Category: Politics, Religion & Money

Duplicitous, Barr None

I am incredulous at what William Barr said on today’s Meet the Press, to promote his book that I will not read. The entire interview with Chuck Todd is worth watching, but this video starts at the point where I realized I was reflexively shaking my head at Barr’s twisted illogic.

Barr says, “I believe the progressive wing of the Democratc party is dangerous for the United States.” Todd almost seemed to stop himself from asking, “more dangerous than an outgoing President inciting a riot to prevent the Constitutionally-mandated transfer of power?”

re: Floridaze

Some Kind of Heaven is quite different from what I expected. Unlike the NY Times article, it ignores the conservative politics held by most residents of The Villages. After some very brief historical background, with no axes to grind, the documentary is a focused character study of a few residents.

One of them is a homeless con man, pretending to be a resident and searching for “a nice looking lady with some money” to take him in. Another is the long-suffering wife of a self-medicating, mentally ill man. Then there is the lonely widow from Boston who is having trouble finding her place among the fun-loving retirees.

The Villages in Florida may be America’s biggest retirement community, but it is not unique. I am very familiar with Sun City West in Arizona, and while watching the documentary I felt much of it could have been produced there. Here’s a conversation between the director and a couple living in The Villages.

Floridaze

Yesterday a friend was telling me about retirement living in Florida. From my extensive exposure to Arizona, I learned that neither its sun nor the politics are good for me. I’m certain Florida would be the same. Today I read a piece in The New York Times about Florida’s largest retirement community, The Villages, that further cements my feeling about Florida.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/opinion/florida-the-villages.html

The article mentions a documentary the Times co-produced, called Some Kind of Heaven. Being made sufficiently curious by the article, for a couple of bucks I have rented it on Amazon Prime.

Who Rules the Rule Makers?

I’m not as liberal as could be assumed from a lot of what I write here. For example, I think the deadly embrace between Corporate America and Organized Labor contributed to the inflation/unemployment spiral of the 1970’s. It also gave us some of the worst cars ever made.

A liberal theme I have expressed often is my distrust of Wall Street. The Federal Reserve and Treasury have served the needs of investment banks very well, but the big firms aren’t satisfied with borrowing money for free. They want unregulated markets, and the only rules of the game they will follow are the ones they write for themselves.

We are still living with the repercussions of the market collapse in 2008, and there is nothing to prevent it from happening again. In fact, it almost did happen again, as explained in a new documentary, Gaming Wall Street.

The documentary reminded me of a book I read that further explains how the system is rigged, and that markets are free only in the “anything goes” sense. Flash Boys, by Michael Lewis.

Tough Guys

I’ve been watching movies featuring Hollywood tough guy Lawrence Tierney.

Lawrence Tierney
Lawrence Tierney (1919-2002)

Tierney reminds me of a guy I knew in college, named Tom, who was a year ahead of me during my freshman year. Tom and his roommate were in the dorm room directly above myself and my two roommates.

We were a nerdy trio, while Tom was a tough guy majoring in Criminal Justice. He was also a major pain in the butt, taking delight in giving us a hard time. When I’d finally had enough of him harassing us, my roommates literally had to hold me back from taking him on. Tom seemed content that I would dare to challenge him, and from then on we were okay.

Tom is introduced a few moments into this video, and you will hear how he put his Criminal Justice degree to good use.

https://youtu.be/cpnU1tKpTKU?t=4336

One of the last screen appearances of Lawrence Tierney was in Quentin Tarantino’s first movie, Reservoir Dogs.

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