Ever hear of anyone being called, ‘The Inventor of Hollywood’, I think not, the title sounds like it might have referenced someone who may have found and named a piece of real estate, well, the title was bestowed on an American film director. This inventor won and deserved the esteemed honor the hard way, he earned it, as he pioneered modern film techniques that before him was never employed in the production of film, overall his characteristic reputation became tarnished in later years by his public views that was reflected in his films of and in the times in which he lived. Art for art sake has become blind as an achievement if one is found to have been a wife beater, then all talk and honors of professional work is banned from display never to be under consideration for anything but disgust.

The German autobahn was conceived in the 1920’s during the Weimer Republic but construction was slow, Adolf Hitler enthusiastically moved parts the project along, is often given credited for its almost completion by 1936, falsely I may add, it is mentioned here and elsewhere when it is pointed out its more sinister use as a military transport. But I digress, from The Inventor of Hollywood, old Hollywood, the director of the first ‘The Birth of Nation’, (1915), David Llewelyn Wark Griffith…

 

On 28 August 2016, eighty-three-year-old Charles Osgood Wood, III, announced his retirement from the popular CBS Sunday Morning program that I used to watch regularly before the hard to see on-screen CBS logo was replaced by the yellow sun which was a distraction for me, having grown up in a logo free era of clean screens, by comparison my son growing up, most television screens seem to have always had one. It’s ironic that when Osgood took over the hosting of CBS Sunday Morning he displayed more gray hair then he currently does now some twenty-two years later. It’s a testament of the times in which we live when ones worth and effectiveness is based on the color of one’s hair, Osgood is just as valuable with the gray then, though it was actually salt and pepper, as is his tinted hair is now. It’s significant to note that his radio broadcasts will continue, Osgood Files, where marketers cannot see him.

On another front, fifty-nine-year-old Michael Jay Feinstein, the music revivalist, has been seen providing intros to movies on Turner Classic Movies cable channel who is unrecognizable which is unsuitable for his age in his dark dye head of hair, confirming the message, any message is better pitched with youth hair no matter the age of the pitcher, women of The View take note, with twenty years of wigs and hair dye in celebration and still going strong…

 

‘You smell like you have been out on a Safari, yes I know, we have not had a shower or bathed for five days’.

Some were horrified by pictures of the often rich and well off with their kill, the result of their big game hunt, not for food but for pure bragging rights and the killing, the show casing of the magnificence of an animal bagged. The biggest, largest antlers or horns, tusks, the most threating of teeth and muscle the better, the width and girth of a mouse is nothing to boast about or hang on a wall. The hardship of hunting for food, hide, skins for clothing, bone for tools, even feathers for decoration, can be in some small degree understood, as was the case with early Native Americans, after a hunt, one would be hard pressed to be able tell the killing field from any other part of the earth. These modern day hunters experience none of the hardship of old, as they travel about, on into the bush in air conditioned vehicles many times with waste conveniences in one or two of them, never having to dig a hole even to build a fire, roughing it is not part of the chore, unless maybe sleeping outside in a sleeping bag on the ground is considered roughing it, no wait, sleeping in a transport or just out from a lodge on a day trip into the wild would be more like it. If one these modern day hunters had to undergo just a minimum of any of the discomfort, divorced from their everyday life, of a true hunt, I wager not many of them would be so willing do so.

 

As a news junkie I like to DVR for play back up to ten or more of a weekly political panel discussion the purpose of which is to observe the dialogue that I know what they do not, the future. For this post I chose PBS’s Washington Week, (In Review), under discussion that week, a mass shooting, it was not until after about four panelists had spoken of that week’s events before it was clear which mass shooting was being discussed, since they all start out having the same elements up to its actually being named and its uniqueness reveled, under discussion that week, the 2016 Orlando night club shooting, as for its uniqueness it was labeled a terrorist/ hate crime attack, hate crime because the night club was a known gay club otherwise it would have been labeled a simple terrorist attack, as if any terrorist attack can be called simple, but there have been so many mass shootings that they have become simple as in garden-variety…

 

If you were a female television personality in the 1980’s or 90’s your ‘brand’ was/is how you looked, new and improved, not easily applied to your label, a male television personality, not so much. I saw one of those pictorial expose’, displaying many ‘then and now’ photos, which must be horrific for anyone brought up in this current vanity culture of ‘amour propre’. Few child actors are able to transform into adult roles, some do quite successfully, however, it’s those pretty female twenty somethings that experience a hardship the worse, some never recover, from being once cast as a teen, then the mother, and most injuries of all the grandmother. An actress cast as a television character in her thirties playing a character in her thirties, that’s fine, it’s when the series is in production for years, the producers will not allow the character nor the actress to age in place, to do so would alter the brand, that is when the whole affair becomes phony and stale. To add insult to injury, on a publicity tour of chat shows in her fifties, the pounds of make-up and hair dye to match the character becomes a mockery without shame.

Age appropriate hair and make-up in television hosting is unheard of, as they appear clownish in their Orangutanian Orange hair dye and wigs, is painful to watch as in those poor old souls…

Lee Atwater was an American political strategist, who once worked under political director, Ed Rollins, in service to Ronald Reagan, became primarily known for dirty tricks, his political dirty tricks.

When it comes to the criminal justice system most people when pressed believe in some sort of second chance, but for others there is a line in the sand that must not be crossed, that is when it comes to convicted felons. In Massachusetts a convicted murder was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, in June 1986 this felon was released as part of a weekend work furlough program, proceed to commit two more felons along with other high crimes, was recaptured, resentenced in Maryland to two consecutive life terms plus 85 years, the sentencing judge refused to return this felon to Massachusetts in fear of another work furlough release program.

During the 1988 presidential campaign a television commercial was produced by political consultant Roger Ailes aided by Lee Atwater, depicting a revolving door of felons entering and leaving prison, suggesting crimes committed on day furlough, sleeping nicely at night in prison, thus ending forever any furlough programs from prison by a felon. The aim of this post is to point a ‘I told you so finger’ at how the crime of one felon affected the fate of other felons, as in one immigrant’s crime affects the fate of all other immigrants…

A second chance can begin with a work furlough as a meaningful tool toward rehabilitation, one failure should not mean we just stop trying and throw away the key…How else can man learn to fly or cure cancer…

 

World War One, in which innumerable lives were injured and lost, caused principally by seven co-conspirators, including Gavrilo Princip, who would deliver the fatal gun shots into Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the Duchess Sophie Chotek of Austria, on 28 June 1914, that single act can be referred to as ‘the tar baby’ to war, worldwide war. It has often been stated that history likes to repeat itself, well sort of, as it did on 9 September 2001, when another tar baby presented itself, used in the prologue to another war, be it a limited one, or so it has been called, even though it continues to this day and is a continuum of events as far as we can see far-off into our future, when an assemblage of nations in angry revenge invaded a Muslim nation stirring up the likes of a hornet’s nest that has been buzzing about worldwide ever since…

 

What can be assumed after a phrase is uttered after a sneeze; can the average person tell if an Arabic word has just been spoken? What can seem to be trifle in ever day language, in the commission of a crime can add years to a convention, even more years with proven intent. A militant religious connotation blends intermingling prejudicial links, that have no evidential standing in a court of law and yet a just trial cannot be conducted without it as an underpinning that must not be spoken of. Add words like, beheading, or Islamic State, then justice will surely be denied along with an assured convention no matter how flimsy the investigators accumulated accusatory instruments. If hear-say counts for anything, the hearing of voices may be added as a kind of defense of ones subaverage intellectual ability but by no means a guaranteed guilt fee verdict, unless it can be proven by a panel of experts, court appointed or not, that the individual is significantly subaverage, in such cases a long hospital stay may be ordered and not be excessive. Motivation, motivation, is what drives our thinking down the road to a toxicity where the only cure is revenge which can lead to a wild reaction and a false since of, there you see, we got even…

I guess we have all heard the expression, ‘preaching to the choir’, and if you listen on a regular basis to the same radio stations, watch the same television networks, read the same kind of written material on a web site, do they confirm what you already believe to be true or do they challenge your political thinking on any given issue. If the answer to any of the above is yes, then your thinking is in a pot hole, in urgent need of repair. On the other hand, if it’s no, then you have opened your mind to some free thinking, proving that you are out to explore some of the new ideas available on the internet worldwide. If maybe, then you are indeed ready absorb any and all arguments without regard to the source from which it came, in short begging to be told more.

Today Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Francois Hollande of France, met, as the New York Times proclaimed, to chart a rocky new course after Britain voted to leave the European Union. Also today the BBC reported German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere urged Germans to stockpile food and water for a national emergency to last ten days. Did your news outlet report these two stories or just the one banking on fear, about the storing of food and water…

Most people like to think that anyone that pursues a career in medicine do so because of a kind of calling, to heal the sick, and if you can, pardon the expression, make a killing by so doing, so much the better. Becoming a doctor or nurse a comfortable living is guaranteed, someone will always become ill requiring care. In view of the above someone figured that a killing can also be made by selling health insurance because of the certainty of illness and accidents, to get in on the action, investors started fighting each other to put their money into health insurance companies, a guaranteed pay off. Few ventures have a built in profit outcome without much risk, except when people refuse to get sick or have accidents, or are young in perfectly good health. With the aging baby boomers who are living longer than expected, proving more expensive to take care of in advancing age, a health insurance company can go broke. In the early days of health insurance, people were smoking more, eating fatty foods, driving without seat belts, we all can name a few things that used to injure or kill, today not so much; What’s an insurance company to do? Raise the cost of insurance to keep profits up and care down. A baby born in 2013 can expect to live on average 81.5 years, I don’t think any of the current insurance companies will be around wanting to insure anyone of them unless they can hire a professional assassin to do them in at around fifty, as if a crime syndicate which is how some think of health insurance companies these days…

Immigration

Prison Industry

Future Post…Prescription Drugs