Trump vs. Biden, October 22 [2020)

Queens.

“Scranton”.

Hard-scrabble.

Come on, man!

Surprises happen.

Laptop from hell.

Biden is a one-trick pony in a party of well-meaning morons.

No President has ever been hated so much…

…by the establishment.

Ironic.

It took one of their own to bring them to their knees.

And now the establishment has come up with an exceptionally-pathetic excuse for a candidate:

Joe Biden.

Republicans tried to elect a showroom dummy once (recently).

Mitt Romney.

Had the looks.

What could go wrong?

He came off as cold.

Plastic.

And so all the genius, conniving minds of the Democrat Party have gotten behind the person they think can Trojan their specious ideas into the realm of policy.

It is quite obvious.

Joe Biden didn’t get a big enough shot in the ass of ginkgo biloba to really stay in the ring 12 rounds with Trump.

Joe needs to be mainlining that shit by now.

If Joe Biden ate nothing but onions and drank nothing but tea, his brain would still be like a hunk of Swiss cheese.

Trump, fresh off recovering from the plague of the century (once-in-a-100-years) was cogent and articulate.

Look around.

If every media outlet, every source of information, every sports star, every celebrity is against Trump, what does that make Trump?

Anti-establishment.

So, go ahead.

Vote for Joe.

Joe couldn’t last five minutes playing Tropico (much less five minutes actually running the USA).

And he will not be running the USA (if elected).

Swiss-cheese-brain Biden has actually bought and believed the syrupy propaganda of his own party.

Which makes sense.

Because his brain has become (and will rapidly accelerate towards being) childlike.

Which doesn’t excuse Biden of being a nakedly-corrupt politician par excellence.

Joe would bring the old gang back together.

Hillary would have a chance to get her pay-to-play Clinton Foundation back up and running.

Hell, why not make her Secretary of State again?

She will be emboldened to shred every law because, even though she got caught, she paid no price (except for the nosedive in Clinton Foundation contributions).

You would have “bonesmen” like Austan Goolsbee.

[a pale imitation of an actually-competent individual (Mnuchin)]

Hell, bring ’em all back.

Comey at FBI.

Brennan at CIA.

Lynch on the Supreme Court.

Bring back Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder.

Put Bernie’s great economic theories to work at the Department of Labor.

[another guy who would crap out at Tropico within minutes]

Because it’s all one big gang.

It’s all one big, compromised gang.

And it’s all about making money OFF the people (rather than making money FOR the people).

Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Maxine Waters…

“Liberals”.

Limousine liberals (as they say).

Their respective personal worth always MAGICALLY balloons in their years of “service” to the USA.

It doesn’t take a genius to make money that way.

It takes a scumbag.

Trump didn’t need the money.

Hell, he gives away his Presidential salary checks.

But there is something.

He is GOOD AT MAKING MONEY.

So, yeah…

He didn’t fight in Vietnam.

[it’s also quite likely he never disparaged the military]

“Anonymous sources”…

Joe Biden disparaged the military ON TAPE, but never a hardball question about that:

[6’10” —> “clap for that, you stupid bastards”]

on tape.

Joe Biden has a problem with being caught on tape.

Here bragging about getting a Ukrainian prosecutor fired (while using American taxpayer dollars as leverage).  Hmmm, why would he want a UKRAINIAN prosecutor (?!?) fired?  Why would he brag about it?  What was this prosecutor investigating?  Why would we interfere in the judicial system of the Ukraine (by way of Joe Biden)?  Seems like his son Hunter had some dealings in Ukraine.  Hmmm…  Could it be, that this prosecutor was investigating his son Hunter???

But Joe Biden also has, how can I put this tactfully, other “problems” on tape.  It’s not just the hair of women he is sniffing:

Wouldn’t be so bad (?) if it was an isolated incident.  Maybe it was taken out of context?

You don’t need to watch all 17 minutes of the above clip to get the gist.  Joe Biden takes liberties with children…knowingly…on C-SPAN, etc.  What does he do behind closed doors?  The footage we’ve seen is shocking enough.

Joe Biden makes women and children (particularly Chris Coons’ daughter) feel uncomfortable.  You can see it in the body language.  Biden whispers in their ears.  And the young Coons daughter pulls away from the kiss.  Cre-epy!

But in this debate (the final of the 2020 season), Donald Trump made Joe Biden feel uncomfortable…especially when Trump brought up the “laptop from hell”.  You could see it in Joe’s body language.  

“It’s all lies,” said Joe repeatedly throughout the two debates.

Pull his string:  “It’s all lies.”

“Come on, man!”

Sometimes it’s funny.

Like the moronic George W. Bush who was part and parcel of the cabal that brought down the Twin Towers.

Bush was funny.

But scary.

Because he was so dumb.

But Joe Biden is not so completely ravaged by senile dementia not to feel the fear at even the mention of “the laptop from hell”.

But let’s hit some key points.

Joe Biden cannot consistently get his train of thought from point A to point B.  Witness this gem:

“And I don’t look at this in terms of the way he does, blue states and red states. They’re all the United States. And look at the states that are having such a spike in the coronavirus. They’re the red states, they’re the states in the Midwest, they’re the states in the upper Midwest. “

Trump knows his opponent is mentally-compromised.

But Trump also knows that his opponent is a textbook corrupt politician:

“Joe, you have raised a lot of money, tremendous amounts of money. And every time you raise money deals are made, Joe. I could raise so much more money. As President, and as somebody that knows most of those people, I could call the heads of Wall Street, the heads of every company in America. I would blow away every record. But I don’t want to do that because it puts me in a bad position.

Like with the kids, Joe just couldn’t help himself (even against the obvious preparation where his advisors explicitly told him to, under no circumstances, broach this topic) #LaptopFromHell:

“His own National Security Advisor told him that what is happening with his buddy… Well, I shouldn’t… Well, I will. His buddy Rudy Giuliani. He’s being used as a Russian pawn.”

Joe fucked up.  As Trump explains:

“Well, let me respond to the first part, as Joe answered. Joe got $3.5 million from Russia and it came through Putin, because he was very friendly with the former mayor of Moscow and it was the mayor of Moscow’s wife. And you got $3.5 million. Your family got $3.5 million. And someday you’re going to have to explain, why did you get three and a half? I never got any money from Russia. I don’t get money from Russia.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/23/hunter-biden-took-3-5-million-from-ex-moscow-mayors-wife/

#RosemontSeneca.

More booms:

“But now, with what came out today, it’s even worse. All of the emails, the emails, the horrible emails of the kind of money that you were raking in, you and your family. And Joe, you were vice-president when some of this was happening, and it should have never happened. And I think you owe an explanation to the American people. Why is it, somebody just had a news conference a little while ago who was essentially supposed to work with you and your family, but what he said was damning. And regardless of me, I think you have to clean it up and talk to the American people. Maybe you can do it right now.”

https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/

Big tech scrambled to censor this ^ story.

But the follow-up story was far more damning:

https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/emails-reveal-how-hunter-biden-tried-to-cash-in-big-with-chinese-firm/

Big boom:

“…I don’t make money from China. You do. I don’t make money from Ukraine. You do. I don’t make money from Russia. You made $3.5 million, Joe, and your son gave you, they even have a statement that we have to give 10% to the big man. You’re the big man, I think. I don’t know, maybe you’re not, but you’re the big man, I think.”

#TheBigGuy.

AKA #TheBigMan.

Truth:

“I was put through a phony witch hunt for three years. It started before I even got elected. They spied of my campaign. No president should ever have to go through what I went through. Let me just say this, Mueller and 18 angry Democrats and FBI agents all over the place spent $48 million. They went through everything I had, including my tax returns, and they found absolutely no collusion and nothing wrong. $48 million. I guarantee you, if I spent $1 million on you, Joe, I could find plenty wrong because the kind of things that you’ve done and the kind of monies that your family has taken, I mean, your brother made money in Iraq…millions of dollars. Your other brother made a fortune, and it’s all through you, Joe. And they say you get some of it. And you do live very well, you have houses all over the place. You live very well.”

Fire when ready:

“His son didn’t have a job for a long time, was, sadly, no longer in the military service, I won’t get into that, and he didn’t have a job. As soon as he became vice-president, Burisma, not the best reputation in the world, I hear they paid him $183,000 a month, listen to this, $183,000, and they gave him a $3 million upfront payment, and he had no energy experience. That’s 100% dishonest.”

Trump did this same thing to Hillary.

Blew holes in her metaphorical hull.

Torpedoes.

“He is the vice-president of the United States and his son, his brother, and his other brother are getting rich. They’re like a vacuum cleaner. They’re sucking up money…”

Incoming:

“His son walked out with a billion and a half dollars from China to…after spending 10 minutes in office and being in Air Force Two. Number one. Number two, there’s a very strong email talking about your family wanting to make $10 million a year for introductions.”

Joe Biden does not understand international finance.

He does not understand the implications of Chinese currency devaluations.

He doesn’t even understand the mechanism.

Joe Biden is a (renovated) showroom dummy:

“My response is, look, there’s a reason why he’s bringing up all this malarkey. There’s a reason for it. He doesn’t want to talk about the substantive issues. It’s not about his family and my family. It’s about your family, and your family’s hurting badly. If you’re a middle-class family, you’re getting hurt badly right now. You’re sitting at the kitchen table this morning deciding, ‘Well, we can’t get new tires. They’re bald, because we have to wait another month or so.’ Or, ‘Are we going to be able to pay the mortgage?’ Or, ‘Who’s going to tell her she can’t go back to community college?’ They’re the decisions you’re making, and the middle-class families like I grew up in Scranton and Claymont, they’re in trouble. We should be talking about your families, but that’s the last thing he wants to talk about.”

Bill Clinton was persuasive when he was peddling this same shit.

Joe Biden isn’t.

And Trump calls it out:

“That is a typical statement.

[…]

That’s a typical political statement. Let’s get off this China thing, and then he looks, ‘The family around the table, everything.’ Just a typical politician when I see that. I’m not a typical politician.

[…]

That’s why I got elected. Let’s get off the subject of China. Let’s talk about sitting around the table. Come on, Joe. You could do better.”

Joe Biden’s message is hackneyed.

His delivery is maudlin.

His economic “plan” is planned economy.

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

Lame.

Been tried.

Doesn’t work.

“Inefficient” would be too kind a descriptor.

It’s just not fair.

Joe Biden only has one “dollar word” left in his intellectual quiver:

“The public option is an option that says that if you in fact do not have the wherewithal, if you qualify for Medicaid and you do not have the wherewithal in your state to get Medicaid, you automatically are enrolled, providing competition for insurance companies.”

Twice in the same sentence?!?

Come on, man!!

Joe’s (and the Democrats’) answer for everything is “bailout”…as Trump begins to delineate:

“The bill that was passed in the House was a bailout of badly run, high crime, Democrat, all run by Democrat cities and states. It was a way of getting a lot of money, billions and billions of dollars, to these guys. It was also a way of getting a lot of money from our people’s pockets to people that come into our country illegally. We were going to take care of everything for them. And I’d love to do that. I’d love to help them. But what that does, everybody all over the world will start pouring into our country. We can’t do it. This was a way of taking care of them. This was a way of spending on things that had nothing to do with COVID, as per your question. But it was really a big bailout for badly run Democrat cities and states.”

Joe wants a planned economy (like Uncle Joe Stalin had).  Price ceilings.  Price floors.  Arbitrary values for labor (a major factor in production).  It doesn’t work.

Trump defeats this backwards economic chestnut in one sentence:

“How are you helping your small businesses when you’re forcing wages?”

Watch the price of eggs.

That’s how you will see the free market (as opposed to a planned economy) assert itself.

Supply and demand.

As simple as that.

Don’t toy with it.

Don’t stifle it.

Let it create value.

For everyone.

It may be trite, but “a rising tide lifts all ships” (as it is said).

The stock market is equivalent to the vital signs of a medical patient.

Joe may or may not understand that.

Again, he seems to have bought the “black propaganda” (total disinformation) of his own party.

What little brain Joe has left has been thoroughly washed of all real-world, economic logic.

As good as Kristen Welker was (and she was quite good [compared to the atrociously-partisan Chris Wallace]), she is still part of a profession that, when it comes to Democrat interviewees, almost always shirks its duty:

“Who built the cages? I’d love you to ask him that. Who built the cages, Joe?”

The U.S. immigration system is broken (on purpose).  And Joe should know that.  But he still blithely opines otherwise.  Trump truth:

“And then you say they come back. Less than 1% of the people come back. We have to send ICE out and Border Patrol out to find them. We would say, ‘Come back in two years, three years. We’re going to give you a court case. You did Perry Mason. We’re going to give you a court case.’ When you say they come back, they don’t come back, Joe. They never come back. Only the really… I hate to say this, but those with the lowest IQ, they might come back, but there are very, very few.”

Sure.

Trump is rough around the edges.

But he is no bullshit.

And there are a few opinion leaders (Johnny Rotten) who understand and appreciate this.

Joe steps in it again:

“My daughter is a social worker and she’s written a lot about this. She has her graduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania in social work.”

This daughter?

https://www.infowars.com/posts/report-diary-of-joe-bidens-daughter-alleges-years-of-sexual-molestation/

Doesn’t take a fucking genius to see that Sleepy Joe is actually Creepy Joe.

MOAB:

“You know Joe, I ran because of you. I ran because of Barack Obama, because you did a poor job. If I thought you did a good job, I would’ve never run. I would’ve never run. I ran because of you. I’m looking at you now, you’re a politician, I ran because of you.”

And again (for good measure):

“If this stuff is true about Russia, Ukraine, China, other countries, Iraq. If this is true, then he’s a corrupt politician. So don’t give me the stuff about how you’re this innocent baby. Joe, they’re calling you a corrupt politician…They’re calling it the laptop from hell.”

Emphasis mine.

No cap:

“But, why didn’t he get it done? See, it’s all talk, no action with these politicians, why didn’t he get it? ‘That’s what I’m going to do when I become president.’ You were vice president along with Obama as your president, your leader, for eight years, why didn’t you get it done? You had eight years to get it done, now you’re saying you’re going to get it done because you’re all talking and no action, Joe.”

#AllTalkNoAction

Biden:  “I don’t know where he comes from.  I don’t know where he comes up with these numbers.”

Trump:  “Queens.”

-PD

 

Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang [2014)

I bet you thought I stopped writing about film, right?

🙂

Me too.

Sometimes.

I think…

“Am I still a film critic?”

With all this Trump this and Trump that.

With these tableaux.

This lazy poetry.

But I am back with an actual film.

And it is a masterpiece.

But I don’t know what to call it!!!

It’s a Chinese film.

Sort of.

But not really.

Because it’s by a Brazilian film director.

But not just any Brazilian film director.

Someday I will get around to reviewing one of the best exemplars of naïveté ever made.

Yes, one of the best FILMS ever made.

Central do Brasil.

Central Station.

A formative episode in my filmic life.

But back to this Chinese film directed by a Brazilian.

I didn’t even get to his name yet 🙂

Walter Salles!

Yes…two masterpieces are enough to make an auteur!!

But we can’t use the Chinese title here.

For the film.

Under consideration.

Because that would be disingenuous (and we will get to Trump).

[Or we will try.]

{so much…stuff…in the world}

Let’s paint the picture…

Three Gorges…no.

We must wait.

Central Station was a fiction film.

A beautiful masterpiece which stretches even up into the sertão.

But Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang is a documentary…about a guy from Fenyang…named Jia Zhangke.

Messrs. Baggini and Fosl (Julian and Peter) would call that a “spectacularly uninformative sentence”.

And Kant, the less-colorful–less-candid “analytic proposition”.

But we hit an impasse.

The film I am reviewing is so little-known (apparently) that it doesn’t have a Wikipedia page.

Worse, it has a strange, butchered title on iMDB.

There it is called Jia Zhang-ke by Walter Salles.

Hmmm…

I must admit:  it appears some people in marketing over at Kino Lorber are dicking around.

But we press on…

Just who the fuck is Jia Zhangke?  And why should you care about him?

Well, first:  he’s a film director.

And second:  he’s as good as Jean-Luc Godard.

Did I just say that???

Yes.

I just put someone on an equal level with my favorite director of all time.

What’s more, a Chinese guy you’ve probably never heard of.

Of whom.

And what about this Fenyang business?

Well, let’s get out our maps.

First, we must find Shaanxi Province.

Northern China.

The capital is Xi’an.

But we must get to the more obscure.

Fenyang.

Home of our subject auteur:  Jia Zhangke.

So we don’t exactly know the title…here to there…from this platform to the next.

But we will say this.

If you are in the U.S., this film is currently streaming on Netflix under the title Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang.

Or something like that.

This is the confusion of a lack of standardization.

Where’s ISO when you need them…or Zamenhof!

Ok…so why should you watch a 105 minute documentary about a filmmaker of whom you have likely never heard?

Because Walter Salles compels you.

He says, “Watch my story…  Pay attention to this little self-deprecating Chinese man.  He’s a cinematic genius.”

Wouldn’t it be great if all artisans and artists helped each other out in such a way?

A filmmaker, age 57, decides to make a film about another filmmaker, age 46.

Actually, that is quite an honor.

That an older filmmaker would help in the career of the younger one.

So we heartily praise Salles for his mise-en-scène as well as his morals.

But then we hit another impasse.

Because words cannot express the brilliance of Jia Zhangke’s grasp on cinematic language.

And so, why should you watch this film?  I ask again.

Because it gives you an introduction (not dumbed down in any way) to the works of a contemporary film artist who is leading the cinematic medium into this new century.

Likewise, it gives you an introduction to Chinese film at the same time.

These aren’t kung fu flicks (for the most part).

These are art films.

Similar to Breathless

Born of the French New Wave.

But also born of Raj Kapoor.

Indeed, as a young boy…Jia Zhangke remembered an early film which extolled thieves.  And it was this Indian film shown in China.  And the Chinese kids remembered the melismatic melodies for decades…to rip off a shred and a few threads of a melody which bound them as enfants terribles.

Jia Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang is a bit like Cinema Paradiso.

The big director returns home.

And there’s a sadness.

Maybe you can see your childhood home.

And hit the wall one more time.

You can imagine the family bed and the father’s desk was there.

And the books on shelves along here.

So many books.

That there is a sadness of being from Fenyang.

I feel it being from San Antonio.

And Jia Zhangke, all throughout this film, ideates thoughts which have now and then wisped in and out of my dreams.

Jia is very calm.  Thoughtful.  Serene.

A true artist.

And as he talks about the process of creation, I find him to be an exceptionally dedicated artist.

We hear about Xiao Wu (1997).

Pickpocket.  Starring Wang Hongwei.

I mean, this bloke…Wang…  His clothes hang on him in almost a magical way.

He’s a good-for-nothing bum in the Chaplin mold, but still puffing away like Belmondo in Breathless.

But Jia was right.

It’s the gait.

The way Wang Hongwei walks.

Body language.

Brilliant!

And the shots we see of Platform are really moving.

It’s like being from a place like Kiruna, Sweden.

Gotta get there by train.

Up past the Arctic Circle.

And the kids…they don’t have a lot of entertainment.

Maybe even the sight of a train.

But in China…………….far more vast.

These remote places.

Like the Three Gorges area where Jia made Dong and also Still Life.

But the joke’s on me.

Because the whole world knows Jia Zhangke.

The whole world of cinema.

And me, with my insular approach, not so much.

Because Jia won the Palme d’Or in both…wait.

We have the wrong envelope.

Ok…so maybe he’s not that well know.

His films have been screened in competition at Cannes, but no hardware yet.

With the exception of his Golden Lion from Venice.

But none of that matters.

What matters is that he’s making great films.

What matters is that he has the potential to best us all.

This was a very moving film for me.

Because it speaks to the obstacles of life.

Of the unhappiness.

Of the solitude which must be for creations to ferment properly.

To mix metaphors, we need the darkness in which to screen our masterpieces of light.

We cannot screen them in a glass house…at 2:30 p.m.

Finally, this film will give you invaluable insights into the recent history and current state of China.

All the people on Weibo (like Twitter).

The market system which has been kicking ass since the 1990s.

And crucial periods such as 1976-1989.

The restructuring period right after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

WE NOW JOIN PAULY DEATHWISH NEWS NETWORK…IN PROGRESS: “…

Xi Jinping.  His father purged in 1963.  His father jailed in 1968.  Xi was sent without his father to work in Shaanxi Province in 1969.  [The remote province from which film director Jia Zhangke hails.]

This was a time of immense violence in China.  Being purged.  Being jailed.  Being sent to the countryside to work and be re-educated.  All of this was suffused with violence.

So when President Xi got the message from President Trump himself that the U.S. had just launched 60 Tomahawk missiles into Syria minutes earlier, President Xi was met with the shock of surrealism…a perfect steak…beautiful ladies…the glitz and glamour of Mar-a-Lago…and the throat punch of an actual tiger.  No paper.

“Get North Korea in line, and fast!”  Would have been the message.

So that, in these times, to truly appreciate that which is unfolding around us, we need directors like Jia Zhangke.

These are our new philosophers.  Our new poets.

Thinking about social media.

Fooling around with it.

Inventing new artistic forms.

And finding new types of loneliness.

And desperation.

Jia came from a very poor area.

He loved his family very much.

The Chinese don’t like violence.

We Americans don’t like violence.

See this film.

Then get back to me on Dereliction of Duty 🙂

-PD