Interim Film Review - The Good Fight

One of the benefits of chronic insomnia is the ability to watch endless amount of film. That being said, I am able to watch movies I never would have been able to see if I had the standard 16-hour waking life.

I just watched The Good Fight - a film about Americans who formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and went to Spain to fight for the Loyalist cause in the Spanish Civil War. They fought against the Fascist and eventual victor and dictator, Francisco Franco. The Loyalists ended up losing, but what its government achieved during their short period of rule, along with the courage and resourcefulness of their soldiers from every walk of life and every nation, is remarkable.

The film's strength is its reliance, almost solely, on interviews with the American veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Even though there are no major revelations, and frankly, no surprises, this film has a warm quality -- as though your own grandfather was telling his story to you beside a fire... or a poster of Rosie the Riveter.

The one aspect of the film that is important to note is that while there were several women, African-Americans, and African-American women who joined with the brigade, the film does not refer to the fact that this was the first American (para) military unit that was not segregated by sex or gender. The filmmakers could have played this up a bit more, but it seemed they were more interested in the individual stories. Who could blame them? Some of them are fantastic.

There is one interviewee who tells the story of being in the hospital in Spain after being shot in the foot only to be visited by his father who had come all the way from the states to bring him home when he heard about it. After seeing his son and the way in which the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was helping the cause of the legitimately elected Spanish government, his father attempted to join the cause himself, only to be dissuaded from military action and sent back to drum up financial support.

The Good Fight is narrated by Studs Turkel, who until his fairly recent death, was the pre-eminent oral historian of our time. He does a great job. I would suggest reading his book, The Good War, which is his collection of oral histories of World War II.

I recommend The Good Fight, especially if you're unfamiliar with the Spanish Civil War.

H.R. 3590 (The Health Bill) – It Has Been Read, Understood and Can Be Explained by Yours Truly (Part III - Rationing of Care)

Issue 1: Rationing of Care – Public AND Private

We don’t want “Obama-care” to get between us and our doctors when it comes to what care we will receive. I agree. I also don’t want private insurance companies getting between me and my doctor. Do you?

I didn’t think so. I certainly didn’t want my insurance company to take its time mulling over its approval of the MRI my doctor prescribed when he found three tumors in my tibia and patella.

Luckily, it only took them 10 business days to approve it.

Section 2711 clearly states that there will be no lifetime limits or unreasonable annual limits of the dollar value of any participant or beneficiary of an insurance plan – ANY insurance plan.

This means that there would be no cause for my insurance company to do a cost-benefit analysis of the MRI of my three bone tumors. That should also save me some time. Thank you, H.R. 3590!

H.R. 3590 (The Health Bill) – It Has Been Read, Understood and Can Be Explained by Yours Truly (Part II) - Why I Read the Bill

As for reading the bill, it had never occurred to me until “Read the Bill!” became a rallying cry for conservative “protesters.”

I think my decision to read it was based on dare. For a nebbishy Jew who can legitimately be accused of being afraid of his own shadow, I am awfully daring. I have bungee-jumped, climbed big rocks, and ran with the bulls in Pamplona (July 13, 1996). If I had the spare cash, I’d be happy to jump out of a plane or get a tattoo. I don’t know why. Sometimes all it takes is an “I dare you,” and I’m in.

Maybe I’m prejudiced, but when I see a few thousand people in front of the Capitol with Nazi-themed posters, I’m going to assume that even though they’re yelling “Read the Bill!” they probably have not read the bill themselves. Also, any representative on the Hill will tell you that most of them never read the bills themselves either.

Also, when the Wall Street Journal published an article dedicated to decrying the volume of the bill, and elected representatives use the size of the bill, histrionically, to entertain the developmentally disabled, I felt that I was dared to read it.

The Length (Oy Gevalt!)
It’s 2074 pages! My Lord. I’ve never read anything that long.

You see, I am a reader. I’ve read War and Peace (1455 pages), Don Quixote (985 pages), The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1252 pages), Le Morte d’Arthur (935 pages), and the Lord of the Rings (1008 pages). So I am no stranger to reading, although some of these books I read years ago… when ephedrine was over-the-counter… but still…

So I found the bill online. It was easy enough. In fact, even Senator Ensign (R-Nevada) has a link to it on his web site. This gesture makes me want to forgive him for having an affair with his campaign advisor's wife and then having his parents pay them off.

OK, enough of that. Here it is.

As you can see, it’s pretty fucking big. But I started “leafing” through it and I found something odd. Like any Shakespearean play, every line of a bill is numbered. This allows readers to cite specific pages and line numbers in their arguments/research.

The left margin spans 2 inches to the line number and the vast majority of the text has a combined left margin of 3.25 inches. A piece of paper has 8 inches of horizontal length.

Immediately, almost half of the page is blank. Oh, and every page has a 1.75 inch right margin. That means, for all intents and purposes, more than 62% of the horizontal space of each page is blank.

Oh and I forgot to say that the font is at least 14 pt. Oh, and it’s double-spaced.

It reminds me from when I was in Junior High and I needed to stretch a two-page paper into a five-page paper. I would manipulate the margins and the font so that there would be about four words per page. A lot of us did. It was the advent of the age of word processors and we milked it for all it was worth. Eventually, our teachers caught on and started to give us assignments based on word number.

This gave me an idea. I took a random ten pages from my dusty old copy of War and Peace. Of those ten pages I counted an average of 456 words per page. Then I took a random ten pages of H.R. 3590 and found that there was an average of 143 words per page. Hmmm. So, generally (and generously) I’ll say that each page of the bill is about a third of what a real book is. So, let’s re-evaluate the size, generously again, at about 700 pages.

700 pages isn’t so bad, is it? Let's Get Started...

H.R. 3590 (The Health Bill) – It Has Been Read, Understood and Can Be Explained by Yours Truly (Part I)

I hadn’t read the health bill (H.R. 3590). I had listened to Senators and Congressmen whose opinions I trust. I saw how the insurance industry mobilized its employees and paid stooges to scream and yell at the top of their lungs. I make my political judgments that way. I don’t usually read the actual documents (as I have a job) but I’ll take a look at who cheers it and who boos it, and based upon my general affinity/hatred of the parties involved, I’ll make a decision.

Sure it’s simplistic, but that’s one more degree of judgment than most of us utilize when it comes to politics. Not all of us have the time or inclination to analyze, in any way, aspects of politics. Most of us are happy to listen to a Glenn Beck, O’Reilly, Limbaugh or Olbermann. I went a little farther. There were several sources I visited to help me make my evaluation of the push for a public health insurance program. I felt the best opinions I could get were from the health professionals themselves...

The New England Journal of Medicine

The National Medical Association

The American Nurses Association

… and of course, the people who, in general, need health care the most...

American Association for Retired Persons

… and the major unions who already worked hard to negotiate their "Cadillac plans..."

United Auto Workers

AFL-CIO

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)

… and, unapologetically, the liberals...

The Center for American Progress

So, I support it. Now, to Read it!

ACTION PLAN FOR THE NEW ERA OF RESPONSIBILITY

It has been in vogue for sometime to blame the poor for lacking the “Protestant Work Ethic,” and labeling them as stupid or lazy. How long has this been the viewpoint? How about forever. Though Charles Dickens, a fairly good social commentator, exposed the hypocritical nature of this viewpoint (i.e., A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, etc.), it never actually caught on.

Frankly, I’m sick of it. So I’ve decided to point the finger the other way.

The Ill Will and Everything Else Inc.
New Era of Personal Responsibility

I’ve decided that “personal responsibility” should be the hallmark of my future rise to power. Yes, that’s right, I will be Emperor one day, and this is what I intend to do to restore personal responsibility to our culture… and hopefully this will encourage the right people to take responsibility for themselves.

1. The elimination of legal rights for Corporations

Would you ever dare to poison the water or kill people with cigarettes and asbestos if you weren’t protected by a legal clause that can only fine you and not imprison you? Maybe.

Corporations generally make their employees faceless and non-complicit in their actions and unless they end up getting called before Congress, they will never be prosecuted, nor pointed out for the ridicule they deserve. Their companies will be sued and fined, but they can always change their names, and their employees can just move along to other high-powered jobs and do it again, just like a child-molesting priest.

Well, now they will be criminally culpable, so think twice before you sell a product that causes the destruction of people and institutions. Weigh the consequences again now that the rules have changed and ask yourselves whether that private jet will be worth getting drawn and quartered.

2. Destruction of Sub-Prime Mortgage Lending Institutions and the Summary Execution of their Executives, Lenders, Employees and Independent Brokers.

Why do I have to pay taxes for people who defaulted on mortgages they could never afford?

Well, I couldn’t agree more.

It’s popular to blame people who used sub-prime mortgages to purchase their homes, only to lose them later when they lost their jobs or their rates jumped. Who couldn’t have seen this coming?

Well, I could. So could a lot of other people, including the rat bastards who sold them. You see, if you tell people that yes, even they can own a home, and that it is a great investment, and yes, they can afford it, then they will buy it. Nobody looks to purchase a house they will lose in two years, douchebag.

You will all be burned at the stake. The flames, of course, will be ignited and stoked by of all the Salesman of the Month plaques you people earned.

If you hard-sell a product, you’re more complicit than the person who buys it, which leads us to the next step of my action plan…

3. Destruction of all fast-food restaurants, and the summary execution of all employees at their respective Corporate Headquarters and Franchisees... but not their store employees.

Why should I have to pay taxes to pay for people who ate their way into obesity, heart disease and Type II Diabetes?

Well, I couldn’t agree more.

There is a saying, “Fifty million Elvis fans can’t be wrong.”

Who doesn’t love a Whopper? They’re great. That’s why they’re popular. McDonald’s serves over 80 billon people. Their fries are incredible. The question is, do you blame hundreds of millions of people for buying them, or do you blame the handful of corporations who sell them?

Hey, if the Big Mac didn’t exist, nobody would buy it. But it does, so everybody is fat and has Type II Diabetes.

Executives and Franchisees, prepare to be eviscerated and disemboweled. Every time I eat a Whopper, that’s what I feel like afterward, and now you will feel the same. Your last task before you die will be to watch hundreds of hours of footage of the destruction of your various establishments throughout the country. Like your fries, the land you purchased for your franchises will be salted so that nothing else may grow there.

4. Prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages to anyone over the age of sixteen.

OK, I don’t expect prohibition to be successful. It doesn’t mean I can’t have it on my action plan. The problem with alcohol is that its side effects tend to bleed over and well, kill other people. Drunken parents drive their kids the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway. Drunk parents beget and abuse children, who then become drunk parents. Drunk people get into fights and kill each other all the time.

Samuel Johnson said, “He who makes himself a beast, gets rid of the pain of being a man.” No-no. We’ll be having none of that now.

The only people we can trust with alcohol are those who are too young to drive, own guns, or parent children. It is only for the children we must keep alcohol. Once you get your driver’s license, you will lose that privilege. If you have a child before you are eligible for a driver’s license, you have bigger problems than alcohol.

Sure, you may ask, what about wine and other alcoholic beverages that are essential to religious rites and rituals?

This leads us to the next and last step of our action plan…

5. Prohibition of Religion

Sure, there are the usual arguments that more wars have been fought and more blood spilt over religion than any other cause. Sure, there have been thousands of years of religious hegemony and persecution. Sure, most bigotry is justified by pious villains who interpret passages from a poorly conceived, antiquated document that is so unpopular that its followers have taken to planting it in hotel rooms in the event someone might mistake it for the local phone book and make off with it.

These are not the reasons God must die. Religion must be prohibited because devotion to God by its very nature, means letting go and placing yourself entirely in God’s hands. This is the very opposite of personal responsibility. George Bush would be personally responsible for two illegitimate wars… if God didn’t tell him he needed to do it.

And by the way, if you’re looking for absolution from someone who is in no way a participant in your “sin,” you’re looking in the wrong place. Personal responsibility is supposed to be personal.

If you don't agree with me, let me hear it or kill yourself and let me read about it. Peace.

Will No One Rid Me of This Turbulent Priest?

I love Richard Burton.

Tonight, I spilled some beer on my floor to commemorate what could have been his 84^th birthday. As I was wondering why I spilled it on my own floor and not someone else’s (or perhaps out the window), I tried to figure out what my favorite Richard Burton movie is. The funny thing is, I love him more for the movies he hated doing.

Go ahead and tell me that you didn’t love him in Exorcist 2: The Heretic. Scream at me that he was awful in Alexander the Great. Sure, he was fabulous in Equus, but did you see him in his spectacular performance as John Molnar in The Medusa Touch? Of course you didn’t. Nobody did. Just me and the a-holes who made it.

Actually, I met the screenwriter way back when I was a college student. I can’t remember his name but he was lecturing about his Oscar-winning screenplay for Ghandi. From The Medusa Touch to Ghandi in five years… Only in America.

My favorite film of Burton’s was Becket. Becket told the story of Henry II (played by Peter O’Toole) and his best friend, Sir Thomas Becket (Burton). What a story…

Becket was the Lord Chancellor and Henry’s best friend. He is also said to have invented the fork… something that still confounded my maternal step-grandmother centuries later. When the Archbishop of Canterbury died, Henry II took the opportunity to install his trusted friend as the new Archbishop. Becket was agnostic. Can you see where this is going?

Becket ended up taking his new job very, very seriously. Agnostic no more, he bought himself fur underwear – underwear he never took off. That’s right… NEVER. He was self-flagellating by flatulating. Seriously, if I go more than a day without changing my 100% cotton boxers, I break out in a rash. Imagine what that was like for Becket. It was said that when he died and they removed his clothing there were all sorts of insects crawling in and out of the underwear and feeding off of his flesh. Yikes.

Anyway, while it usually takes going to prison to find Jesus, it is definitely much rarer to find Him after being appointed to the second most important position in England. Perhaps this was why Henry II was beside himself with Becket’s continual refusal to hand over control of the Church to him. He saw it as an utter and perpetual betrayal of his lifelong friendship and sponsorship. The rift widened and Henry II, a big drinker, started getting loud about it around court. One night, during a particularly angry, wine-induced tirade with a bunch of drunken knights, Henry screamed, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

A drunken warrior king, in front of a gaggle of loyal, drunk knights yells, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” It wasn’t long before knights had invaded the cathedral at Canterbury and murdered Thomas Becket on the steps to the altar. When Henry woke up the next morning to find out that he had inadvertently ordered the death of his best friend, he was heartbroken.

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Bill O’Reilly said it until one of his psychotic followers shot and killed abortion provider Dr. George Tiller in his church.

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Psychotic Congresswoman Michele Bachmann rants about the (now) evil federal government and invents wonderful stories about FEMA concentration camps and how the Census is designed to control you. In Kentucky, an old man who worked part-time as a Census taker was taken out into the woods and murdered. Carved into his chest was a single word: FED.

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Savage call President Obama all the names in the book, including “a racist with a deep-seeded hatred of white people,” a “ communist,” a “fascist” and the man who will rob them of their America. Chuck Grassley, Dick Armey and a whole host of insurance companies preach to a mob of people holding signs of the President as a monkey, or with a Hitler moustache. Hell, to a lot of people he’s not even an actual American… He hired a Puerto Rican woman to replace a white, male Supreme Court Justice. Can you believe the nerve of this guy? Weren’t there any other white men he could have hired?

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

How long do you think it will be until all of those unspoken directions are followed? When you have representatives on the Capitol steps urging thousands of angry, disillusioned people to go inside and confront representatives who support government-sponsored health insurance, do you even wonder if even one of them might physically attack someone? When you try to convince millions of people to point their fingers at one man as the reason for all of their problems, how long will it be until someone points something else at him?

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Look, think what you like of his policies, but there needs to be a concerted effort to lower the tenor of anger. It doesn’t take that much encouragement for people to feel uneasy. This type of encouragement to action is more than we’ve ever mounted against any of our country’s enemies. By the way, did we forget that we were at war?

Take it down a notch, people. We don’t need another morning after like Henry II had. Of course, this time that heartbreak won’t last so long. Beck and Limbaugh are on the air every day and they’ll probably just pin it on Pelosi.