The Word has returned!
Say The Word and you’ll be free.
Category: Politics, Religion & Money
All the Way With LBJ
LBJ, dead 50 years ago today, at only 64 years old. Johnson was president for barely more than five years. Incredible, considering the profound changes that swept through America. There was Viet Nam and Civil Rights riots, but what a time it was to be a kid, with comic books and music!
Methods of Persuasion
The MAGA crazy hats in the House are going to hold the debt limit hostage — and the nation with it — in their mad hatred of FDR and LBJ. That’s what they’re really talking about, isn’t it? Ending Social Security (1935) and Medicare (1965).
The Carrot won’t work with those freakish loonies, so use a Stick. Forget about being a Good Cop, be a Bad Cop. There’s no point in trying the Easy Way, so make it go the Hard Way. And for goodness sake, kick that silly little lying boy scammer Santos, or whatever his name is, out the door.
I wouldn’t be paying attention to this nonsense, except for Social Security and Medicare. I started paying into those programs over fifty years ago, and now I’m collecting my benefits.
The Party of False Equivalencies
A comparison between the newly-discovered classified documents from Biden’s time as VP, with Trump’s classified documents from his time at POTUS.
The two aren’t comparable but, okay, let Republicans insist there’s a double standard, and drop the docs as a basis for prosecuting Trump. Doing that will free Special Council Jack Smith to concentrate on what matters most — Trump’s attempted coup.
Wait, there’s more!
The Justice Department can either stop looking into Trump’s document handling, or it can open an investigation into Biden’s document handling.
Even more! Classified documents were found in Biden’s garage! He’s stupidly handed a free ball to the Republicans, and they’re going to run with it.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/12/politics/joe-biden-classified-documents-counsels-office/index.html
I already considered Biden too old to run for re-election. In my opinion he’s been doing a good job, but he already has a low approval rating, and now his credibility is shot. The Democrats need to find another candidate for 2024, and not VP Harris, who’s been a lot of nothing.
Fusion Power
There were multiple security failures that led to the disaster on 9/11/01. Inadequate passenger screening at Boston’s Logan Airport was one of the last of them, so now we all remove our belts and shoes for the TSA.
Before that fateful day, there was a daily intelligence briefing with a late warning about Osama bin Laden. A warning that George W. Bush chose to minimize, if not ignore.
Much earlier than that, there was an appalling lack of coordination between the FBI and the CIA. So now we have Fusion Centers, as explained last night on the PBS NewsHour.
The Wall of the Street
This must be documentary week. After “The Lie Detector” on American Experience, I binge-watched the four-part Netflix series, MADOFF: The Monster of Wall Street.
The substance is excellent, but the style is annoying. I agree with everything in this review from The Daily Beast.
Berlinger… falls back on his worst habit: staging dramatic recreations that unnecessarily tip the action toward melodrama.
The narrative provided by Diana Henriques in the series has great clarity. So it’s no surprise that her book, The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust, was adapted into a movie.
This pre-existing dramatization of the Madoff story further proves the point made in The Daily Beast review of the Netflix series.
There’s little reason to have actors playing Madoff and his associates in dialogue-free sequences designed to accompany interview snippets.
The DeNiro movie is on HBO Max. I’ll get to it after watching the first part of another new documentary, Frontline’s “Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus.”
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/global-spyware-scandal-exposing-pegasus/