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

 

Ordet [1955)

I’m so scared of life.

So scared of death.

And everything in between.

And so I thank the God of all religions.

My God.  Whom I do not own.  Not mine alone.

Once, an old lady in a corner taught me how to pronounce Søren Kierkegaard.  [Kierka Gourd]

And I delivered a speech of mere seconds…in Denmark…extolling Ordet.

And now we have come full circle.

What was living has died.

And in the spark of a moment is alive again.

That is the miracle of cinema which the auteur theorists captured.

It’s not just the story.  It’s how you tell it.

That spark of manipulating the mystery…the seventh art…cinema…that is authorship.

The breath of life.

Magic.

Yes.

Anything can happen in the movies.

Everything is possible.

The mutants receive new life from David Byrne and Luaka Bop captures a situation à la Yves Klein.

Johannes will often spout out nonsense.  Seemingly.  The insanity of religion.

But few times has the essence of faith been so lovingly portrayed as here.

Certainly Francesco, giullare di Dio.  Rossellini.  Five years previous.

Yes, the jester of God.

I am here for you.  For that very purpose.  My sermon.  Amen.

Now that we finally have a Pope who espouses omnism.

And there are those who would call him antichrist.

Rubbish!

Be like Peter.  Peter Peterson.  Reread the words of Jesus.

It’s all a bunch of unimportant bollocks over which we are arguing.

And meanwhile propaganda puts truth at the service of falsehood.

But I’m just a messed up kid.

I’ve studied too much.

Like Johannes.

I’m delusional.

Especially insofar as thinking I can change anything whatsoever.

What faith!  What insanity!!

No.

I merely have the heart of Mikkel.  The doubter.

And I grow into the form of Morten.  The pessimist.

But what about that magic?

That electric guitar with a lightening flash?  Perfectly synchronized.

Those behind-the-scenes meanderings of God.  A humble god.  Not drawing too much attention.

Yes, that is the sentiment of Inger (Birgitte Federspiel).

Everything we have ever loved.

Taken from us.

Goodbye.

And all the while Preben Lerdorff Rye wanders around as if in a trance.

Exactly like Nicolas de Gunzberg in Vampyr.

Exactly like Falconetti in La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc.

And exactly like the mad saints who penned the great maniacal books.

The Gospel of John (Johannes).  The Word.  Ordet.

And the Book of Revelation.  Dangerous plaything of the lonely.

Harmless psychedelia taken literally.

So obviously a bad trip.  And what a perfect exclamation of fear to finalize the canon.

And how ironic that the futurists have never heard of Giacomo Balla or Carlo Carrà or even Marinetti himself.

Yes.  Not at all ironic.

Dialectic.  Socratic method.  Devil’s advocate.

Unity of opposites.  Heraclitus.  Logos.

I say, my good man…  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Harrumph!

Is the auto-antonym flammable or inflammable?  Make up your mind!

And cleave TO or diverge like cleavage (literally)?

Which is to say, “defined by its opposite”.

Leadership><Followership.

You’ll end up hating algebra (wink wink).

iff!

(~)

ñot!  Borat.

Bathetic (!)

+ or

with black pieces, mind you:

“1.e4 e5 2.f4 Bc5 3.Nf3 d6 4.c3 Bg4 5.Bc4 Nd7 6.h3 Bxf3 7.Qxf3 Qe7 8.a4 a6 9.b4 Ba7 10.Na3 Ngf6 11.f5 c6 12.d3 h6 13.Nc2 Rd8 14.Be3 Bb8 15.O-O Nh7 16.Qg4 Qf8 17.h4 Ndf6 18.Qf3 Qe7 19.g4 d5 20.Bc5 Bd6 21.Bxd6 Qxd6 22.Bb3 O-O 23.Rad1 g5 24.Ne3 Kg7 25.h5 Rfe8 26.Rf2 Nf8 27.Rb2 b5 28.Ra2 d4 29.axb5 axb5 30.Nc2 Ra8 31.Rxa8 Rxa8 32.cxd4 exd4 33.Kg2 N8d7 34.Qf2 Nxg4 35.Qxd4+ Qxd4 36.Nxd4 Ne3+ 37.Kf3 Nxd1 38.Bxd1 Ne5+ 39.Ke3 Ra1 40.Be2 Rb1 41.Nf3 Nxf3 42.Bxf3 Rxb4 43.e5 c5 44.Bc6 Rb1 45.Ke4 b4 46.Kd5 b3 47.Kd6 b2 48.Ke7 Re1 49.f6+ Kg8 50.Be4 Rxe4 51.dxe4 b1=Q 52.Kd6 Qxe4 0–1”

Will easily lead you to a rather insignificant Rousseau.

A social contract for the turnstiles.

“the things that you’re liable/to read in the Bible”

And yet the tearstains remain on my glasses…

Like a day at the beach.

Long ago.

Salty.

I pray this that and the uttering.

The word.

If it be possible.

 

-PD

Jamaica Inn [1939)

This film is even more disgusting than Psycho.  Disgust.  Fear.  Anxiety.  Moral ambiguity.

This is what made Hitchcock great.  Like Dostoyevsky, Hitchcock brought to life those personages who were between good and evil.

In the words of Henry Miller, “They were alive and they spoke to me.”

Authors.  Real authors.  Blood and guts authors.  Authors who left everything on the page.  Every shred of emotion.

Samuel Fuller would have been proud of such authors.

We must remember Fuller’s cameo from Pierrot le Fou.  His words are instructive:

“Film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word . . . emotion.”

And though Hitchcock was perhaps the greatest film auteur to ever live, we must not neglect the source material.

Though auteur theory would argue otherwise, it was indeed Daphne du Maurier who concocted this perfect story.

And, as another affront to the politique des auteurs, we must acknowledge that this film would be far less powerful were it not for the all-world talents of actors Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara.

For those wishing a parallel to Ian Fleming’s Dr. No (set in Jamaica), this film has absolutely nothing to do with Jamaica.

Jamaica Inn is merely the name of the roadside lodging in this period piece set in 1819 Cornwall.

But like a good James Bond film, a believable villain makes all the difference in sustaining the dramatic tension.

Laughton is just that villain.

Though Jamaica Inn is not as powerful and iconic as Hitchcock’s The Birds, it is (in my opinion) a strong competitor against his film Rebecca.  And why focus on these three films exclusively?  Because they were all from du Maurier stories.

What is more, I would argue that Jamaica Inn is every bit as good as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).  Why that comparison?  Because it featured the same duo (in the same year):  Laughton and O’Hara.

As for O’Hara, this was for all practical purposes her true film debut (in a starring role while assuming the screen name with which she would become famous).  For all of my effusive praising of Saoirse Ronan, it should be noted that Maureen O’Hara was a sort of Irish prototype for the panache Ronan would bring to the screen these many years later.

But nothing tops Laughton here.  Hitchcock was still honing his skills towards a mature style.  Laughton creates a character both laughable and hideous.  It is not the visceral aversion of the Hunchback, but rather an elite, condescending, corrupt local squire (and justice of the peace).  Laughton is the law.  He relishes his position as he savors his victuals.

Life and simulation.  In real life, Laughton fought for O’Hara…insisting she be given the lead role (and her first, as noted earlier).

It should be noted that past critics have eviscerated this film.  Let it be noted that their pretensions are largely unfounded.

-PD