Media Distraction of the Month Club

Each week or month the media pushes some new political distraction in order to keep you from thinking about the changes that are going on in the West. Currently, the distraction has to do with football players who choose not to stand for the national anthem. Lets start by looking at the issues involved. Firstly, why do we play the national anthem at football games? It is not a requirement and it is not a law, it is a choice made by the NFL itself. Whether or not one chooses to stand for it is a personal choice and our military died for your right to choose whether or not to stand. They fought so we would have the personal freedom to choose. Funny how people that are complaining that conservatives are being prevented from free speech in public spaces are also complaining that people are exercising their right to expression by not standing for the anthem. On the left they believe people have a right to not stand for the anthem; but, not the right to speak on college campuses. Hypocrisy is never a good look regardless of the side you are on.

My starting point is that this whole thing is a non-issue. To be clear, I support young people who believe that it is right to fight for this country and see themselves as defending this country. At the same time, I don't see us waging wars that actually protect this country, I see us fighting wars for oil, control and to fund the military industrial complex. I'm pretty sure that Libya and Syria were not going to invade the United States and none of this has anything to do with football or the national anthem. In fact, I don't think people know what they are protesting against in the first place.

Here is a simple question. Why did football team owners take the position that it was okay to protest the national anthem? Why not just refuse to play it as they are not required to in the first place? Why did a singer of the national anthem choose to take a knee during his song instead of just choosing not to sing it at all? The NFL chose to make this a political issue and President Trump chose to address it because they made it an issue. If the media had not pushed the issue, most of us wouldn't have even noticed. If I saw a guy kneeling during the national anthem, I would assume he was praying like when Tebow would kneel.

Because of my religious and political beliefs I will not pledge allegiance to a piece of fabric. For the same reasons I will not swear on a bible. I also choose not to make an issue of these things in public and to allow others the right to do as they see fit.

There is a reason why the complaints about statues of long dead southerners is no longer front page news. Just so you know, many of the parks that have statues of these dead southerners were given to cities, counties and states on the grounds that they be named after these old dead soldiers and if the statues are removed the land goes back to the family that gave the park to the community. As the false arguments about old rusty statues of dead southerners died off, the media turned it's attention to multi-millionaire football players taking a knee during the national anthem, just as meaningless. These things are distractions not real issues. Stagnant wages, healthcare and outsourcing of jobs effect our day to day lives in real terms, someone choosing to take a knee is not.

This little foolishness will pass soon enough and the corporate media will replace it with a new outrage. Each month we get a new outrage because it drives ratings and distracts the public.

Liberal Protests Today

Back in the early 60s the youth protests for equal rights for blacks. In the late 60s and 70s the youth protested the war in Vietnam. In the mid to late 70s women protested for rights and pay parity when doing the same job. In the 80s the youth protested nuclear energy and weapons. During the 90s and early 2000s they protested for gay marriage. Today the protest against metal statues of dead southerners, the right to be here illegally and non-existent Nazis. They don't even protest all the wars we are in because they don't have to be in them.

During the 60s and 70s the establishment determined that people had to be allowed to express themselves to let off steam; but, they also determined that they should choose the targets for the complaints. Liberals do not protest the fact that they don't get one person one vote in the Democratic party and that the "leaders" of the party decide who gets one third of the votes in primaries. As for Republicans, they almost hold protest meetings.

Lets be honest, people don't protest to put more rules on the bankers or to eliminate tax cuts for the rich. They will protest for a $15 an hour minimum wage and get soundly ignored by both parties. Both the average Republican and Democrat would like to see Glass Stiegel put back; but, they don't unite to ask for it. Heck both would like to see limits on the interest rates that people are charged but they don't protest for these things.

The youth are distracted by the petty and incapable of protesting what will effect them. What their biggest threat is not having a decent job. What is coming for them is a world in which their are fewer public services, no chance for retirement and a diminishing lifestyle. Real threats. They attack free speech and the only result they can hope for is that they will be free from being informed or intellectually challenged. The protest to make sure that they only hear what they want in their safe spaces rather than the freedom and opportunity to be challenged and grow. Professional baseball players do not grow by pitching to your little league team; but, the little leaguers may.

College educated youth are told that people in the Midwest have absolutely no understanding greater than their own. They are taught that the people in 90% of the country are ignorant buffoons believing in silly things like God and country and industry. They are taught that these people are backwards and bigots and xenophobes and misogynists; but, they don't even know what the words mean most of the time. They are more accepting of people who cut their penises off and call themselves women (rather than eunuchs which is technically what they are) than they are of people who work in factories that lose their jobs to outsourcing. They are being taught to have no sympathy or respect for people who do not live in the coastal cities enjoying the fruits of high tech jobs. They are being taught to be elitists and that they are better than the rest of us.

Global Warming is a Lie and Bad Science.

The real science deniers are the one's who won't look at the actual facts. We have 800,000 years worth of climate data. We spent billions to get it from Antarctica. Yet, all the climate change models are based only on 120 or so years worth of data. Can you imagine us basing all of our beliefs about history if we only looked at the last 120 years when we have a few thousand years worth of written and drawn records? What understanding would we have of music if we ignored all music that was over 120 years ago? What if we ignored every book written before 1890? If you need to ignore 799,900 years worth of data to make your conclusions, it means you are lying.

The Telegraph - Climate change not as threatening to planet as previously thought, new research suggests.

Here is the essence of the article, climate change scientists are now saying things are not getting as bad as quickly as they predicted and we'll be okay if we nothing for 20 more years. This is the funniest things I have ever read and more than one newspaper reported on it. I saw a couple of articles in the last couple of days.

They made this statement to reassure people that Trump's refusal to have us adopt the Climate Agreement can wait till he is gone. The reason is simple, since the United States has not adopted the accord, the doomsayers will have to explain why their models are failing more and more. In fact the article points out that their models are already failing, they are now admitting that. Read the article.

Should anyone believe in this pseudo science they call climate change, poke me with the best question you can come up with right after you do your research and explain to me why we are ignoring 99.999% of all the date we have available. The issue has never been about climate change and has always been about how many people they think they need to control the world. The leaders have decided they don't need so many sheep. They said that and wrote about that over 40 years ago and I have posted links in the past to those writings.

Feel Like a Quickie? How Bout Two and Some Talk?

YouTube - China Banning Non-Electric Cars.  Watch the video and hear the talking monkeys of The Young Turks speak. They are excited that China is going to ban gas burning vehicles and think this is great for the climate change issue. ROFL. China will make the electricity by burning coal. They leave that part out cause they are too stupid to look it up. By the way, as I have explained before there are 500 ships that transport China's goods to the United States and Europe and they create more pollution than all of the cars in the United States each year. The funny thing is that they mention in the beginning that China is the biggest polluter in the world; but, fail to ask where the pollution comes from. It comes from creating the energy that their manufacturing uses, not from the products themselves.

CNBC - The party's over: Republicans and Democrats are both finished. "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Gandhi said that. It is something I quoted when the media was going after Sanders and Trump, especially in regards to Trump.

When Trump entered the race, they ridiculed him with the Huffington Post classifying articles about him as Entertainment. They didn't go quite that far with Sanders; but, they did go far even saying that men that supported him just did it to pick up women. The establishment didn't take the Occupy Movement or the Tea Party seriously and managed to destroy them both. Trump and Sanders were the response to having those movements ignored by the establishment. For the past year the establishment has been trying to prevent these movements from growing now that they have seen success. For their part, the Democrats are trying to kick the progressives out of any place of decision making within their party. The Republicans on the other hand are continuing to distance themselves from Trump; but, are actually distancing themselves from the people who voted for him. The establishment is losing and they know it. Denial is no longer working for them. It is still all Hillary can manage to do; but, she will never be relevant again

Jerry Lewis - The Day the Clown Died

Recently Jerry Lewis passed away. For decades I was involved in supporting the Muscular Dystrophy Association, MDA. Mr. Lewis had put on a annual fundraiser for the on Labor Day. He started doing it in 1966 and was let go in 2010. He did it for 44 years and raised over a billion dollars for the charity. In 1972 Lewis made a film called, "The Day the Clown Cried". I has never been shown in public, though at least one copy exists. Lewis said the film would never be seen because it was horrible and I believe it was; but, still want to see it because I think it could have been great. I read the script.

IMSDB- THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY.

The Greeks said there were only so many stories, they classified them as comedies and dramas and recognized the seven plots available to either. The essence of comedy is not the plot, it is the ending. Let me explain. Comedies have happy endings and dramas do not. This is true for action films too, it is true for all stories. If a story The feelings you have when you end a story is either happiness (comedy) or sadness (drama). The two masks that symbolize theater, the smiling mask and the frowning mask.

Comedy and drama both work best when there is something to cheer for. Most comedy goes for the silly underdog; but, the challenge he faces has to be real for the comedy to work. You have to care about him. You have to want to see him succeed, you have to wish him well and seek a happy ending.

The problem with "The Day the Clown Cried" is that they wanted to have humor in a movie with a horribly sad ending, a drama. You can mix humor into a drama; but, not too much and it has to be a very unique style of humor, gallows humor, not fun humor.

The film is about a clown in Germany who is sent to a concentration camp, jail, for Germans that ends up being side by side with a true concentration camp, one for Jews and Slavic people. The character that Lewis plays is a sad character, devoid of self. He is a broken man uselessly trying to fill out the papers that will get him released as he is a political prisoner, he insulted the idea of Hitler being the leader in front of the Gestapo.

Lets be clear about something, Jerry Lewis was a Jew and his parents were Russian Jews. Looking from the outside, attempting to make a comedy about the Nazi's gassing children seems like a really stupid and horrible idea; but, he wasn't making fun of them. It could have been his own family and he knew that.

I read the script for the first time tonight, it is linked above. The writing is terrible and the writer seems lost to me, he indicates which parts he thinks can possibly be played for laughs. I believe the writer was told to find places where the jokes could go in; but, it was never meant to be a comedy. There is a movie called "Life is Beautiful" that pulled off a very similar script; but, any humor was incidental to the story.

After making the film, Jerry Lewis stopped making films for years. He said he lost his artistic vision because of that film. Humor is tough, it is always a tight wire act and the performers usually die till they get really good at it.

Comedians frequently make great dramatic actors; but, in my opinion, Lewis never was. I think Don Rickles was a great dramatic actor (just watch Casino); but, Lewis played silly in comedy. Of silly comedians, I think Jim Carrey might just be able to pull this movie off.

I don't know that this movie deserves to be remade. I believe it could be powerful; but, too much time has passed and the dialogue is horribly immature. Francis Ford Coppola could have made this a good film; but, as much as I like him, Tarrentino could not make this film. If made, I don't think it would make tons of money, in fact, it is really depressing watching a clown lead children into a gas chamber. The biggest mistake the film made was focusing on the clown, on Lewis. It should have about the lack of compassion of the guards who were willing to send children off to be killed with a clown, just to make their jobs easier. If anyone bothers reading the script, let me know what you think.

Different Excuses Same Solution

YouTube - Irish Pay Water Tax - Corporations Dodge Billions: Russell Brand The Trews.

YouTube - A Tax on Bottled Water: Jorge Vinueles at TedXZurich.

YouTube - Bill English continues to attack Labour Plan over water tax plan: RNZ Checkpoint.

When you hear the same solution being suggested in different countries but the excuse changes, it is because they believe that one society will like one excuse more than another; but, it is still just excuses. The reality is, they want to tax everything except income. They want to tax you for living, but not succeeding. Watch the water games in your town and you will see it coming too.

Hillary Clinton Does Not Believe in One Person One Vote But Hates the Electoral College?

MSN - CNN - Hillary Clinton: Time to abolish the Electoral College.  You have to appreciate the hypocrisy. She is totally in favor of rigged primaries and super-delegates that represent only the donors a in crowd; but, is concerned about the electoral college. The electoral college is more representative of this nation than is the Democratic National Committee's rules for choosing nominees.

Without one state casting a single vote, she already had one third of the Democratic delegates for the primaries. I wrote about it at the time, still on this blog with links to the corporate mainstream media talking about it and why Bernie could not win. Just imagine if we had an electoral college that gave the votes of one third of the whole country to a specific party in advance of anyone voting. That is how the Democratic primaries work. The Republicans are not much better; but, they actually more democratic. I wrote about that too when the primaries began.

Both parties want to fix primaries so that you only have two choices and both parties choose corporatists who only look out for the wealthy. They only argue over homosexuality, what it means to be citizen, abortion and religion. They agree on not regulating banks or business and cutting back on how much we help the poor.