Curtiswselby

My 6 Favorite Romantic Moments in Film

And other pointless ramblings about romance.

The author with a toupee acting all sexy like.

So I thought I’d take a stab at remembering the romance from films in the bygone days. See if I could lift the rusty hinges of my memory and bring back some of what once was. If I’m gonna love someone, I gotta try to be whole….hold on for her (though I did a terrible job of holding on for myself).

Number 6 Much Ado About Nothing Benedick is tricked into realizing he loves Beatrice Be Ye Blithe and Bonny

When it comes to romantic comedy, Shakespeare is still the king (hail to the king baby) and if you don’t believe it, rent or watch this gem from Thor director Kenneth Branagh and you will know the wit of true genius (as opposed to reading this blog, where you will get the half wit of true gembus). The fact that both have broken each the other’s heart, but still they both love each other, and basically everybody knows it but they themselves.

Some of the greatest lines in cinema here. “The world must be peopled!” is still one of my favorites.

Number 5: Smoke Get’s in Your Eyes, when Richard Dreyfuss Showed us All How Patrick Swayze Shoulda Done it….(meaning, without Whoopi Goldberg’s Help)

Until I got married, this was very nearly my favorite romantic movie. For reason’s I don’t have the heart to share, I haven’t watched it in well over a decade, and possibly I will never watch it again. There is so much in this movie, I actually prefer it to Ghost for a lot of reasons, but it is a similar idea. A man passes away, and essentially gets to haunt the woman he loved. It sounds creepy, likely is creepy, but an eighteen year old Curtis who felt that love would never be his….the whole thing resonated from start to finish. I still think it is one of Spielberg’s most underrated films.

Think of the scene in Ghost only without the creepy thought that it’s actually Whoopi Goldberg and Demi Moore making out. I still can’t hardly hear this song without tearing up. I can’t find a good copy of the actual scene where the ghost dances with his love, but this video kinda gets the point across.

Number 4: corny as it sounds, the scene where Baron von Trapp and Maria dance a waltz in The Sound of Music

I know the movie seems trite to a lot of folks, and sure, it has some moments where the syrupy sweetness get to be too much. But then there are moments when you get just a glimpse of the real people who inspired this musical. The Baron von Trapp’s grief for his wife who passed away, his unconscious punishment of his children as he fails to process his grief, the love that brought music back into his life, and his incredible patriotism in the face of tyranny…..there is a whole hell of a lot of manliness in this movie if you just know what you are looking for. You women don’t know how deeply you move us sometimes, but Christopher Plummer nailed it in this one. I can’t speak for how a woman feels about a man. I hope what Julia Andrews sings is true though. I hope we inspire you even just a tenth part as much as you inspire us.

I’ve done a lot of dumbass things in my life. But I must have done something good to have gotten on the road that led to you.

Number 3: Heather and Conner’s Romance in Highlander

When I was young, I foolishly loved a girl quite a bit longer than there was any point. But to me there seemed something beautiful about it. The whole idea that love could live forever, that it was a force more powerful than time itself. I found out, to my grief, that time really is the more powerful force, but there is something romantic in the idea that love can last forever. I suppose that is why people still think of marriage as a beautiful thing (at least till they tie the knot). When I was twenty I first heard about Highlander, and thought “What an idiotic movie! People running around cutting off each other’s heads?” Then Heather, who was Conner’s love back in the medieval times, starts to age, and Queen sings the mournful notes of Who Wants to Live Forever. It was love at first song. I fell for that movie hard, and that was the moment that defined its beauty to me.

What kind of love would you need, to remember her four hundred years later? What would it be, to miss her for all those centuries?

2. Highlander the Series. Dust in the Wind

So I fell in love with the movie, but I was a purist. For a couple of years I refused to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, because I felt like it was a betrayal of the original series to love it. Well, twenty one year old Curtis was the same way. Who was this long haired dude? Why a different character altogether? Duncan is such a stupid name. But then his love dies on the show. Her name is Tess, and there is a scene where Duncan is remembering her, grieving her loss, and the Kansas song Dust in the Wind is playing. This scene did the same thing for the series as the other scene had done with the movie. I fell in love with the series, and while Duncan does move on and finds love again….Tess is always a part of him.

If you don’t think he is a great actor after watching this scene well….respectfully….I disagree……you can see the pain and grief in his eyes……

Number one: Up

If you’ve seen this movie you need no description. If you have not seen it, no description can prepare you. If you think this is just another Disney cartoon….well…..watch it….your toughern me if you can watch with a dry eye.

All right….now I need to find a tissue. Thanks a lot ya’ll for making me cry.

What’s Love Got to do With It?

The author tries to give a valentine to his girlfriend, only to incur another restraining order.

I never understood Tina Turner’s song until the movie It came out. I see nothing romantic or sexy in this movie whatsoever. How Hollywood could think there was anything lovely in this movie at all is beyond me, and I totally am in agreement with Tina Turner that there just isn’t anything in the movie about love….what….oh….my assistants tell me Tina Turner was in fact not singing about anything involving Stephen King. Never mind!

Seriously though, love has always been a subject of profound confusion to me. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for me, it seems to be pretty confusing to the whole frickin’ world. There may be other subjects with more words written, but I doubt if any subject has inspired more poems, more songs, or more movies than love.

When you grow up abused and neglected, you frankly just don’t get it. You know that you yearn for a human to think highly of you, but you are afraid that it is all a sick joke. Mommy may love on you this moment, but the next she is going to be beating the unholy crap out of you while you hide behind a chair. And Daddy? He is mainly a source of terror. Yes you worship his every word and bully deed, but you are so scared of him (and we all know that to be feared is better than to be loved).

*The IT Crowd* has a bit more to do with love, but there is never more than a vague hint of romance between any of the main characters. It is funny when Jen ends a relationship by yelling for a taxi, but I still don’t get why Tina Turner would sing….What? She wasn’t singing about that show either? I’ve gotta get better assistants.

Trouble of it all is, you need love. Baby starves without milk, or fails to grow tall if there isn’t enough. And love is the same. You don’t give the baby love, and they may grow up, but they grow up emotional monsters. Grow up thinking that love is wrong, or a weakness, or a perversion. If you are very very lucky, the abused merely grow up thinking that love, like money, is something only the lucky or the strong acquire. Well…..I looked up love in the Ferengi Rules of Acquisitions…..oh my…some of the best advise I’ve found is in here…like this rule: There is no profit in love; however, a strong heart is worth a few bars of Latinum on the open market. Keep it on ice.

Yeah, I’ll share that link for the benefit of humanity. Kinda my Valentine’s present to my readers (there are more than one….right?):

https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi_Rules_of_Acquisition

Of coarse! Because IT feels no love and can only control, Meg defeats IT by loving Charles Wallace….but I still don’t understand why Tina Turner sings about IT…..more of a *They Might Be Giants* theme….

Ok, ok….I’m well over five hundred words in, and have yet to say anything of real substance. Until recently I had nearly forgotten what love was. My marriage taught me that all my old illusions about love were no more than that. Bitter dregs at the bottom of the wine barrel. Ashes of all the burnt hopes. Desiccated corpses of the butterflies I saw flitting about in my youth. So much forgotten, and often I wonder if it is worth trying to rebuild.

Somehow, I have found love again. She deserves so much more than what I have to give her, but she loves me, and so for her sake, I have to try. Thank God she is patient.

Hicks, George Elgar; Woman’s Mission: Companion of Manhood. From an article about how we have unrealistic images of how nurturing women should be.

Why all the humor, why so unwilling to be serious? I could speak unflinchingly about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, about Plague and Death. Why is love so hard to talk about? What does love have to do with the incessant pain that is life?

It is late in the post, and only now do I feel the strength to say: We need each other, but so many of both sexes have been so badly abused. And we hear about how our expectations of the other sex are unrealistic, but all we have is a defensive “yeah but,” and we instead argue that it is actually the other sex that is unrealistic. Women say we are too influenced by porn, men say women are too affected by romance novels. And each expects the other to change and conform to what “we” naturally are, but any request for us to change is seen as abusive or rejecting. We demand vulnerability, but insist we be allowed the luxury of staying behind our own castle walls. My sex is allowed any cowardly, rude, vindictive, insulting, even physical form of expressing anger without consequence, but by God you better fight fair and play by the rules.

If this were a modern Disney film, we all know who would win….

908 words, just to accomplish what Westly said in a few succinct lines. In the end, whether it is too late or not for me, I hope it is not too late for the reader. Get your fracking act together a little bit, and then go for the person you love. Hold them to a high standard, but not an impossible standard. Hold yourself to a higher standard than you hold them. Seduction, like intelligence, has a wide range of types and talents. Maybe you can’t be Marilyn Monroe or James Dean. But you can still rock someone’s world. Someone who, by the way, needs their world rocked just as much as you do.

Quit stroking your scars, and stroke her cheek. Quit focusing on what you don’t have, and focus on how wonderful she is. And yeah, some sombitch in the past broke your heart. Well, if God is just, they will get theirs someday. Focus on the Other in the best broken way you can. And maybe….just maybe…..it will all be worth it in the end.

Or not….”Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyOanMqdcfg

I saw this version of the video on MTV late Saturday night after killing a bunch of zombies. I don’t know why this version isn’t everywhere. It is beautiful to heartbreak.

Don’t Shoot Me G-Man

I don’t understand what all the hype is all about….how would this help prevent crime?

I’ve written two posts about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in which I discuss the possibility that there was government collusion. In the end I felt there is not definitive proof, but there is absolutely enough evidence to make one wonder. I will leave the links here for those who wish to read my thoughts.

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/595

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/618

While I feel good about the first post, I don’t feel so great about the second. I was talking to someone I really think highly of, and she asked if I had talked about J. Edgar Hoover. To my chagrin, I realized I had not. And in order to understand the belief that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, you really need to know a bit about Hoover.

This evil man caused the great depression, held this innocent dog hostage…..wait….what…? That’s *Herbert* Hoover not…*J Edgar* Hoover? What the hell am I paying my assistants for? No wonder my readership is so low….

For the sake of this post I’m doing a bit of cursory reading, and learning a great deal I had not known before. Let me sum up what I had “known” before. He founded the FBI. He was head of the FBI for over forty years. He was accounted a hero until about the eighties when rumors started leaking out that he had spied on quite a few people, and had possibly had a hand in several assassinations, and he (or maybe it was Ed Wood) was a cross dresser. Presidents were afraid of him. Truman compared Hoover’s FBI to the Gestapo, and Nixon said “We have on our hands here a man who will pull down the temple with him, including me.” Now you know as much as I do, let’s see what we can find out about him, and why the King’s feel he had a hand in their father’s death.

*This* man started the FBI, spied on politicians….what? You’re kidding me….Ed Wood? You just can’t get good help these days…..

A cursory read of Wikipedia is enough to make one understand the unique place in American history the man had, for good or ill. He spent his entire life in Washington D. C. Which likely explains part of his issue. He enrolled in ROTC and was on the debate team. A stuttering child, he overcame this foible by learning to talk super fast. His first job was as a messenger for the order department at the Library of Congress. The library taught him the value of research and the orderly collation of data. He had his law degree by age twenty-two and was a clerk for the War Emergency Division of the Justice Department. So his career begins preparing America for war and terrorism at the dawn of WW I. The year is 1917. He is exempt from the draft, but the horror of the war in Europe is known, and he likely was determined that America would not suffer the same way Europe did.

Images like these were likely in the papers or came across Hoover’s desk. A young man could be terrified that such horrors might come home.

Soon he was appointed the head of a new Justice division: The Alien Enemy Bureau, authorized by Woodrow Wilson to arrest and imprison foreigners suspected of disloyalty without trial. So you have a man in his early twenties, ambitious, powerful, with unconstitutional powers granted under the premise that this was a special, wartime situation. But as we all know, youthful habits die hard.

In 1919 he was appointed the head of the Bureau of Investigation’s (the precursor of the FBI) new General Intelligence Division (the grandpappy of the CIA). He was only twenty-four. His job was to both gather intelligence and disrupt the activities of “radicals.” One of these, a fellow named Felix Frankfurter (no, I didn’t make that up) was according to Hoover, “The most dangerous man in America.” Frankfurter was later appointed to the Supreme Court (again, no joke).

I know almost nothing about this man, but this quote alone makes me wish to know more.

The Red Scare was on, and one of Hoover’s first assignments was to carry out the Palmer Raids…..which had nothing to do with the reason some boys have hairy palms. Under the orders of Attorney General Palmer (acting under the administration of Woodrow Wilson), three thousand people, mostly Italians, Eastern Europeans, and Jews, were arrested for being socialists, communists, or anarchists. 556 foreign citizens were deported. Again, a youthful Hoover was taught that the security of the nation trumped the rights of the citizens. And he learned that differing ideology was dangerous to our survival.

Much of what I’ve said sounds critical. But to be fair the guy did revolutionize law enforcement, revamped the system for hiring agents so that it was less political, and under his direction, the FBI put some really terrible people behind bars. But on the other side, there were secret files on movie stars, politicians, and world leaders. He was not above blackmail, disinformation campaigns, and allegedly, even assassination.

You dirty rat! Finally, the actual photo of J. Edgar Hoover.

I know, I know…I’m writing about the FBI, but still…..

Amplify Black Voices, or, We Are So Sorry We Tried to Silence You Back Then…..

The town of Lauderhill Florida celebrated Black History Month in 2002, inviting James Earl Jones to speak. Whoever printed the banner made a terrible mistake. Read on if you wish to know more…..

Intrepid, intelligent readers will know that in my last post, I started digging into the mystery of Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination, and finding things in the story of the convicted suspect that made no sense. I didn’t find proof exonerating him, but there were gaps in the story that made me think somebody is crazy (to be fair, it really could be the suspect).

Our ambitious villain, as you can read in the last post, gets on the George Wallace volunteer roster, get’s plastic surgery to disguise himself, and then plans on assassinating King and running away to Rhodesia, Africa. On the surface this sound crazy (ok….it’s bat crap crazy from start to finish, but hear me out anyway) but doing some research I learn that Rhodesia was a white ruled British colony in Africa that had a white revolution because the Caucasoids feared the blacks would basically overturn their rule, since the blacks were the majority. Oversimplifying here but think South Africa and Apartheid and you have a good idea. So maybe Ray Ray had a capital idear after all, what what?

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/595

Yeah, this absolutely looks like the place for J. E. R.

While that part of the story is making more sense to me, I still don’t understand how a two bit con who couldn’t even make it as a porn king in Mexico. So I did a little digging into that. How was the car, the gun, the facial reconstructive surgery, bus fair to Canada, air ticket to England to Portugal and then back to England, and escaped justice from the April 4 killing till June 8 when he was arrested in Heathrow Airport?

According to an article from the Washington Post, J. E. R. actually was a very successful criminal, and had used his entrepreneurial spirit to drum up all that cash. They state in an article on the subject that he had “earned” $4600 dollars selling drugs and various contraband in prison, and when he escaped that money was augmented by $2400 his sister gave him, leaving him seven thousand. The Washington Post estimates that would have been enough to do all of what he did.

J. E. R. is truly what capitalism is all about……

Somehow this fails to placate my suspicion. Why is the King family so convinced that J. E. R. was innocent? While the King’s are good people, they still desire justice, the whole point of what Martin Luther King lived for was to acquire justice of the oppressed (frankly, he struggled against oppression of any kind on any race. His last march was going to be for the trash collectors union, which would have had a fair number of whites). So they wouldn’t just give him a pass without some evidence.

I’m going to post an article of the Washington Post here, you can read several of the pros and cons.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/03/30/who-killed-martin-luther-king-jr-his-family-believes-james-earl-ray-was-framed/

Initially I had become convinced that there must be more to the story. Looking up the cost of the plastic surgery he got to disguise his face, I believed there was no possible way he could do all the things the FBI say he did without help. Digging further into the story though, I realized that facial reconstruction was less expensive than I had thought, and the items listed were within a $7000 capacity at the time. Though, frankly, just barely. It is still hard for me to believe that a two bit hood would have the discipline to keep his mission under budget. But it is not impossible.

He was never tried for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. He took a plea bargain to escape the death penalty, and thus never faced a jury for this atrocity. When the King’s took Loyd Jowers to court (Loyd Jowers being the owner of the establishment Ray was renting at the time of the assassination), a jury found Mr. Jowers responsible. He could not be found guilty, as it was a civil and not a criminal trial. Mr. Jowers had made the claim on ABC News show Prime Time Live that he had been paid $100,000 by alleged Memphis mobster Frank Liberto.

Is this definitive proof? No, likely there are still tons of facts I don’t know. The government (who I trust implicitly….hey NSA agent monitoring this blog! How is your Aunt Gertrude enjoying my posts! Ya got enough to go after me yet?) continues to insist that there was no government involvement. But then, I insist that I meant to scan every item in the self check out lane. The fact that five items aren’t on my receipt is just conspiracy theory.

Oh yeah! The teaser at the beginning of the post. Likely all of you already know where this is heading, but somebody really dropped the ball with the James Earl Jones speaking engagement in 2002….

Oops! Hey…why are ya’ll picking up rotten tomatoes……

Conspiracy Theory Post, Black History Month Edition

A friend of mine told me today that the King family had sued the government and there was enough evidence of conspiracy that they won the law suit. Baffled, I started rattling out this post and investigating.

America took quite a few hits in the sixties, but blacks were hit especially hard. The road in America was always strewn with rubble by the gracious whites who warmly invited them to this continent, we would remove a few pebbles in remorse, only to dump boulders on the weary pilgrim seeking freedom. Dr. King was only one among many voices, but somehow he struck a chord with both sides. He delivered the message of suffering, but with a pastor’s regard for the sinner. His message was redemptive of white’s, not accusatory. He asked simply for justice, not for overthrowing society. And he was rewarded for his patience with a bullet to his face.

“King had arrived in Tennessee on Wednesday, 3 April, to prepare for a march the following Monday…. As he prepared to leave the Lorraine Motel for a dinner at the home of Memphis minister Samuel “Billy” Kyles, King stepped out onto the balcony of room 306 to speak with Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) colleagues standing in the parking area below. An assassin fired a single shot that caused severe wounds to the lower right side of his face. SCLC aides rushed to him, and Ralph Abernathy cradled King’s head. Others on the balcony pointed across the street toward the rear of a boarding house on South Main Street where the shot seemed to have originated. An ambulance rushed King to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead at 7:05 P.M.”

Information quoted from the King Institute website:

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/assassination-martin-luther-king-jr

So far, I am sharing things that I already knew, and likely that most of us know. But I had not known the rest of the story. Like most mediocre students, all I really knew was the basic story of the tragedy from a few text books and news coverage long after the fact, as all of this happened before I was born. Until my friend from work shared that the topic interested him, I had no idea about the law suit. So the research began.

An image burned in the American psyche. The tragic death of Martin Luther King Jr.

Being rushed for time, I turn to Wikipedia first. This is what I found there:

“The jury that heard the case took only one hour of deliberations to reach a unanimous verdict: that King was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.^[5] They found Jowers responsible, and also found that “governmental agencies” were among the conspirators.^[6] The King family was granted the $100 they requested in damages, and they saw it as vindication. King’s son, Dexter, said: “This is the period at the end of the sentence. So please, after today, we don’t want questions like, ‘Do you believe James Earl Ray killed your father?’ I’ve been hearing that all my life. No, I don’t, and this is the end of it.”“

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyd_Jowers_trial

Why would the government lie to us? What could they possibly have to hide?

This being the first thing I’ve ever read on the subject, I’m baffled. I know my efforts to follow the news have been spotty, but how is it possible this wasn’t splashed across a hundred headlines? Where was CNN, Fox News, ABC?

The next thing I turned to was the Wikipedia page about the assassin himself, one James Earl Ray. His page reads like a baffling novel about….honestly, I don’t know what the hell this character would fit in. But it’s a wild read. He left school at age 12. Joined the army and served in Germany. He is kicked out of the army, becomes a petty criminal with a rap sheet that reminds me of a Gotham City minion “Sure Ms. Mooney! I’ll be glad to rob a grocery store.” He gets incarcerated and escapes. Starts a new life in Mexico as a porno film directer, returns to the US, and becomes a volunteer for the George Wallace campaign.

Then the story starts to get weird.

He decides to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. He has facial reconstruction, evidently to hide his identity. This is where I pause. Where did a low grade street thug have the money to get plastic surgery? Did he steal it? Or did he have someone helping him? Maybe even someone giving him orders? His plan was to assassinate King and emigrate to Rhodesia. Again I pause….why is a racist wanting to move to Africa?

Makes more sense than that a racist would move to Africa…….I know it’s a serious topic, I just couldn’t help it.

Ok folks….this is getting wordy, and there is so much more to find out and explore. I’m going to do a part two, hopefully I can publish it Friday or Saturday. Stay tuned…..

If Reverend Jackson is right, how can we be expected to trust our government…..

Mike Pence, Round Two

Feed the birds! Tuppence a bag! What? Two blog posts about Mike Pence? Not again!

Yes I know, I already wrote about Mike Pence. Here is the link in case anyone wants to play catchup or does not know the context of what I am about to write.

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/504

I also wrote a post about the question of whether Antifa (or BLM, though I actually never touch that point in the post) actually started the violence and Trump supporters are largely innocent bystanders:

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/528

Right or wrong, I am pretty proud of my post about Pence. But it has one obvious, glaring flaw. I fail to say very much about Pence.

I wonder if it is too “on the nose” to point out that billionaire President Trump’s Vice President is named for a penny? Well, in for a Penny, in for a Pound.

When Trump chose Pence as his running mate, I liked him. I frankly knew nothing about him, but the guy just looks Presidential, and he talks Presidential. And unlike Trump who always made me want to either cringe or cry, Pence could actually make me feel like someone was out there doing their job. He may have been full of crap for all I know, but he conveyed that feeling you want from a President. You wanted to respect him, and that is something in these times.

Yes it is shallow. But if you knew nothing about either person, who would you say was the President in this pic?

Hopefully it is not a Joe Rogan moment for me to admit that I really do not remember much of anything about Pence before he became Trump’s running mate. Whether it was because a good Vice President lets the President have the limelight, or because I have not trusted or followed the media in a decade, all I can recall is “Trump Trump Trump Trump Coronavirus Trump is bad” for the last six or seven years. I can even verify that, if you go to http://www.bitemebitemebitemeCurtissucks.com…..what….that is the wrong website? Never mind. Hopefully I can be forgiven for not citing a source, it is surely common knowledge that for good or ill, Trump makes for great news numbers.

Whether you love him or hate him, the media put him there. And by the time they tried to tear him down, it was too late.

According to Wikipedia, Mike Pence ran for Congress, lost twice, and became a conservative radio talk show host in the years 1994 to 1999. During this time, I was battling depression and myalgic encephalomyelitis, had given up (mostly) on following the news, and likely listened to too much Rush Limbaugh. I cannot say whether Pence was an educator or just a hack, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt. His message must have resonated with some, because when he ran for a seat in 2000 he won it.

In the year 2000, Mike Pence will be elected to Congress and Donald Trump will launch an exploratory committee into running for President. Like Trump could ever win……

As the years rolled on, Mike Pence became a supporter of the Tea Party Movement (as was I) and won an election for Governor of Indiana in 2013 (about a year after I quit following the media altogether and followed more healthy habits, like working eighty hour work weeks to support a woman with Borderline Personality Disorder, giving up on all my hopes and dreams, and praying every night that a kind God would allow me to never wake up again).

Likely everyone knows all of this stuff but me. Let’s skip ahead to today. Trump is claiming that Pence could have overturned the election. Pence states that Trump is wrong. What are the Cliff’s Notes versions of their arguments?

Trump says there was voter fraud, and that under the Electoral Count Act of 1887, Pence could have overturned the election on that basis. Pence says that Trump is wrong. Let’s examine these claims.

In Trump’s defense, the Act he quotes was actually written exactly for the reasons he cites. But my research does not at this time support his claim that Pence could overturn the election. The law lays down the time limits and guidelines by which votes are counted, lays out that a state’s governor shall properly submit one set of counts,

Four! Four counts of voter fraud! Ah ah ah!

and that Congress can intervene in “a very narrow class of disputes,” and it is Congress, not the Vice President, who gets to intervene. As President of the Senate, the Vice President would have some say. Hypothetically he might adjourn a meeting for Congress to intervene. But he would not be able to overturn the counts just on his own decision. Last of all, the law spells out that fraudulent documentation is a felony with a five year imprisonment. So maybe the Attorney General could get Joe Biden arrested and…what….fat chance in hell that will happen? Never mind.

In the end, the most important question, “Was there voter fraud?” I still believe can be answered “Yes, but very little can be proven, and what can be proven does not even come close to overcoming the election.” Simply my humble opinion, but I’m standing with Pence at least on this issue.

At the risk of looking biased….I watched this and couldn’t resist ending my post with it…..

Ya Say Ya Wanna Revolution…Well Ya Know….

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve thought a lot about revolution in my lifetime (shout out to the NSA agent monitoring this blog….say….while you are spying on me….why don’t you throw me a few likes or something……maybe get your great aunt Gertrude to read it….who knows, maybe I can become as big as Joe Rogan with your help….I’ll split the profits…and if I do take over the government you can be the new head of the NSA!). For those who haven’t kept up with this blog (I think I have a dozen or so readers, not counting the NSA agent) I include the post “A Dream Deferred” which is my rambling about youthful, foolish thoughts about revolution, and weird dreams coming to haunt an old man in his sleep.

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/251

And to tie things together even more, I wish to reference another previous post, “January 6 Riots Not Very Quiet.”

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/147

Side note: Another thing that really impacted me as a child was Geometry. It was my introduction to real logic, and frankly, other than my class in Classical Rhetoric, was almost the only class I ever had that truly relied on rigorous logic.

See, I’m trying to build a case. While I’m not as wise as Pythagoras, and I am trying hard not to come to predetermined conclusions, I honestly am trying to rebuild my broken world view on this blog. And I’m attempting to do it as logically as I can with the badly limited resources at my disposal. So I’m trying to take the claims of the last decade, discredit or validate them as I can, and see where the reasoning leads me.

Yeah….somehow Geometry stopped being comforting in my early twenties….

So to move on with questions that need answering…..The protests were intended to be peaceful (so I’ve heard), but “bad elements from Antifa and BLM started violence that cascaded out of control.” Is that true or false? You’ll remember I answered at least to my satisfaction that Biden did not steal the election, but Trump did intend to overthrow the government, or was a very foolish victim of a mad conspiracy.

I have a friend who says he has a friend who was there at the riots This person told my friend that he saw “people from antifa” getting out of a van and “starting to act violent.” So he went back to the hotel and missed out on the actual riots. I cannot corroborate this claim. My friend is not someone I would doubt, but having said that….a friend of a friend….can I believe that source? And if that story is true…what does that mean? I need to do more research.

“We are not Ninjas! We are Antifa trying to frame Trump! Und I believe that you are Ninja too! But do not tell!

Against the evidence of my friend’s friend there is a whole host of internet sites (admittedly, mostly not right wing sites) claiming that such claims are totally bogus. Reuters does a pretty fair job of establishing that the most famous folks in the riot were not Antifa. You know. Shaman Man. Southern Man. Aqua Man. Spider Man.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-capitol-mob-antifa-undercov/fact-check-men-who-stormed-capitol-identified-by-reuters-are-not-undercover-antifa-as-posts-claim-idUSKBN29E0QO

Having said that…..what am I to make of my friends statement? I know he would not lie. But of course he could be mistaken, or perhaps he misheard his friend. Still, something lingers in my mind. I honestly want to believe that the rioters were simple Trump supporters, people who truly believed (I believe erroneously, but of course I could be mistaken) that Trump had won the election, and Biden had stolen it. I am not questioning at this point whether Trump planned to overthrow the government, the question right now is was the violence started by a conspiracy?

Maybe it is just because I listened to so many right wing radio shows in the past, but…..

For some reason coming to a conclusion is hard for me on this one. And yes, part of it is my friend. But there is something else. Something is rotten. I seek right wing rebuttals, hoping they will help me understand why there is this upset, this brooding feeling I have missed something vital. One of the best I have found is here:

https://www.norwichbulletin.com/story/news/2021/08/06/call-it-what-it-is-with-capitol-riot-blm-antifa-riots-view-right-conservative/5500448001/.

Most of it does not resonate with me any more. I hear the echoes of the conservatism I have lost. But the last paragraph somehow does stick:

“Here’s the problem: For months last year, the left normalized rioting as part of “peaceful protests.” Who can forget the CNN reporter, the cityscape in the background flaming, describing the “mostly peaceful protest” he was covering? The bear spray, fireworks, clubs, helmets, shields, frozen water bottles and strategic stockpiles of bricks and other weapons employed in the BLM/Antifa events, along with extreme aggression toward police, were a model for some of the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol. When rioters repeatedly tried to burn a federal courthouse in Portland, Ore., why were they not hunted down and charged with both arson and attempting to interfere with government proceedings?”

No, I am no closer to the answer to my original question, but I think I know now why my Spidey Sense has gone off. Because I have seen footage of riots before. And I have seen riot after riot, many from the sixties, many from the recent years, and frankly…..

Why is the left so upset when the right seems to be using their tactics? Perhaps the statement is unfair, I am half afraid to make it, knowing so many of my friends will say that there is a difference. And there is.

Isn’t there?

The riot the right is upset about.

This is the riot the right is upset about.

I feel no closer to the answer, but I think it should be noted…violence is violence no matter who throws the punch. I watch both videos with grief and outrage, and wonder, if there is a conspiracy….haven’t the masterminds won? If both parties are willing to descend to this level….is not the Republic effectively lost?

Mike Pence

Surely all of us remember (as much as I’d kinda like to forget) January sixth of last year. The Donald was pressuring Mike Pence. I had to do a bit of searching, since current events are overwhelming the search engines, but I finally found an article that actually quoted what D. T. said at the time:

“We will never give up. We will never concede,” said Trump.

“Mike Pence, I hope you’re going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country,” he continued.

“And if you’re not, I’m going to be very disappointed in you.”

https://www.the-sun.com/news/4400681/january-6-2021-timeline-capitol-riots/

The big news of February fifth (other than the death of a Groundhog) is that Pence said D. T. was wrong, and D. T. stated “Just saw Mike Pence’s statement on the fact that he had no right to do anything with respect to the Electoral Vote Count, other than being an automatic conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell to get Biden elected President as quickly as possible,” Trump wrote in an official statement.

Trump argued that if “obvious signs of voter fraud or irregularities exist” Pence could have done something about it.” Quote from Fox News.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-responds-pence-overturn-election

Another example of Trump disinformation, Old Crow Mitch McConnell is obviously a condor.

Taking Trump at his word, I’ll accept that the Mike Pence could have overturned the election in the event “obvious signs of voter fraud or irregularities exist”. But as I’ve already written, at least in the two most likely states to have turned for Trump given fraud or irregularities, there were not enough to merit overturning the election. Likely Pence (and the first conservative Supreme Court in about eighty years) felt the same way, or they likely would have sided with Trump. Here is my blog post if you haven’t read it and wish to follow my reasoning more closely.

https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/161

Granted, if I were being thorough, I could have gone through more states, but I felt if the two most likely to flip don’t have adequate evidence, it gets less and less likely with every state you investigate.

You take it back Donald Trump! Mitch McConnell looks nothing like me!

We’ve also established in a previous blog post that Donald Trump did in fact intend to overthrow the government, or that he is just clueless. For the sake of argument, let’s assume Donald Trump’s intelligence (his firing of Lou Ferrigno notwithstanding). Again, blog post included in the off chance you haven’t read it and wish to follow my reasoning: https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/271

I used to be a conservative Republican, before Trump. I voted for him (the first time). I could try to reconstruct the thought that went into supporting him, but I don’t know that I can do the mental gymnastics to do more than a few thought experiments (kinda like watching The Man in the High Castle, or Fatherland) speculating about how things might have gone if history had gone differently.

For me to still be a supporter of Trump, I would have to believe that our Republic is finished, that it has been conquered or is destined to be conquered by a Dystopian, Totalitarian regime, and furthermore that Trump would likely be indispensable to the resistance a la George Washington, Charles De Gaulle, or Oliver Cromwell.

Talk about a real revolutionary leader, I gotta tell you George W…..what? This isn’t George Washington? No wonder my readership hovers around twelve people……..Still, I think it would be nice if I could touch your body, you know not everybody…..why is everyone holding their ears?

I know no better model of a successful revolution than the American, so let’s begin there. The very foundation of our nation (other then Christianity and English common law) is the Declaration of Independence. So what does it have to say about this situation? “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Likely I’ll have to explore this in a later post, this one has already gotten wordy. But we don’t have a unanimous declaration from all of the states, all we have is an election. Totally different context. We are not dissolving any political bands at this point, we are already one of the great superpowers of all time, and the only declaration of causes is : “Just saw Mike Pence’s statement on the fact that he had no right to do anything with respect to the Electoral Vote Count, other than being an automatic conveyor belt for the Old Crow Mitch McConnell to get Biden elected President as quickly as possible.”

An overly simplistic argument, but there is nothing in Trump, or any of his statements, that make me willing to risk “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

But the topic is far from exhausted. Perhaps a Civil War is what is called for. But remember, our founding fathers and even the Confederacy were far more deliberative than a bunch of social media hacks writing mean tweets. If your gonna ask me to fight, please make it a cause worth fighting for, and not just Trump’s ego.

To my fellow Americans who think a Civil War is the answer. I’m happy to fight and die….for America….for the people I love…..for liberty….but Trumps ego? I better not write what he can do with his ego…..

Trump is not worthy to pour out this man’s chamber pot…….

Putin vs Ukraine….Again…oh and China is on Board too

Is it vodka? Is it *Huangjiu*? Oh who cares as long as we get drunk?

The most beautiful bromance in my lifetime has to be that between Putin and Xi. Before my time we had Stalin and Mao Zedong, but that was long ago and far away. Somehow the two great Communist nations drifted apart, and Nixon went to China, and Gorbachev tried to be nice and his military stabbed him in the back.

And there was a partridge in a pear tree.

The United States has been the big dog pretty much all of my life, but I suspect our day is done. We rely way too much on Chinese production, and Putin seems to be the better executive in comparison the the last few we have had in USA. You can say what you want about Putin….he gets shit done.

According to Wikipedia, “Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin^[c] (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the current president of Russia. He has been serving in this position since 2012, and he previously held this office from 1999 until 2008.^[7][d] He was also the prime minister from 1999 to 2000, and again from 2008 to 2012. Putin is the second-longest current serving European president after Alexander Lukashenko.”

I’ve been trying to make sense of the Chinese article, but I’m afraid it is beyond me. It really seems like the Communist Party in China basically tell you who to vote for, and you either vote for said President or not…..

Citing Wikipedia, “Since 1993, apart from brief periods of transition, the top leader of China simultaneously serves as the president, the leader of the party (as General Secretary), and the commander-in-chief of the military (as the chairman of the Central Military Commission). This individual then carries out different duties under separate titles. For example, the leader meets foreign dignitaries and receives ambassadors in his capacity as president, issues military directives as Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and upholds party rule as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

During the Mao era, there were no term limits for the presidency. Between 1982 and 2018, the constitution stipulated that the president could not serve more than two consecutive terms. In 2018, term limits were abolished, without changing its powers.

The current president is Xi Jinping, who took office in March 2013, replacing Hu Jintao. He was re-elected in March 2018.”

“Xi wants to ally himself with Russia? I simply crushed them, saw them driven before me, and relished in the lamentation of their women.”

After World War II, the great powers were basically (in no certain order) the United States, USSR, and People’s Republic of China. It’s not that there were no other important nations, but those were the big three Superpowers.

I think it’s interesting that they are also the Big Three in the book 1984. There is Oceania (basically the US combined with Latin America and the United Kingdom), Eurasia (continental Europe dominated by USSR) and East Asia (most of non Siberian Asia dominated by China). They eternally fight for the resources of Africa and the Middle East. While Orwell was not a hundred percent right in this prediction, he wasn’t altogether wrong. The next seventy years were largely dominated by USA, USSR, and the People’s Republic of China.

At least on the surface, the US has (until the last twenty years) at least tried to defy the Orwellian construct in our efforts to stand for freedom. We made lots of mistakes, there were plenty of times when we were hypocrites, but that was our stated aim since the 1770’s. The US stood for liberty, freedom, and the right’s of humanity.

The aims of the USSR according to Wikipedia: “The ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was Marxism–Leninism, an ideology of a centralised command economy with a vanguardist one-party state to realise the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet Union‘s ideological commitment to achieving communism included the development of socialism in one country and peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries while engaging in anti-imperialism to defend the international proletariat, combat capitalism and promote the goals of communism. The state ideology of the Soviet Union—and thus Marxism–Leninism—derived and developed from the theories, policies and political praxis of Lenin and Stalin.”

And the aims of the People’s Republic of China? Again, quoting Wikipedia: “The communist victory in 1949 brought to power a peasant party that had learned its techniques in the countryside but had adopted Marxist ideology and believed in class struggle and rapid industrial development.”

So here we are. Freedom versus Marxist ideology, class struggle, and rapid industrial development, centralised command economy, one party versus two party, the dictatorship of the proletariat versus Democratic/Republican principles.

So we thought we won when the USSR fell. But did we? Are we right back where we started? And will the third world war we thought we avoided fall on the generation we hoped we had spared? Please leave your comments.

We thought thirty years ago that freedom had won. I wonder if it had, or did we just win a Pyrrhic victory?

Groundhog Death

2022 has been yet another year from hell. And to confirm it, Milltown Mell, the world famous Groundhog from Milltown New Jersey, not only saw his shadow, he died. Whatever he saw was so traumatic it killed him.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/02/02/new-jersey-groundhog-dies-before-prediction/9312255002/

According to USA Today, the county would have had issues with covid anyway, but the celebration had to be canceled. It was reported by Mel’s “wranglers” on his Facebook page that “Milltown Mel recently crossed over the rainbow bridge.”

Personally, I’ll bet he’s not really dead. My money is on just a really deep hibernation. I’ll bet when they try to bury him he’ll squeal bloody murder and go on a vengeance rampage that will impress John Wick.

Woah! You shot my groundhog and now I’m coming for you sucka!

The second possibility is that Mel is chilling in the Bahamas drinking a Mai Tai, laughing at us ignorant humans while he gets a massage from a beautiful prairie dog. I mean, lets face it….aren’t we all just a little sick and tired of winter? The Starks keep warning us it’s coming, but bro, I think it has been here for a long time. I think the last fifty years has been one long winter where the Truth has lain fallow because there isn’t enough warmth of human kindness to bring it to flower. And damn it….my Mai Tai is empty! My workers need to work harder so I can afford the large sized Mai Tai! How is a Groundhog supposed to impress a Prairie Dog on these measly billions I have?

The day all the dead groundhogs crawl out of their graves hungry for brains.

Of course there is always the possibility of a zombie apocalypse. I think it is totally likely that Mel saw this in his vision, and died from sheer terror. The irony is he likely meant to prevent the apocalypse, but somehow his death is going to bring it on. Who knows though, maybe it will just be hordes of groundhogs, muskrats, and squirrels, and maybe instead of brains all they will want is nuts. Crazier things have happened. It would be the most frightening thing to happen since The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Or at least since the last presidential election.

Another possible vision would be a nuclear war transpiring because of the whole Ukraine issue. In the end, all humans might die, and animals would mutate and evolve and become the intelligent species on the planet. I asked my dog if she thought that was possible, but she just barked and licked my hands.

Magnetic forces slowing down my brain……

I think the strongest possibility is that Mel saw the future that our corrupt politicians and greedy billionaires are leading us into. Mel saw the enslavement of the masses, the machinations of the media moguls, the dehumanization of everything we value and love. A world where children are harvested for their blood so the vampire overlords can stay young forever. Where corporations program for profit the Artificial Intelligence programs that will run our lives because after all, we are not smart enough. We would just ruin everything we touch. We have given the masses over two centuries to get their act together, and instead all they have done has been to drive up debt, eat glutinous fast food, breed like disgusting rabbits, steal from their neighbors, rape their children, and kill themselves with drugs.

Maybe the overlords have a point.

“Curtis, what in the world is your point? Have you been eating paint chips again?”

No. My point, if I have one, is a groundhog died. And that is sad. According to the following website, Mel lived to be seven. That would be……getting the calculator out….very roughly one hundred sixty three for a human. So we have the Father Abraham of groundhogs. And his last vision was likely some dream of mating with his groundhog love from five years ago, or eating alfalfa sprouts from some kind human that used to scratch him behind the ears when he was young. And that is a better (and more likely) story than all this nightmare crap I’ve been spouting.

I would say this is the typical Tulsa driver, but frankly he drives too well…….

So what am I trying to say? Today, not much. My dog is howling at me to be petted, and I can’t find my copy of Groundhog Day. In the end, why don’t we all just be nice to each other, and maybe someone will give me a positive comment about the groundhog post I made while drinking a couple shot of rum.

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