Saturday Musings

- The President doesn’t see a problem with the economy right now. Always the optimist, he thinks his policies are working just fine and no immediate action is needed, as he crosses off the days on the calendar until he can retire. Presidenting is hard work.

- Oil is at another all-time high this week. The price of gasoline at the pump heading straight for $4 per gallon as summer 2008 approaches. The President doesn’t know this, doesn’t understand this, but we still love him.

- The price of wheat is also breaking records. No one seems worried here in America though.

- Maybe we should start gathering around our firesides (or giant plasma screens) and recall tales from our Grandparents about the Great Depression and FDR. Here are some movie suggestions: Little Caesar, King Kong, My Man Godfrey, Man’s Castle, John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath,  Frank Capra’s American Madness, Meet John Doe and Mister Deeds Goes To Town, Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels and of course there was Shirley Temple.

- The Democratic Primary may be coming to a dramatic conclusion this Tuesday. The Party faithful may finally put an end to the campaign of Senator Clinton. If not and she disappoints us all by winning in Texas and Ohio, the fight goes to Pennsylvania, where Ed Rendell and the quiet giant of Pennsylvania politics awaits to save Hillary Clinton.

- I seem lost in this year’s tide-turning Presidential election. I’m being told that the Millennial Generation is taking over from the Baby Boomers and by supporting Senator Clinton; I’m on the wrong side of American history’s latest generation gap, etc.

Well, kids I hope you know what you’re doing. I hope this century’s doers can achieve wonderful things like the Internet. You seem to like that.

I hope you all have plans for global competition for jobs and oil and resources and water and food and peace. I hope you have educational plans for your children and grand children. The last half of the 20th Century saw some amazing and powerful changes in America and the world. The Millennials have inherited a great treasure. Watch your back, though, The Republican Party doesn’t give up that easily.

Take a lesson from two generations ago. Who ever thought the Party that gave us the Great Depression in the 1920s would rule the second half of the 20th century. The Republicans are like the Terminator: They never stop coming and all they do is kill.

- On the East Coast, States like New York and New Jersey are banning hand-held cell phone use and text-messaging while driving. From what I see in Los Angeles, California’s economy would collapse if similar laws were passed out here.

- The little red-headed, spare Prince of England took up the Crusade in Afghanistan. Doesn’t seem like such a good international PR idea, British royalty shooting up the Muslim countryside and all that. None of my business I guess. Just saw it on the news.

- Hey, why is American royalty not fighting? The sons of the rich and powerful? …and the famous? …why are our Football heroes, those monsters of strength and over-muscled toughness not kicking ass on the front lines? What about our Basketball stars, giant athletes like Kobe, on the front lines? What about other young people like Justin Timberlake and Usher taking up the fight to protect America? What about all those Country Music Stars, they seem pretty tough…whiskey for my horses and all that stuff. Why aren’t the American Idols fighting?

- Sacre Blue! The French are winning US military contracts. I guess that is what happens when they finally elect a real man as their leader. A wedding gift from Uncle Sam.

- The person who wins the Best Original Screenplay Oscar is considered the best American writer for a year (face it, novelists don’t count anymore). This year Ratatouille was up for BOS, it didn’t win, but I think the nomination says a lot about Hollywood.

Louise Schumacher: Get out, go anywhere you want, go to a hotel, go live with her, and don't come back. Because, after 25 years of building a home and raising a family and all the senseless pain that we have inflicted on each other, I'm damned if I'm going to stand here and have you tell me you're in love with somebody else. Because this isn't a convention weekend with your secretary, is it? Or - or some broad that you picked up after three belts of booze. This is your great winter romance, isn't it? Your last roar of passion before you settle into your emeritus years. Is that what's left for me? Is that my share? She gets the winter passion, and I get the dotage? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to sit at home knitting and purling while you slink back like some penitent drunk? I'm your wife, damn it. And, if you can't work up a winter passion for me, the least I require is respect and allegiance. I hurt. Don't you understand that? I hurt badly.  - Paddy Chayefsky, Network

Comments

[fallenmonk]

Good post! Hit all the high points and the low points. Have a good weekend.