DeRosaWorld

Saturday Musings

- As the primary season comes to a close with a surprise progressive hero, Senator Barack Obama coming from nowhere to claim the leadership of the Democratic Party in the post-Bush, Jr. (and maybe the post-Republican) era, the party bosses are gathering this weekend to try and wrap up the confusing and fucked up nomination process before the actual convention.

With the final primaries being held this week, Obama hasn’t actually won, yet. Arianna Huffington has the champaign on ice, though. The celebration is about to begin. Change and hope and pride in America is right around the corner. Out with the old. In with the new.

- Republicans have no wins on their card to run on. If Democrats don’t sweep both houses of Congress and the White House this year, they might as well shut the Party down.

Conservatism has lost and lost big time. Hit McCain on the issues: The Republican economy. The Republican health care system. Republican Party perversion and corruption.

Make John McCain defend the last eight years: Republican gas prices. Republican-run war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republican Veterans Hospitals. Republican Education.

How can he defend any of it? Just ask McCain if he is a neocon? I’d like to see him answer that question.

- Isn’t is awesome having oil men in the White House? And after taking over the country with the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world….Americans can’t afford to fill both their cars and their bellies at the same time. How’d that happen?

- Sydney Pollack is a great loss to Hollywood and movie lovers. He was one of the last producers of films made for grown-ups. Since he died, I can't get scenes from his films out of my head: Robert Redford in the snow in Jeremiah Johnson. The dancers in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Barbra Streisand's sad face in The Way We Were. Sally Field's indignation in Absence of Malice. Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in the airplane from Out Of Africa. Robert Mitchum kicking through paper walls in The Yakuza. Dustin Hoffman walking down a New York City street in drag from Tootsie. Thanks Sydney!

- I have not seen Iron Man. I will not go to see Sex and the City.

- I’ve been listening to a lot of The Doors’ music lately: Strange Days and Waiting  For The Sun. They are my drive-time background music. Ever since I watched the season finale of American Idol I have not been able to get David Cook’s mock-rock screeching out of my ears. Jim Morrison had some pipes and some spooky rock chops.

- Hey, John McCain’s favorite book is Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls.

- I was told recently that I needed to read Michael Chabon. He’s the pseudo-gay writer of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (a memoir of the 2008 Pennsylvania Primary) The Wonder Boys (The secret love story of John McCain and Joe Lieberman) and something called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, the Pulitzer Prize winner from 2001. I picked that book up and put it down a half dozen times. (One of them decides he’s gay). So now I have Summerland, a children’s book about baseball and elves. I’ll try, but it is an awfully fat book for a children’s book. I haven’t finished Julian Green’s Memoir’s yet, and I’m getting old.

- I’m goint to try to eat more apples.

Does This Mean Bush, Jr. Gets A 4.0?

"The U.S. Army reported Thursday that the suicide rate among its soldiers continued to rise last year, and is now nearly double the rate recorded before the invasion of Iraq. But they say last year's increase was not as sharp as the two previous years. VOA's Al Pessin reports from the Pentagon.

The army says it has confirmed that 115 active-duty soldiers committed suicide last year, with two more investigations still pending. That is a rate of nearly 19 per 100,000 soldiers. The rate was just under 10 per 100,000 in 2002, before the Iraq invasion, and has been rising steadily, except for one year, ever since. The rates for the last two years are the highest since record keeping began in 1980.

Army officials say the military suicide rate is still lower than the rate for people of similar age and education level in the rest of American society. But they say it is too high because the Army should be able to provide mental health care and other support to its troops.

Officials say personal issues such as relationship problems, trouble at work and legal or financial difficulty are among the main causes of suicide in the military, just like among the civilian population.

But Colonel Elspeth Ritchie, a psychiatrist in the Army Surgeon General's office, acknowledges that the stress of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is also part of the reason for the rising suicide rate in the Army.

"We see a lot of things that are going on in the war which do contribute," said Colonel Ritchie. "Mainly is the long-time and multiple deployments away from home, the exposure to really terrifying and horrifying things, the easy availability of loaded weapons and a force that's very, very busy right now. And so all of those together, we think, are part of what may contribute, especially if somebody is having difficulties already."

Still, officials report 26 per cent of the soldiers who committed suicide last year had never been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan."

Unbelievable.

Oh, That Other British Prime Minister

"Gordon Brown reached out to millions of families hit by the soaring costs of running a car as his Chancellor pledged to review a planned increase in fuel tax.

The Prime Minister warned that high oil prices were a long-term global issue that could not be tackled by Britain alone.

But Alistair Darling held out the prospect of relief to motorists by promising to revisit a 2p increase in fuel tax set to be introduced in October.

He appeared to hold firm, however, on moves to increase road tax on gas-guzzling cars, despite mounting concern on Labor's backbenches about the impact on millions of drivers.

Ministers had previously hinted that the Government could be considering their second tax U-turn in weeks by climbing down on the reform of vehicle excise duty announced in the Budget."

So Bush, Jr. is finished with Labor Prime Ministers from Britain and is getting ready to skate away from the global fuel crisis by November.

I guess Britain's Labor government will be the first to fall and then our next Democratic President and Congress will be blamed for the economy falling completely off the tracks.

Scott McClellan, Now You Tell Us?

"Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

So everything the Democratic Party and the progressive blogs have said over the past 8 years is true and Scott McClellan lied to us and the Bush, Jr. Presidency is the worst in American history. Why did you wait until the end of his term?

You are still to blame and were the face of this administration for a while. You are guilty, too.

Shove your book up your ass.

Sydney Pollack: A Handsome and Respectable Body of Work

 

Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack, a Hollywood mainstay who achieved commercial success and critical acclaim with the gender-bending comedy "Tootsie" and the period drama "Out of Africa," has died. He was 73.

Pollack died of cancer Monday afternoon at his home in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, surrounded by family, said publicist Leslee Dart. Pollack had been diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago, said Dart.

Pollack, who occasionally appeared on the screen himself, worked with and gained the respect of Hollywood's best actors in a long career that reached prominence in the 1970s and 1980s."

I'm a Sydney Pollack fan. He has a consistent A-picture quality list of films to his credit. He worked well with actors and his movies are all of the kind that keep you up late if they come on and you are scrolling through the channels looking for something decent to watch.

Sketches of Frank Gehry (2005)
The Interpreter (2005)
Random Hearts (1999)
Sabrina (1995)
The Firm (1993)
Havana (1990/I)
Out of Africa (1985)
Tootsie (1982)
Absence of Malice (1981)
The Electric Horseman (1979)
Bobby Deerfield (1977)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
The Yakuza (1974)
The Way We Were (1973)
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)
Castle Keep (1969)
The Swimmer (1968) (uncredited)
The Scalphunters (1968)
This Property Is Condemned (1966)
The Slender Thread (1965)

I'm not sure if Pollack lands on most critics top ten directors lists, but he should certainly be considered. Like Sydney Lumet, Clint Eastwood or even Robert Redford with whom he collaborated often, when I heard that Sydney Pollack had a new film, I would be sure to check it out. I was rarely disappointed, and neither were the audiences.

The Yakuza, Three Days of the Condor and Jeremiah Johnson are on my alternate list of favorite movies. Like a lot of John Huston's films, Pollack's films are not in my top ten, but are certainly movies I bring up when I am in deep into the list with serious film lovers.

Me and certainly an important list of modern movie stars will miss Sydney Pollack. He started in the early days of television, so he had the medium close-up and a face; he learned how to direct actors. Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep and Jane Fonda all benefited from his technique.

As this generation of movie directors die off, the replacements are few and far between. Maybe movies have run their course. If so, Sydney Pollack directed a class third act.

Sunday Morning Music

Allen Toussaint and an amazing band perform Backwater Blues with Irma Thomas.

Saturday Musings

- Memorial Day 2008. We have a lot more men and women to Memorialize this year. America history seems to show that America is endlessly at war. No victory, no armistice ever stops the list from growing. Americans do one thing very well and consistently. We go to war.

- More Liberal guilt. Most liberal progressive media and blog folks seem more upset that Hillary Clinton mentioned Senator Robert Kennedy’s assassination than they were when the man was assassinated.

I don’t see the entire force of the media being turned on Bobby Kennedy’s autopsy report. Now that would be news.

- Why can’t BHO, the Democratic front runner lock up the nomination? This race goes into June. The convention looms ahead. Obama supporters grow weary. Why doesn’t she just let him have it?

- A few racist questions: (I place my Democratic Party credentials at risk.)

- Is Barack Obama going to reverse the Bush, Jr. tax codes in his first hundred days?

- Is Barack Obama going to end the Iraq war in his first hundred days? He was never for the war, I think I heard him say that a hundred thousand times.

- Is Barack Obama going to give the United States universal health care in his first hundred days?

- Is Barack Obama going revoke the Patriot Act in his first hundred days?

- Hey, how about Bush, Jr.’s victory lap around the Middle East. That went over real well. Even the Saudi Arabians are tired of having him around.

- Secretary of State…um…uh…oh! Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is still on the job. No news to report otherwise.

- Americans have not cried ‘uncle” yet as the Oil Companies keep twisting our arms behind our backs. No one has tried to steal gas or start a grassroots revolution and take over gas stations to distribute gasoline to their community and neighbors. We just seem to be putting it on our credit cards.

- China is still fucked.

- Myanmar has fucked itself.

 

Memorial Day Trivia

Some Memorial Day trivia fun from Cindy Adams over at the New York Post:

"TOMORROW begins our Memorial Day weekend. So today I was remembering: Harvey Keitel, a Marine at 16 who served in Lebanon: Everyone should serve. I don't be lieve in a volunteer armed forces. We shouldn't leave it for the other guy to fight America's wars. It robs our young men of vital experience. They can't have an identity they can respect without being aware it's necessary to stand up and defend the liberties they cherish."

Kirk Douglas, WWII communications officer on a sub in the Pacific, was wounded in a depth-charge attack by a Japanese destroyer . . . Ed McMahon, Marine fighter pilot in 1944, flew 85 combat missions, remained in the Reserve as a test pilot, and retired as a colonel . . . Michael Caine, then Michael Micklewhite, served with the British Commonwealth Division in the Korean War . . . Kris Kristofferson, helicopter pilot in Vietnam; MPs were Chuck Norris and Rip Torn . . . After his Army plane crashed in the Pacific, Clint Eastwood had to swim three miles to safety through jellyfish . . . Sean Connery still receives nine shillings a week disability allowance from the British Royal Navy.

And it was Capt. Ronald Reagan who signed the discharge papers for Major Clark Gable in June 1944 . . . And it was naval officer Richard Nixon who set up WWII's only hamburger stand in the South Pacific. Nixon's Snack Shack served free burgers and Australian beer to flight crews . . . And it was at West Point that Dwight Eisenhower was demoted from sergeant to private for "wild dancing."

Walter Cronkite flew World War II bomber missions over Germany and survived a glider crash landing . . . Roger Moore was in military intelligence; Gene Hackman a Marine Corps radio operator . . . Six years as a Marine helped Drew Carey overcome severe depression and suicide attempts . . . Ralph Nader? An Army cook (who subsequently always worried that germs could be transmitted during large dinner assemblies) . . . Shoeshine boy/high school dropout Bill Cosby never appreciated the value of education until the Navy, where he earned a high school diploma through correspondence courses . . . Morgan Freeman joined the Air Force after high school: "I wanted to be a fighter pilot like those I saw in war movies. But after napalm and rockets and realizing whoever you kill is going to stay dead, I realized this is not what I want for life."

Alan Alda: "At boot camp in Fort Bening, Ga., I'd go AWOL weekends to see my then-fiancée Arlene, who worked 800 miles away in Houston's symphony orchestra. We'd meet halfway at a motel in New Orleans. It was high-risk, and I could have been thrown in solitary. The military doesn't care about romance."

Dr. Ruth Westheimer: "As a teenager in the Israeli army, I was a lethal sniper who could hit a target farther away than anyone and was accurate with hand grenades. Even today I can load a Sten automatic rifle in one minute blindfolded. On my 20th birthday in 1948 in Jerusalem, my legs were almost ripped off from a Jordanian cannonball that threw me 20 feet. All I could think about was would there be blood on the brand-new shoes I'd just gotten for my birthday that morning."

Tony Curtis: "I was on a submarine in Guam and got hit at the base of my spine. Doctors thought I'd be paralyzed for life. I prayed in English, Hungarian, every language I could think of. I was terrified I'd never walk again. I was mostly afraid my penis was dead. That area was completely numb. I had a good body, handsome face, and sex was all I thought about. Then one morning I felt a tingling. As the swelling at the base of my spine lessened, my nerves came back. As did everything else. Boy, was I afraid it mightn't."

Soldier Tony Bennett's duty was digging out Nazi mass burial sites . . . Military combat engineer Mel Brooks' duty was deactivating land mines. And when Germans broadcast propaganda to GIs via loudspeakers, Brooks responded with an Al Jolson rendition of "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" . . . Dennis Franz, in the 101st Airborne in Vietnam, "heard bullets whizzing over my head and got as close to being shot as I care to" . . . Paul Newman enlisted in the Navy. Rejected from being a pilot because of colorblindness, he became a radioman third class . . . Oliver Stone, who won the Bronze Star for Valor and the Purple Heart with Oak Leaf Cluster: "I can't even walk a straight line in daytime. I've no sense of balance. I lost my hearing in Vietnam."

Griffin Dunne: "At 18, my father, Dominick Dunne, fought in the Battle of the Bulge. As he was retreating, he saw a very wounded guy, moaning, legs broken, lying by the road under a car. Remembering the terrain, he snuck back after dark, crawled past Nazi sentries and, terrified he'd be shot on the spot because the Nazis were taking no prisoners, carried this guy for hours back to the company." Dominick Dunne was awarded the Bronze Star."

Wow. 
 

American Idol: Rock Is Dead They Say. Long Live Rock

The Who: Long Live Rock

Senator Edward Kennedy: A Speech From 1968

Senator Edward Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. He was first elected to the Senate in 1962. His political career has spanned my life time.

Here is a link to a speech he gave after the 1968 election brought Richard Nixon and the Republican Party to power. A few months earlier he buried his brother, Senator Robert Kennedy.

About 7:20 seconds into the speech, Kennedy lays out a plan to end the Vietnam War. It is a brave speech and should be remembered not only for the details of the plan, but the braveness of the timing in which it was delivered.