Monday, December 8, 2014

FDR's Day of Infamy

December 7 marks the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that led the U.S. into WWII.  In the U.S. this day is greatly memorialized for its tragedy and celebrated for the heroic response of the American military in what was the first battle of "the good war" against Japan and Nazi Germany.
My grandparents were very much your model Americans of the early-mid 20th century with a strong sense of service to country.  My grandmother's brother was killed in the war in the Pacific, something she was never able to forgive the Japanese people as a whole for.  However, I remember a couple conversations with my grandparents that always stuck in my mind and one statement in particular:  "No sir, I never believed that (the Japanese surprised us)."  Long before the internet or independent newspapers or radio, it seems that skepticism over the Roosevelt Administration's account of what happened that day in 1941 abounded in the taverns and coffee show shops of mainstream America.
The preceding video is a brief discussion of the questions surrounding the Pearl Harbor attack and tends to be aimed at debunking the argument that FDR allowed it to happen, but it's a cursory primer and largely based on Robert Stinnett's book Day of Deceipt.  The most explosive evidence in Stinnett's book is the recently declassified (1994) McCollum Memo which listed steps to provoke a Japanese attack, but there are many more facts exposed in the book that are largely ignored by critics.  If you've got the time, I highly recommend the book, because it sure convinced me.  The author is respectful of Roosevelt's probable motives, like the need to stop Hitler, but the justifications for baiting an attack should not preempt a historical analysis of the facts.
The most catastrophic loss on Pearl Harbor Day was to the U.S.S. Arizona, which lost 1,177 men when it was struck by dive bombers--nearly half the men killed that day.  Ironically, the christening of the Arizona in 1914 was presided over by then Asst. Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt--the very man who may have sent the ship its grave.  Even now after 73 years, many of the official government records concerning what was actually known about the movements of the Japanese fleet in the weeks approaching that fateful day remain inexplicably classified.  More secrecy exists around the events at Pearl Harbor than does the development of the atomic bomb.  Since the technology that existed in 1941 is now so completely obsolete, the only rational conclusion to draw is that the contents of those records remain politically explosive and that can only mean that they do not support the official explanation of what happened.  The casualties of World War II and their families deserve the truth.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Ferguson Ver-Dicked

The social engineering of the American populace to accept police brutality continues...
The more things change the more they stay the same, Brothers and Sisters, fellow Americans, compassionate members of the human race....



"When reason fails, the Devil helps!"---Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Battle of the Bands: Jesus, Satan, The Atheists live in Florida!

If you've ever been in a local band, you know that competition to get people to come to your shows can be intense.  So it is that a school district in Florida reluctantly brought about a Battle of the Bands, or something like that.  Turns out a local Christian group, Satan, and some cats calling themselves The Atheists (who also play under the name Freedom From Religion Foundation) created quite a stir in the Orange County Public Schools when they started passing out flyers.  Ironically, it was The Atheists (not the Satanists) who generated the most shock among parents.
Freedom From Religion Foundation Atheist Promotional Flyer
Marilyn Manson would have been proud.  Fans of Satan were shocked as the NWOBHM pioneers from 1979 produced some very un-heavy images, causing quite a stir in metal chatrooms until it was revealed that it was not the same Satan; rather it was more of a baby metal band.
So far Orange County Schools haven't had too much problem with stickers being plastered all over lockers and bathroom stalls, but the controversy seems to have proven quite enough for administrators.  The Atheists responded to the controversy by claiming that the local Christian group was "hateful, sexist, and cruel."  Personally, I think they just need to work on their image because they look really stupid.
 You know it's just plain wrong when a Christian musician stuffs a sock in his spandex to get attention, so maybe the critics have a point.  However, I just can't understand why people these days don't just chill the fuck out!  The Bible thumpers have always been around, because Christianity is the dominant western religion and makes up 32% of the world's population.  That we've reached a point where atheism/existentialism/secular humanism/etceteraism is so passionately proselytized that its believers have come to admonish any challenge to that belief system would seem to contradict its very purpose.  Existentialist super-philosopher Sartre wrote,  "And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own."  It seems like a progressive movement that once felt like an intellectual vanguard has become an ideological abstersion.  And as for Satanism, Spinal Tap summed it up best at the 2:20 mark of this interview.  Back in the 80's Satanists had class and didn't need to go stirring up trouble in high schools.  Classy like this...

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Eleven Eleven Eleven

Though I never knew him, the story goes like this...  My Great Uncle Nils, the day after the United States entered the Great War, went to Sausalito and took the ferry to San Francisco (the Golden Gate Bridge did not exist at that time) where he enthusiastically enlisted in the Amry.  After basic training, he was shipped to France and was immediately sent marching to the front to counter the Ludendorff Offensive which had made huge advances toward Paris.  With little rest and probably still a bit seasick from the long ocean voyage, he went over-the-top and into the Argonne Forest.  Whether he was one of the famous "Last Battalion" I honestly don't know, but what I do know is that he was cut down by machine gun fire not long after the assault began.  He took a ride across the river Styx, departing in Northern California and reaching the other side in a wasteland called a forest.  He rests someplace here now...
Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery (France)
Has there ever been a war so terrible to have been a soldier in?  Only a few battles from other wars are comparable in their scale of brutality and certainty of death (e.g. Stalingrad, Gettysburg), unless you start to take into account civilian casualties and events such as the firestorms of Tokyo, Hamburg, Dresden, the Battle of Berlin, Hiroshima, etc.  Whether you are talking about WW1's Eastern Front, Western Front, Gallipoli, or Isonzo, the casualty and death toll were horrifying.  There's no doubt in my mind that if it possible for any of the soldiers stuck in the thick of those battlefields to transfer through time to Okinawa, Tunisia, Khe Sanh, etc, and trade one version of Hell for a seemingly lesser, they would have done so.
I've sometimes felt that I've been reincarnated from a prior life that ended in those cryptic trenches.  I remember taking a train from Frankfurt to Paris and for whatever reason, the train had to stop somewhere on route.  Passengers were allowed to disembark temporarily and as I did I immediately recognized the tortured landscape around us.  I remarked to the people I was with, "Do you realize where we are?"  None did, though we stood in a giant killing field.  The trench lines were still recognizable.
Why do we take time to remember the mistakes of the past if we continue to repeat them?  God damn the people who have the power to prevent war, but let it happen anyway.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

Ivy League Sex Education: Anal Sex, Jungle Fever, Online Hookups

Here in America, the old English system of perpetuating the division between "the classes and the masses" (Quigley, 1966) that the Brits have with Oxford and Cambridge can be found in the Ivy League--a group of prestigious and expensive universities that produce many presidents, senators, blue chip CEOs, and the like.  Harvard is arguably the most recognizable of these institutions which have a profound impact on the direction of higher education at large through influential publications (e.g. Harvard Business Review) and alumni, though intraconference pomp and rivalry are intense.  So it was that after Yale University introduced "Sex Week" in 2002, Harvard was quick to join the race and has taken Ivy League sex ed to a new level.
You can go to Harvard's class schedule to see the courses on offer.  I'm a straight guy, so I'm interested in taking Jungle Fever, Sex Ed 101 (because I honestly don't know what a "dental dam" is), and Online Hookup Culture so I can improve my "technique."  As an aging single, I can use all the help I can get with sexting and mobile dating apps.  Unfortunately, I don't live in the Boston area and Harvard has yet to put these courses online with edX.  If they did I might even go for a certificate program, but I'm afraid one of the required courses will be What What In The Butt.  I'm not a homosexual, but the course instructor says that's just due "repressive patriarchical conceptions of sex."
I'm sure I could successfully challenge the Losing Your Virginity course given all my undergraduate credits.   ...And I've yet to look into the award winning sex program at Yale, but since it is home to the elite secret society known as Skull & Bones where ex-members like George Bush (father and son) and John Kerry would lay naked in a coffin and reveal their darkest secrets, I suspect it's pretty good.  I'm not sure if "Boffin In A Coffin" is being offered, but past courses have included Fantasy Rape and Sex Geek Chic.  It's unclear what the career prospects are for students who go through these workshops, but like many college majors these days, it's really not so much about pulling six figure salaries as it is about personal development and becoming a better person.  An Ivy League education in "sexology" can help you accomplish that.
It remains to be seen if America's Ivy League can even begin to compete with the centuries old tradition of sex education that has been perfected by the British, but its a start.  I'm probably behind the curve, given that I only went to flagship public universities where we didn't have anything like Sex Week (nothing official anyway), but one of my alma maters now has "gender neutral" restrooms.  Last summer I visited the old campus and must say I found it quite liberating to expose myself to pee in a room with young ladies without fear of being arrested, though I'm not sure that's exactly what administration had in mind.  Overall, I think what Harvard is doing is a good thing, and it's important to remember that classes like What What In The Butt have something to offer heterosexuals too.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Casting Day at the American Political Theater

Ah, it's Election Day in the U S of A.  This is the day that Americans head to the polls to choose the actors for many roles in the political theater to follow for the next two years.  For WARRiors who click through from foreign lands, and for those Americans who still don't get it, the way this works in most states is you go to a polling station and enter your vote on an electronic voting device that is produced by private corporation with proprietary software that the public isn't allowed to inspect, don't have to produce auditable paper receipts, and are notoriously vulnerable to hacking, which has led many cases of vote tally irregularities since Bush pushed for the Help America Vote Act.
Electronic voting is definitely easier than the kind of skullduggery that the CIA used to get Buddhist-monk-killer Ngo Dihm Diem elected Prez of Vietnam in 1955 or the FNLA in Angola in 1964.  ...Not to mention all the trouble Jeb must have gone through to get his lil' bro' in office in 2000 by purging blacks from the voter rolls, or the strange case of ballot paper switch that led to the hanging chad fiasco.  Unfortunately, it most probably means that American democracy has been hijacked in the last few elections, according to professors from University of Pennsylvania and UC Berkeley among others.  No wonder so many people in the U.S. are completely fed up with Congress going into this election.  They don't respond to what the voters want, because the voters aren't the ones who put them in office.

Friday, October 31, 2014

Dudley Do-Right Likes Beer! Happy Halloween, Eh!

I love my neighbors to the north.  That would be Canada, eh.  They really know how to incentivize good civic behavior.  Such is the story of this man, a modern day Dudley Do-Right who put himself in harms way to protect Canadian Parliament from an armed gunman.
 "Canadian mounted, baby, a police force that works..."  Alain Gervais, a government security guard, was rewarded for his heroism with...  A LIFETIME SUPPLY OF BEER!  And just in time for the holiday season, too!
The Obama Administration should take note of this, since a guy recently jumped the White House fence, sprinted past the guards, and made it all the way into the White House with a knife.  How he managed to do that when an old guy like me was getting assholed around by Secret Service just for standing on the sidewalk by the Eisenhower building this summer is beyond me.  More amazing is that it happened a second time weeks later.  Both men were returning U.S. Army veterans.  But that's beside the point.  Maybe instead of making our returning vets wait for months to receive critical services due to the backlog scandal at the Veterans Administration we should do as the Canadians do and give them all free beer for life.
That would certainly take the edge off of Gulf War Syndrome.  Then again I would much prefer that the U.S. government stops treating the American military as a mercenary force for some New World Order so international banking interests can profit while the American taxpayer foots the bill.  And don't fucking tell me I don't support the troops!  Most of them that I've talked don't understand what they Hell they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan anyway.  Bring The Boys Back Home!  And give them free beer!  The way to fight fundamental Islamic terrorists is to send American hard core bands to the Middle East.

Friday, October 17, 2014

World War 1: Putin and Russia's New Perspective

I've been personally disappointed by the lack of recognition and public ceremony in the U.S. over the 100th anniversary of WWI, or "The Great War," as the Brits like to call it.  WWI is one of my favorite and most studied periods of world history and is still probably the seminal event of the last two centuries.  Obama and other European leaders gathered at the Menin Gate in Ypres earlier this year, but the even was largely ignored in America.  Russia had its own ceremony and the speech is really quite revealing of how Vladimir Putin and modern Russia and look back on its past.  Instead of venerating the Bolsheviks and murderers like Trotsky and Lenin, he calls them out for what they really were--not altruistic communists, but thieves who "sought only power for themselves."  Putin's view of the Russian Civil War of 1918, one can presume, is decidedly more White than Red.


Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Ebola: Did Dallas Nurse Have One of These?

The CDC is taking heat for blaming America's first case of ebola transmission on the Dallas nurse who caught it, saying it was a "protocol breach" of protective gear.  CDC Director Tom Friedman, might want to look in the mirror when it comes to protocol breaches.  Ebola is a  Bio-Safety Level 4 pathogen.  In addition to Dallas, hospitals in Seattle, Omaha, Washington, and Boston either have or are preparing to take ebola patients.  I don't think any of them look like this:  Popular Mechanics magazine took us inside a BSL4 facility in 2007 (notice PM in '07 mentions that ebola could even spread with a sneeze).
BSL4 protocol checklist....   Vacuum sealed suits?  Nope.  Building in a building?  Nope.  Compression chamber?  Nada.  Separate HEPA filter HVAC system that removes everything down to .0003 microns?  Nyet.  Separate water decon system?  Absent.  Okay...  So who's breaching protocol, Mr. Friedman?  According the CDC's own BSL standards checklist, it doesn't even appear that BSL2 was reached at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Fukushima Radiation vs Ebola Outbreak

The contrast between news coming out on the Fukushima nuclear meltdown and the ebola outbreak could not be more stark.  The mainstream media is completely saturated with news of the ebola virus outbreak.  The Obama Administration's refusal to restrict air travel from Africa is already becoming an election issue in America.  This is as it should be, because ebola is a very scary disease.  It is overwhelming west-central Africa and kills about 70% of its victims in short order.  Now Europe and America are experiencing their first cases of ebola.

On the other hand, radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown is already in the U.S.  It's also been revealed that mixed oxide fuel rods were in use at Fukushima and we can count deadly plutonium among the radioactive isotopes released.  The Vancouver Sun reported that seaweed samples taken off British Columbia had tested at 4x safe limits for radiation.  The New York Times reports "low levels" of radiation in U.S. milk samples.  There has also been massive mortality among fish on the West Coast, including sardines, starfish, salmon, and other sea life.  Mainstream media won't speculate on radiation, though it's interesting that radiation from the Fukushima 3/11 event arrived on the West Coast in March 2014, about the time these anomalies in the coastal ecosystem became present.  And about 80,000 gallons of contaminated water from Fukushima continues to pour into the Pacific each day to bioaccumulate in the food chain.


Wednesday, October 8, 2014

A Naomi (Were)Wolf in London

I like Naomi Wolf now.  Like me, she's a reformed OTT Devil Dog for a progressive charge, who at some point realized after charging into some No Man's Land, that it was not all it was meant to be.  Eye deep in Hell, she began to see things more clearly.

Naomi has long been a leader of the feminist vangard.  I bought and read her 1997 book, "Promiscuities," and understood it's point, but felt it was extremely one-sided.  Was my experience as an awkward, young stud-supposed-to-be really so different from the pressures she described for young women?  In this scene from An American Werewolf In London, she (Nurse Alex) confronts the wolf of man and in his demise, sees his tragic vulnerability.  She realizes then that he was cursed and that she loves the beast being hunted.


Monday, October 6, 2014

Cryogenic Future World?

A few weeks ago, the United States had rallies in many cities to draw attention to the threat of global warming, or more generally, climate change.  Now that is a subject itself, because what does one mean by "global warming?"  Does that mean "the earth's atmosphere is heating up and we need to understand and do something about it" or does it mean Al Gore's Imminent Apocalypse theory?  Might the reality of the situation lie somewhere in between?  My problem with such movements is when questioning the magnitude of the variables involved in climate change draws accusations of "global warming denial."  I didn't graduate with honors from a major research university for being a "blathering idiot," Congressman DeFazio.

Someday I'll go deeper into the global warming equation and models, but for now I'll go straight to the point that there's also significant evidence that the world is only a decade away from dipping into another Little Ice Age.

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Stanley Kubrick - Too Fast For Love (Motley Crue cover)

Man, there's so much heavy shit to contemplate in the world...  Ebola, Fukushima, Charlie Sheen...  Not to mention my own personal problems.  So I'm going to go a little more fizzy rocka rolla on this post.

Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" came out in 1987.  Motley Crue (insert aumlauts) releasted Too Fast For Love on their own Lethur Records (insert aumlauts... yes really) label in 1981.  By the way, I once owned a copy of the original "Too Fast For Love" album, which I bought from a friend, who I believed purchased it at Beekman Bob's, which was the underground record shop on Melrose in LA in those days.  I bought it for $20 and sold it a few years later for $50.  I wish I still had it.

Anyway...  Bear with me here...  Motley Crue preceded Kubrick's film by like six years, okay?  So look at the cover of "Too Fast For Love" and then look at this scene from "Full Metal Jacket."

Monday, September 29, 2014

The Goldman Sachs Finger - In Your Face!

The latest revelation of just how corrupt the investment banking sector has become comes from another another Angel named Carmen Sagarra, one Federal Reserve Bank regulator embedded at Goldman Sachs who has revealed how Fed regulators look the other way when it comes to Wall Street corruption.  Like Sibel Edmonds, she's smart, sexy, honest, and being crucified for doing the right thing.  I wish I had a swimsuit calendar full of girls like this.

As Bloomberg and other financial news outlets report, Sagarra was alarmed at the level of collusion and lax regulation that Fed employees were giving Goldman Sachs.  So she went all Bond Girl on them and started recording the meetings, uncovering Enron-like soundbites such as, "Once clients are wealthy enough, certain consumer laws don't apply to them."  Instead of saying something like, Wait just a fucking minute, you hedge fund cunt, slime bag piece of shit, her fellow regulators would say to Carmen, "You didn't hear that."  Pulling a gig where acting like a regulatory whore meant one day swallowing some of the Goldman lucre, honesty only led to Carmen's termination and another nail in the coffin of market efficiency theory.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Prof. Zeke Emanuel, Obamacare Policy Wonk, Thinks People Should Die By Age 75

"In a time when no man could just do alright and get by...  To make way for the new, the old had to die!  It was crazy.  It was crazy!"--Sammy Hagar from "Spaceage Sacrifice" by Montrose

One of the self-ordained central planners of globalism, Prof. Zeke Emanuel, who is also one of the main architects of so-called Obamacare in the U.S., has penned a rather lengthy op-ed in The Atlantic magazine.  The article is titled, "Why I Hope To Die at 75."  The University of Pennsylvania MD and PhD is currently 57 and presumably has a rather lucrative pension and retirement to look forward to, but he seems to feel that his quality of life will not be sufficient to enjoy the good life that keeps guys like Warren Buffet, 84, or Henry Kissinger, 91, going at a ripe old age.  Hey, to each their own.  I hope Zeke has a heck of party before he puts himself out of misery.

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Scotland's Valient Stand


The last few days have been a tornado of news and opinion on the loss of the "Yes" campaign for Scottish independence.  It's an unfortunate outcome, but one that sends a message, no matter how much the political elite of the UK and western world wish to ignore it.  The 45% "Yes" vote is a significant rebuke of federalism and globalism.  The New York Times even went so far as to publish an editorial citing the Global Crisis of the Elites.  Of course, if you read my previous blog post about Henry Kissinger's new book, "World Order," those same global elites really think the answer is to shift more power to regional governments and supra-sovereign trade organizations like the hideous Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) which is secretly being negotiated by the Obama Administration and the EU.  Scotland sent a loud and proud message to the globalist elite.


Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Another Lame Duck Swan Song from Henry Kissinger

"For God's sake, how many swan songs can a lame duck deliver?"--Henry Kissinger quoted in Rolling Stone (1977)  regarding the number of farewell ceremonies he had to deliver.

Kissinger just released his latest pontification on how to achieve a "new world order" in his latest book called--wait for this--World Order.  You can read Henry's own press release in the Wall Street Journal or you can read Hillary Clinton praising this warmonger in the Washington Post.  If the book is anything like Hillary and Henry's previews, it should largely read like a piece of fiction.

Friday, September 5, 2014

Joan Rivers 'Throat Wide Shut'

Comedy fans throughout the world mourn the death of Joan Rivers, the woman who almost trumped Jay Leno to replace Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.  Last night I was watching the opening game of the NFL season as the Seattle Seahawks mauled the Green Bay Packers when there was this announcement for some TV show (paraphrasing):  "...Joan Rivers dies due to complications with her throat."  That's an odd way of saying it.  In fact, it had a certain eerie, Eyes Wide Shut quality to it.


Sunday, August 31, 2014

Killing Herself To Live

Here is a sad story about Maria, a 32 year old woman who was working four jobs to make ends meet and literally died of exhaustion.  It makes me think of the Black Sabbath song Killing Yourself To Live.  "You work your life away and what do they give?  You're only killing yourself to live!   ...Never give your trust away, you'll end up paying 'til your dying day!"


Friday, August 29, 2014

Coral Snakes & Ebola Virus

I read this article from the NY Times saying that government is cracking down on companies selling cures or preventative medicine for ebola.  Sounds reasonable enough, since you don't want people getting ripped off or poisoned, but some radically paranoid bloggers are suggesting that the government is trying to crack down on possible cures.  Those kind of leaps toward hysteria seem to drive more traffic than my blog, so here's my take on the situation.

Personally I'm more concerned about the U.S. government's failure to do something about the absence of coral snake venom from hospitals, which could result in an apocalypse of highly neurotoxic envenomation in an America.  It's hard to call these docile and candy-colored little elapids "terrorists," but they are native American and quite deadly if allowed to chew on exposed skin.  Fortunately, the NFL's New England Patriots' quarterback superstar and supermodel-husband, Tom Brady, took the time to film a bare-chested, public service announcement on YouTube to warn people about the danger of coral snakes amongst us.


Come Halloween Night 2014, all coral snake antivenom will be past its already-extended expiration date from the FDA.  This colorful relative of the taipan, krait, and cobra will have free reign among the living, who will no longer have recourse to antivenom, only a potentially awful death!!

Monday, August 25, 2014

YES!!!... for Scotland's Independence! Freedom!!!

A short shout out to all my distant clansmen and Scots.  Vote yes for your independence and self rule!  I've yet to make it to Scotland, but for the record my grandmother's folks on my father's side came to America from Scotland in the 1800s.  I'm a mixed American mutt, but on my great grandfather's side my family is from the Colquhoun Clan.


I recently visited Independence Hall in Philadelphia where the American Declaration of Independence was signed and the Constitution of the United States was drafted and executed.  I'll be brief with my argument here--all progress in human civilization has come from the decentralization of power.  The Roman Senate, The Magna Carta, the U.S. Constitution are all examples of where authority and information was distributed.  When power is held in fewer hands, brokerage of that power occurs across a more narrow range of interests and humanity suffers.  This has certainly been the case with the trend toward supra-sovereign organizations and treaties like NAFTA, the G7, and EU.  Though their stated goals are ostensibly humanitarian, there is always an undercurrent of avarice and nepotism that reigns in policy.  The most visible victims (for those who care to look) are nations like Greece, Argentina, and Azerbaijan.




The Founding Fathers of the USA understood something very important about the consolidation of power.  It's bad, okay?  Thus most of the time and furious debate over our fledgling Constitution centered not around what was considered Democratic or Republican (by today's standards).  The debate that raged for years was over the distribution of power between the federal government and states' rights.  Unfortunately, the U.S. has taken a strong turn back toward Federalism, which is the natural consequence of war-time crisis (Civil War, Great War, WWII, War on Korea, War on Poverty, War in Vietnam, War on Drugs, War on Iraq, War on Terror, war, war, war...).  The average middle or working class person is always the loser.

What has the consolidation of power at the UK and EU brought Scotland?  What has hard fought independence throughout history brought Scotland?  The eyes of the world are upon you.  Choose your independence and, like Iceland recently, you will find your own path.  Your friends and distant clansmen the world over will support you.  I personally will visit Scotland at long last and hopefully have a chance to meet some long time Nazareth fans and raise a glass to your independence.


Freeeeedom!


Friday, August 22, 2014

The Top 1% Only Get 1% of Income... Well, Sort Of


Income inequality is a hot topic these days, with the Occupy Wall Street movement of a few years back and so much attention being paid to the disproportionate share of income for the top 1% in the U.S.  However, that's not true for income earned by labor (wages, tips, etc.).  In fact, it's quite the opposite, with the top 1% earning only about 1% of income from labor.  How can this be?  This discrepancy of polar extremes is because the top 1% earns around 75% of income from capital gains.


Sunday, August 17, 2014

Edge of Tomorrow - Starring Tom Cruise as Dirk The Daring


So I just today saw Edge of Tomorrow with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, quite late I should say, because my strategy for budgeting my limited time to catch the occasional movie is to wait and see if (a) it's sufficiently reviewed, (b) I remain interested months after all the opening week hype, and (c) it comes to one of my favorite pub theaters where I can see the movie and down a pint of microbrew all for a Paper Hamilton.

The movie has been reviewed thousands of times by bloggers and critics already.  Most reviewers pick up on the action-adventure version of Groundhog Day.  Far fewer make the connection of the video game plot--you play and die, play and die, play and die, until you figure it out and win.  You kill the mothership (yeah, I guess there's a little Xevius to the plot).  I couldn't help but think of Dragon's Lair, the first video-anime arcade game where Dirk The Daring dies over and over again (Over the Edge? - shout out to LA Guns classic).  But that point's been made, even if I'm the first to compare Tom Cruise to Dirk The Daring.


I would much rather talk about Emily Blunt, the movie's heroine than Tom Cruise....