March 29, 2014

Those of us old enough to remember this:

(from Wikipedia) (Northeastern "Liberal" Republican Senator George) Aiken took an ambivalent position on the Vietnam war (1965-75), changing along with the Vermont mood. Neither a hawk nor a dove, he was sometimes called an "owl."[15] He reluctantly supported the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964, and was more enthusiastic in support of Nixon's program of letting South Vietnam do the fighting using American money.[16] Aiken is widely quoted as saying that the U.S. should declare victory and bring the troops home.[17] His actual statement was:

"The United States could well declare unilaterally ... that we have 'won' in the sense that our armed forces are in control of most of the field and no potential enemy is in a position to establish its authority over South Vietnam," and that such a declaration "would herald the resumption of political warfare as the dominant theme in Vietnam."


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So this is what has effectively been done with the missing plane. It is lost...everyone is dead...now go home.

Interesting...it basically worked. I do believe that my life is a weird combination of Catch-22, The Illusionist, Three Days of the Condor, Dante's Inferno (the book), Amelie, The Little Fugitive, Portnoy's Complaint, and You Can't Go Home Again.

Musings on a rainy Saturday Afternoon...

March 22, 2014

Well, congratulations, DU...

Yeah, I know that it is against the rules to 'whine' about DU on this thread, but I'm not 'whining'. I'm stating a fact...

The fact is that the RWers who populate our site with varying degrees of efficiency and efficacy have finally managed to incite a 'mild-to-moderate' Civil War here, or, if you prefer, a War of Right Wing Aggression. Like Vietnam, it has been waged stealthily and carefully and I for one have become increasingly frustrated with the act of posting here, which is exactly what the bad guys wanted to occur. Lately we have had some outbreaks of epic scale of 'internecine' warfare.

The way I see it, an individual posits an idea, thought, observation, interpretation, commentary, breaking story, highlight, idiosyncratic occurrence, anomaly or other statement and the race is on! The battle begins to rage disproportionately over a turn of phrase, a word used 'questionably', a point of view, a regional opinion, a perceived prejudice, or other aspect of the OP or the response. The first poster, who had no intention of getting into a battle over that aspect of his or her post is then 'forced' to defend him or herself on this point, the larger context being completely forgotten. Others who do not want to enter the fray refrain from posting altogether, and the thread dies a sad death, a different version of the petit mort. Or, worse, scores of posts are placed in anger and antipathy grows.

This week we have had a controversy involving a long time member making an angry and vituperative post with hundreds of responses and many associated threads. This is what the Army ants are waiting for: a chance to swarm and go wild as we peck each other to death.

I can just feel many who read this getting ready to type a negative response. Tell me, before you do, if you have been here a while, do you notice that your thread or response is basically hijacked, turned away from its destination like a certain flight from Malaysia was, and you wind up attempting to defend your honor, your legitimate self-righteousness, and begin to wonder why you ever wasted your time on the post to begin with? I have been here since 2004, and was quite familiar with the angry tropes of the old days, but that was open warfare. These, as I stated before, are guerilla tactics and I'm not going to stop posting, just so you, whose mission it is to disrupt, know.

I (eagerly) await the expected and occasionally somewhat-contrived backlash...now I have to go forth and heal some sick people.

March 21, 2014

Bwahaha! You heard it here first...or not...

On MSNBC just now, an "expert" on Maylasian politics said that although the opposition leader actually got more than half the votes in the last general election, he did not win due to the authoritarian blah blah blah present since 1967. And how ridculous that is...

Gee, where was he in 2000?

Pretty funny...if you're a Neocon, Neofascist Republican. Not funny at all otherwise

March 21, 2014

The "Plane" is a poor substitute for the O.J. Simpson saga:

From that moment all those years ago when the jury came back with a "Not Guilty" verdict, the cable channels, but particularly CNN, have been searching for an analagous story. The multifactorial interests of OJ involved celebrity, sports, mystery, dead people, glamor, Hollywood, judicial process, families, and lawyers with varying degrees of star-quality. It was the perfect storm and the perfect story and no one in their heart-of-hearts could be absolutely certain of his guilt or innocence, despite their prejudices in all directions.

I do not believe that there will be such a story again in my lifetime. But that does not stop these programmers from trying to invent one out of whole cloth. I needn't reiterate the lunacy which has accompanied the coverage of this seeming-tragedy, but it contains some elements such as mystery, (ostensible-but-not-certain) dead people, glamor of air travel (well, you know what I mean), the official process of the countries and the organizations whose job it is to monitor and regulate air travel, lawyers/"experts", and grieving families.

This formula as utilized by cable channels, CNN in particular, is useful to boost ratings and thus to collect more advertising revenue. It is working to some degree but it is minor league compared to the "wondrous" television which the whole OJ experience brought us.

As an addendum: for the "record", I do not believe that in the early 1990's we would have a broadcaster who would state that since the plane has "disappeared" then it not wholly unreasonable to conjecture that the Almighty Himself may have had something to do with it as Don Lemon implied the other day. I would submit to him that God was tired of watching Super Bowl reruns and decided to rapture these two hundred plus souls, since he reported the story that half of football fans believe that God decided the winner of the Big Game.

How far we've fallen in so short a time....

March 20, 2014

The pic of Fred Phelps on the Home Page of (yuck) AOL

makes him look like the chief poltergeist in the Poltergeist film franchise. Just sayin'...

http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/PJ1BNp1qfO0F_RXh1lIrAw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTYzMA--/

March 19, 2014

The whole picture, watching the news, reminds me of The Bedford Incident

a film from the mid-60's.

Logical and reasoned war-mongering which escalates to a horrific ending.

Having lived through the Fifties and Sixties, it scares the crap out of me that we are once again poised to make Russia our enemy and vice versa. It was a very bad time in America, despite what black and white comedies and family shows you might see on TV LAND.

March 18, 2014

Well, the Peter Principle has shown itself to be extant in 2014

For those who weren't around, the phrase "rising to one's level of incompetence" may not be familiar. The idea was that in management, people are promoted until they can't do the job effectively and thus become entrenched...and incompetence prevails.

Normally I watch or at least have on the TeeVee, MSNBC because in Philly, the lowest level of basic cable includes only that cable news station (I exclude FOX from that classification). So I am home today and decided, just for fun, to put CNN on. It is fascinating to listen to one anchor after another, including the inimitable Ashleigh Banfield, just incompetently wade through this cesspool of "ideation" which they have been provided. On top of everything else that is wrong, mixed metaphors provide great fun: Ms. Banfield was exclaiming in her repetitive fashion that the search was now over two and one-half million nautical miles..."Sit on that for a minute." she said. SIT on THAT!!? Happy Days is on in the afternoon and being broadcast on CNN, there must be some residuals in there somewhere for the surviving cast. Next up: Up your nose with a rubber hose and back to you

But it is all hypothesis-in-hyperbole. Every fourth sentence as uttered by someone is jaw-droppingly non-journalistic or just plain ignorant. I can only imagine that CNN would cover the raging academic debate of whether Fermat's Theorem was still a puzzle or if it had finally been proven by a mathematician, since all of the correspondents had taken algebra in ninth grade. This may all be so complex that it will take competent people months to discern what happened if ever. But when facts fail, they just show the heartbroken families over and over with all the adjectives on loop. And the head-shaking and shrugging! Can you imagine Cronkite, Huntley, McGee, Murrow, or anyone from that era, sadly, tearfully shaking their heads after playing the SAME fifteen second exhortation from the same parent who has literally lost a loved one as though they have heard it for the first time. THAT gets me shaking MY head.

But my favorite is when the anchor says, "Honestly..." That is a refreshing change from the rest of their pap.

"Uh-oh, we are out of time and we'll have to leave it there."

March 16, 2014

What I personally think is good news here in PA:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/state/20140316_Some_Democrats_wonder__Can_anyone_stop_Tom_Wolf_.html

Those who still read my posts my recall that I stated that I was supporting him early on:


ALLENTOWN - Tom Wolf compared the California and Florida strawberries at Bedway's Fresh Fruits on Thursday afternoon as a stream of shoppers at the Allentown Fairgrounds Farmers Market gave him glances of recognition.

"I see you on TV all the time!" one woman said, interrupting to shake hands with the Democratic candidate for governor.

And so it went, from the Stoltzfus Amish Deli, to the Mary Ann Donut Kitchen and Johnny's Fresh Meats - up and down the market shed. People loved the commercials, especially his daughters and the old Jeep.

Wolf, the multimillionaire York businessman who began the race as an asterisk, is now the front-runner for the nomination, fueled by a $3.2 million barrage of television ads that began Jan. 30 and continues.


Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/state/20140316_Some_Democrats_wonder__Can_anyone_stop_Tom_Wolf_.html#fAYlKLdz0QyoqqkL.99

March 16, 2014

With John Barry's low key music in the background after the opening credits...

the Team of Six stealthily enters the commercial hangar where the Boeing 777 rests before the next-day flight to Beijing. With practiced assurance each of the black-clad technicians installs an aspect of the Commandeering mechanism, developed by the Chinese and brought via freighter to Kuala Lumpur. Forty-five minutes later, the mission completed, they leave for the waiting van disguised as a food-service truck which drives through the exit gate with a wave to the lazy guard in the booth.

Twenty miles away, on the roof of an otherwise indistinguishable office building, the satellite dish is pointed toward the geostationary communications satellite which stands ready to receive the data from the perpetrators. On the fifth floor of the building is a 777 flight simulator, except that in this case, it does not control a trainee, but the actual plane itself.

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So we watch dozens of films, read hundreds of books which utilize this and other "wild" fantasies. Billions of dollars of revenue have come in to film companies and publishers of this genre. Could not happen in real life though? Think about this: in 1971 when I went to college, you picked up a phone receiver, literally dialed a number, and spoke to whomever answered on the other end. You paid a toll amount for that call. But...there were people who possessed what were termed "blue boxes" where there were three keys I was told: the first key would hold open a long distance line, accessed by dialing Information in the state you were interested calling, a second and third key would then somehow be utilized to dial within that toll region, making it a local call for a dime. Impossible! some said at the time. Universities were loaded with phone ripoff artists. But the public assumed that the phone companies were immune to this stuff...because...just because. But they were not.

And so it is with everything else: there is nothing which cannot be hacked or compromised. "Where there is a will,there is a way" is a truism, especially anything involving electronics. Many who denigrate "Conspiracy Theories" should understand that it only takes two individuals to have a conspiracy. It does not have to involve dozens or hundreds of people. "Something" happened here, it may be the vanguard of the next wave, it ma not be. We shall see, shall we not?

March 16, 2014

Some films for the younger generation given recent events:

The RWers want war with Russia! This is not a new concept...

Especially:

Fail-Safe
The Bedford Incident
On The Beach
Dr. Strangelove
Seven Days In May
Ice Station Zebra
The (Original)Manchurian Candidate
and

4
The 49th Man
7
The 7th Dawn
A
Albino (film)
Amerika (TV miniseries)
Apollo 18 (film)
April Captains
The Assignment (1997 film)
The Atomic Cafe
B
The Bamboo Saucer
Barbara (2012 film)
Barcelona (film)
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (film)
The Beast (1988 film)
Blast from the Past (film)
Blind Justice (1988 film)
Buffalo Soldiers (film)
Bulletproof (1988 film)
By Dawn's Early Light
C
Catch a Fire (film)
The Challenge (1970 film)
China: The Roots of Madness
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Company Business
Countdown (1968 film)
Cry Freedom
D
The Damned (1963 film)
The Dancer Upstairs (film)
Dark of the Sun
The Day After
A Day Called X
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Death Train
Dien Bien Phu (film)
Doppelgänger (1969 film)
Dr. Strangelove
Duck and Cover (film)
E
Endgame (2009 film)
Enigma (1983 film)
Escape from East Berlin
Etter Rubicon
The Executioner (1970 film)
The Experts (1989 film)
F
Firehead
The Fourth War
Freiheit (film)
G
Game for Vultures
The Good German
Good Night, and Good Luck
H
Highly Dangerous
Homerun (film)
The House of the Spirits (film)
I
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Invasion U.S.A. (1952 film)
Invasion U.S.A. (1985 film)
The Iron Giant
Ishtar (film)
J
JFK (film)
The Journey (1959 film)
K
Karol: A Man Who Became Pope
L
The Last Grenade
The Last Mercenary
Operation Leopard
Leviathan (1989 film)
Little Nikita
The Lives of Others
Lost Command
The Lost Missile
Lumumba (film)
M
The Man Outside (1967 film)
The Manhattan Project (film)
Matinee (1993 film)
Meteor (film)
Miracle (film)
Miracle on Ice (1981 film)
The Missiles of October
N
Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation
Night Crossing
Night Without Stars
Not with My Wife, You Don't!
O
October Sky
One, Two, Three
Orion's Belt (film)
P
The Package (1989 film)
The Pentagon Papers (film)
The Place Promised in Our Early Days
The Power of One (film)
The Prize (1963 film)
Q
The Quiet American (2002 film)
The Quiet American (1958 film)
R
Rabbit à la Berlin
Rambo III
R cont.
Rambo: First Blood Part II
Red Dawn
Red Heat
Red Heat (1985 film)
Red Nightmare
Red Scorpion
Red Zone Cuba
The Right Stuff (film)
Rocky IV
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming
S
Scorcher (film)
The Secret Ways
Seven Days in May
The Shoes of the Fisherman
Silmido (film)
Six-String Samurai
Sky Commando
Soldier of Fortune (1955 film)
Space Cowboys
Special Bulletin
Special Delivery (1946 film)
Special Delivery (1955 film)
Stripes (film)
T
Telefon (film)
These are the damned
The Thing from Another World
The Third Man
Thirteen Days (film)
This Is Not a Test (1962 film)
Threads
Twilight's Last Gleaming
U
The Ugly American
The Undefeated (2000 film)
Under Fire (film)
Unknown World
Utterly Alone
W
The War Game
WarGames
Watchmen (film)
When the Wind Blows (1986 film)
The Whistle Blower
White Nights (1985 film)
The Wilby Conspiracy
World War III (TV miniseries)
X
X-Men: First Class
Y
The Young Lovers (1954 film)