we think we will survive this constant focus on the queen, can we expect that at the end of her reign we might possibly get back to common sense and fiscal responsibility?

That is the question; the focus of our essay today.

Usually we elect these fellows who are just normal narcissists.  You know, every day, run of the mill, it’s-all-about-me guys who are so taken with themselves that they are in heaven with all the clamoring and the entourages and the cameras and the “Mr. President, this…” and “Mr. President, that…”  Bill Clinton is an insufferable narcissist but even Bill found his way to a common sense proposal once in a while.  George W. was a mess – actually a bit of a dope and too easily managed by the narcissists he surrounded himself with – but to his credit – he has disappeared from the scene.  Yes, he did leave a bit of a mess for us. 

But this time we rang the bell – grabbed the brass ring – found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  We got ourselves a beauty – a full blown, prancing around, no connection between what he/she does/says one day and says or does the next day.  Just create drama.  Always a drama – a crisis – a show – never solve anything – but you can bet that the drama of today will come back again in three or four months and in between there will be five or six new ones.

Just imagine if we had an honest press – honest, truthful commentators to expose this queen of ours?  Or, to put it another way, just imagine if our queen were a republican?  It’s funny to even consider it.

So, how do we deal with four more years of Obama drama?

Well, we investigated what others have discovered about drama queens and this is what we found:

Scientific American did an article on drama queens – go to:  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dangerous-liaisons

According to Scientific American dealing with a drama queen can lead to anxiety and depression.  Okay, we didn’t really need them to point that out – we’re there.  Been there for some time.  They also tell us that all this drama could stem from either childhood trauma or genes, meaning its inherited.  Okay, we can buy into that also – one does need to spend hours at www.ancestry.com to figure out that Obama had some ups and downs as a kid.  But how does that help us get through January 2017?

Well, we may in trouble.  Apparently – the drama does not lessen; queens don’t have built in corrective capability which, we think, means they are unlikely to stop with the drama; even with professional guidance.  Here is what SA tells us to do:

• Set boundaries – Sorry, Barry, we cannot cover your crisis today
• Be consistent.  For John Boehner we think this means no more silly negotiations with the queen because the queen is not going to be consistent
• Stay calm.  For fiscal conservatives, this is the challenge
• Create a paper trail – in other words document the nonsense and hope facts will prevail.  Unfortunately, TheFundamentals has spent 4+ years doing that and it is not working
• Cut ties with the queen – if only it were that easy

230 years ago, the founding group got rid of their king.  First did the paper trail (Declaration of Independence) then cut the ties.  230 years later, we voluntarily crowned ourselves a queen.  That was no inauguration last month.  That was a coronation.  It will be an anxious and depressing four years.  Let’s hope we can survive her.

 

Gun Violence Issue – Compromise Proposal

There are two constitutional amendments involved in our simple proposal –

1.    Right to keep and bear arms cannot be infringed, and

2.    Right to express oneself (speech/press, etc.) cannot be abridged

We don’t know what motivates deluded humans to grab guns and kill innocents – crimes that don’t adhere to routine motivations (lust, money, anger, envy and jealousy) or cannot be anticipated and prevented.   Could it be that governments everywhere engage in such activities with their large guns and thereby spread authenticity and approval to such acts?  Clearly the most violent portions of many societies are the governments.  America’s recent presidents have directed actions that have killed a lot of kids – mostly with high tech weaponry.  The type these deluded killers get off on.

We do know why Hollywood produces all forms of violent entertainment – in book form, in movie form, on TV, on the stage, on computers, in games, etc. – much of it digitally created and spread electronically, directly into our homes – they do it for money; lots of money.

Is there a connection?  Between misguided behavior from distorted minds and the ready accessibility to killing weapons and violent government behavior and greedy Hollywood producers with their digital creative skills?   Common sense would seem to say yes.  But the gun forces and the Hollywood money making forces still demand their “constitutional rights.”

So what to do?  Here is what we suggest –

            Pass a law – for a five year period only.  Outlaw the clips that hold more than 8 or 10 bullets and limit access to “assault style” weapons to proven, responsible adults (25+ y.o.)  And tax the Hollywood “creative” product – any form of material that contains a gun or other weapon brandished against any living thing; a violent act or a shooting or a massacre or anything in which,  justifiable or not, one human does violence to another living creature.   This would include American military enactments.  Make the tax the same as the federal tax on cigarettes – currently $1.01 per pack.  Anyone wishing to buy, rent or view the Hollywood violence product in any form pays $1.01 each time, or whatever congress sets the federal cigarette tax at.  Every time anyone wants a Hollywood violence product – buy it/lease it/or just view  – add $1.01 to the price.  

Five years, give it a try.  Both side’s compromise (favorite new word of the progressive movement which, of course, includes Hollywood) and we try to reduce the violence of the crazies amongst us.  Obama will love it because it brings in more money for his deluded schemes  - does cause one to wonder – is presidential delusion part of the problem?

Hollywood, we know you want to do your part and NRA, we are sure you are ready to do something jointly with the creative set out in southern California.

Hollywood could even make a movie about passing the law – coming together – compromising – big drama – stirring music – everyone weeping as the credits roll.  It could star Sean and the Clooney gang and Meryl and Matt and even Quentin and Steven could get in on the action.  No violence, of course.  They could do a “director’s version with violence” for  the viewers willing to pay the cigarette tax – could have the feds take their pictures and register them as “violent voyeurs” or some such thing.   

Let’s see if we can stop the violence by limiting the bullets and taxing those who get off on them.  It will pass Supreme Court review because “it’s a tax” just like Obamacare.  States can add whatever additional tax they wish – surprised Bloomberg didn’t think of it.  Hollywood could announce their support for the compromise this Sunday night during their big show.

 

Argo versus Abe

Argo is winning everything.  If you’ve got an award to award – Argo gets it.  All the other movies are coming up with crumbs from the glitter and glamour gang.  So what gives with this Argo phenomenon?

Well, in order to answer that question – two things are required.  Six to eight dollars for a ticket and the patience to sit through 15 minutes of product commercials that are more dimwitted on the big screen than on our home TV screens; followed by another 15 minutes of previews of coming attractions followed by 2 hours and one minute for the movie itself.

Argo starts out with a pretty good slam on Uncle Sam and his antics in helping the people of Iran get the leadership they didn’t want.   This distorted history lesson quickly leads to the capture of the American embassy in Tehran – the crowd and the enthusiasm and the antics and terror of the embassy occupants/captives is just plain darn good theatre.

Then we go back to Washington and enter the halls of the bureaucrats and, predictably, one bureaucrat has more common sense than all the hundreds of other bureaucrats combined.  One of the movies more accurate depictions.

Then we delve deeper into the plot – a contrived Hollywood/CIA scheme to save six embassy employees who snuck out to a neighboring embassy residence – hurray for Hollywood and here we reach our first conclusion about why we think Argo is winning all the awards.  Two wonderful Hollywood performers dissect the Hollywood scene – its top players and their shenanigans with some of the funniest and dismissive dialogue ever presented on a movie screen about Hollywood itself.  John Goodman and Alan Arkin skewer the Hollywood dopes with a few offhand remarks that can only be described as Shakespearean elegance – 21^st century style.  Watching these two guys have some fun is worth the price of admission – go see Argo if you haven’t!

Then the movie gets kind of predictable and boring and finishes up with a Hollywood ending that leaves this reviewer puzzled – deeply puzzled.  What could this confusion be you ask? (Alert – you may not wish to read further if you haven’t seen the movie.)

Well, remember that the whole mess was caused by Uncle Sam and his bureaucrats and they want us to buy into the last half of the movie cheering on the CIA/diplomats as they try to get out of the mess they themselves created.  That’s not a Hollywood ending – the good guys should not be the Americans who never had any good reason to be in Tehran in the first place.  The good guys are the homeys who want to kick the Americans out and get a piece of their disposed leader’s (aka the Shah) entrails in the process.  Who cares if the Americans flee?  Who cares if they get awards for bravery?  Who cares if they serve valiantly for 20 more years?  Yee gods, they never should have been there in the first place.

So, why all the awards?  We think Hollywood is cheering on the real good guys – no not the Iranians who would just like to live their lives their way and control their oil reserves – no, not the CIA which creates problems so that it can get more money to fix the problems they created and, in the process, create even more problems so that they can give out more awards and more stars for their fallen heroes, etc. and repeat the process over and over again but always with a big budget increase.

We think Argo gets the awards because this movie tells us about the real Hollywood and there is something about this brutal truth that the award voters really want us to know – Hollywood and government are the problem – not the solution.

Sorry Steven Spielberg – bad timing for you and Abe.  But you can still win the director award Sunday night– as you well know, Argo and its director were not even nominated.  That sounds more like Chicago politics than something Honest Abe would have done!

 

In His Own Words - Dr. Benjamin Carson

 

 

Here is a brief summary of Dr. Carson's biography from Wikipedia:

 

"Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan and was raised by his single mother, Sonya Carson.   He struggled academically throughout elementary school, but after his mother reduced his television time and required him to read two books a week and produce written reviews for her, he started to excel in middle school and throughout high school. After graduating with honors from Southwestern High School, he attended Yale University, where he earned a degree in Psychology. He chose to go to Yale because in College Bowl, an old knowledge competition TV program, he saw Yale compete against and defeat many other colleges, including Harvard. Carson wanted to participate in College Bowl, but the program was discontinued. From Yale, he attended University of Michigan Medical School."

 

Go Blue!!



Whitewashing America’s Black Problem

There is very little one little blog can do to counter the overwhelming management of message and media by a completely propagandized news, entertainment, political and media combine.  But we still can report facts for our audience and we can still hope that those with logical minds capable of connecting reasonable solutions with accurate problem analysis will end up leading America out of darkness. 

With this objective in mind, some facts:

Blacks accounted for half the murders in America in 2011.  They are 13-14% of the population which means that their murder rate is about six or seven times greater than the murder rate of the larger, mostly white population.  If one wishes to deal with violence in America, be it gun violence or other forms of personal violence, one needs to address the violence in black America and not whitewash it into a broader problem.

So where would you go to address gun and personal violence in America?  Minneapolis, MN; Newtown, CT or Chicago, IL?

We could go on with statistics about black children having children – about black education results versus white education results – about black incarceration rates versus white incarceration results – about black youth unemployment and job preparedness and even more.  We could talk about black children in homes without discipline or two parents or positive educational and developmental environments but we all know the facts.  They are simply depressing.  Few wish to even enter sections of Detroit or Chicago or Philadelphia or Los Angeles and many other neighborhoods and communities in America.  In many forms, the desperation of the old south has simply relocated to violent domiciles in America’s northern ghettos.

Who/what will change America’s black problems?  Is it possible to think, much less suggest, that America’s first black president would face a problem squarely – head on?  And if not, why not?  Why would America’s first black president define a problem as something different from what it is?  Why can’t Obama and his neighbors – Jackson and Farrakhan deal with their own neighborhood; their own community?   Why do they always make their problem someone else’s problem?

What we just wrote above is not a rhetorical set of questions.  We cannot grasp why President Obama chooses to make America’s black problem a much broader, country wide problem and so we ask the question, “Minneapolis, Newtown or Chicago?”

Why does he whitewash America’s black problem?  Be it guns or employment or education or family values or the broader societal issue of discipline?  Does he really believe that whitewashing the truth – making it something it isn’t; works?

Does he believe money will solve this problem?  If so, he is facing decades of evidence to the contrary which means he is simply wrong.  Which also could mean he is afraid to face facts – perhaps, because he has no answer?   Perhaps because his rhetoric combined with David Axelrod’s propaganda just plain works in getting votes and that is all he really cares about?  We hope not.

Whitewashing America’s black problem is neither an answer nor a temporary solution.  The evidence to date would suggest that what we are doing is just making America’s problem worse.  And President Obama is selling out the principal component of his electoral coalition because he is simply afraid to face facts.  We know of no problem that has ever been solved by whitewashing it.

“Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and relatives of victims of fatal shootings in Chicago urged President Barack Obama on Saturday to come back to his hometown and address the gun violence plaguing the city.”  See:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-crime-chicagobre91200x-20130202,0,2230435.story

"My greatest fear about the gun violence in Chicago is that we're adjusting to it," he said.

Jackson is partially right – we have “adjusted to” not only gun violence but the entire societal decline of large portions of America’s urban black society.  He is wrong in thinking that a politician will solve the problem.  Politicians throw other people’s money at problems and then go home and ask their propagandists to spin a good story. 

Whitewashing is propaganda – fear based avoidance of facing a real problem head on.  Propaganda and political correctness are no substitute for leadership – for discipline – for responsibility.

 

Bernanke – Holder – Obama Find Themselves a Scapegoat

A brief chronology follows:

Bernanke – “There’s no housing bubble”, October 27, 2005 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/26/AR2005102602255.html

 “Ben Bernanke was incredibly wrong”, July 28, 2009 http://mises.org/daily/3588

 

January 3, 2010, “Monetary policy and the housing bubble.”  Read Bernanke’s own rationalization of fed policy during the bubble – in his own words: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20100103a.htm

 

“Bernanke admits failure to see housing bubble”, February 7, 2011 http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/blog/comments/embarrassed-bernanke-admits-failure-to-see-housing-bubble

Bernanke – “Fed didn’t cause the housing bubble”, March 26, 2012 http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/22/news/economy/federal-reserve-housing-bubble/index.htm

 January 21, 2013 – “Bernanke clueless about housing bubble” http://silverunderground.com/2013/01/proof-leaked-bernanke-clueless-about-housing-bubble-in-07/

 Yesterday:

February 5, 2013 – US sues Standard and Poor’s for defrauding investors for inflating credit ratings for mortgage backed securities

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-sues-sandp-over-inflating-mortgage-ratings/2013/02/05/2d235bf1-a337-409f-a968-3c7a96509bfc_video.html  Attorney General Holder says conduct was “egregious”

If we have learned one thing in the past 5 years it is this – the US government is the 800# gorilla in anyone’s room – anywhere – anytime.  That is a fact.  If it supports something – it’s a go – if it doesn’t – it’s a no go.  Stand in their way and you will be crushed.

So, the government does not sue itself – even though it clearly was the cause of the housing bubble – low interest rates – low credit standards – lots of money in the system to make all the loans – those are the causes – the government could have stopped it at any time but didn’t because it liked what it saw and it didn’t want it to end.

When it ended – does the government hold those who caused it accountable?

No.  That would require accountability – of themselves.

Instead they sue the rating agency which would have been pilloried and shunned had it dropped the fecal matter in the punch bowl by saying – it’s (mortgage backed securities) junk; don’t buy it.

The government – America’s top bankers, top regulators, top congressmen and congresswomen and the presidents and all the president’s men.  They loved the bubble and they didn’t think it would end.

Can you imagine a lawsuit against that gang?  Can you imagine accountability?

Not a chance.  Best to blame the messenger who didn’t have the moxie to stand up to the geniuses and deliver the message that no one would have believed anyway.

Clinton, Bush and Cheney – Obama and Holder – Bernanke and Greenspan – all desperately weak leaders – always looking for the good news – all afraid of their shadows – all afraid to embrace fundamentals – our leaders – all afraid to lead. 

 Postscript to this essay – August 5, 2011, S and P downgrades US debt.  US Government Officials attack downgrade analysis: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/08/govt-official-us-expecting-sp-downgrade/    Obama used the downgrade as an opportunity to preach his “raise taxes” propaganda.

Final comment – Obama and his bureaucrats are incurring debt with no repayment program other than more devalued, printed, US fiat, Federal Reserve notes.   There is no one to indict them other than history – in the meantime, they have provided both a scapegoat and a built in defense for the S and P scapegoat as outlined above.  One need not be a genius to predict that they will follow this pattern as US financial conditions worsen under the burden of Obama debt.