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All this Iran stuff -- a New York Times article said yesterday that the advisers who are still left, working with Pres. Trump, presented him with a list of options -- killing Suleimani was one of the options, and a spokesman said advisers were "flabbergasted" when Trump chose the murder option.
My first thought was -- you could avoid being flabbergasted by not including an inflammatory killing as one of the options. Just leave that one out, and show him the other options.
When I used to sell advertising, I would have two or three different advertising plans (X number of ads for the year, at such-and-such price, and an outline of how and when they might use the commercials to the best advantage of their business). The largest money investment got the customer the best per-ad rate, etc. ... I didn't include an option that said "I'm not buying any advertising, screw off."
Of course they could always say that anyway, but -- you know -- don't hand them over the option. Don't suggest your worst-case scenario.
Is it worth it to kill this one guy and now it may go nuclear and the planet and all people on it will be destroyed?
Last night I was listening to You Tube videos, trying to learn what is happening and why.
You can watch any of these videos -- I don't know if they come up if you type them on Google, but they will if you type them on You Tube.
Why the U.S. Military Targeted Qassem Soleimani
Full Warner: America Has To Be Strong But Also Smart
Petraeus Says U.S. had Lost the Element of Deterrence
Col. Wilkerson Speaks Out Against the March To War
------------------------ It was pointed out by several commentators that in 2011 Donald Trump said Pres. Obama would "start a war with Iran to win the 2012 election."
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"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."
~ George Bernard Shaw
There is a new Netflix movie that I want to discuss, but I have to wait until I know what I want to say about it, or think about it.
One thing about Netflix, and I guess I've said this before -- they are like, "No censorship, so that means we can say or show whatever we want to."
And then my question becomes, "But why do you want to show -- that ??!"
(I'm telling you, if I watch one more series or movie on Netflix and have to see somebody throw up, I'm writin' a letter....)
I'm against censorship, too -- but that doesn't mean we can't refrain from saying or showing ugly or gross stuff.
You can tell a story without shock value.
Some people like "Sons of Anarchy." After hearing its action described to me, I think, "What would fans of that show think of "Dr. Foster" (from the BBC, but it's on Netflix) -- I got all consumed in the drama of that, but -- there are no eyes being gouged out...
Sometimes the characters look sad or deeply worried or suspicious, and sometimes they get into a Lexus (Lexuses-? Lexii-?) and drive away rather quickly.
Oooooooohh...
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I saw Jerry Lewis come on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1984 (on the you tube with "m" in front of it). Mr. Lewis danced and fell -- or almost fell -- and his dancing was somewhat like Michael Jackson's moonwalk -- his shoes sliding as if he can't stop them, but of course it's all choreographed -- quite an active, coordinated comic -- anything to entertain...
He would have been 58 years old that year, I think. He talked about his new heart-healthy diet: Johnny Carson asked him, "What did you have to give up?"
Answer: "Toast and coffee in the morning."
"What do you eat instead of that?"
Jerry Lewis answered, "Salad.
And then later on in the day I have some chicken."
Carson says, "That's all?"
He says, Yes, and he never felt better.
----------------- Google says he'd have cut calories even a little further if he had replaced the chicken with turkey.
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Go on You Tube and type in,
I cannot come to the banquet
and Play...
I cannot come.
I cannot come to the banquet,
Don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments -- that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot come.
A certain man held a feast on his fine estate in town.
He laid a festive table, and wore a wedding gown.
He sent invitations to his neighbours far and wide.
But when the meal was ready, each of them replied:
I cannot come.
I cannot come to the banquet,
Don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments -- that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot come.
The master rose up in anger, called his servants by name,
Said: "Go into the town, fetch the blind and the lame,
Fetch the peasant and the pauper, for this I have willed,
My banquet must be crowded, and my table must be filled!"
I cannot come!
I cannot come to the banquet,
Don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments -- that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot come.
When all the poor had assembled, there was still room to spare,
So the master demanded: "Go search everywhere,
To the highways and the byways, and force them to come in.
My table must be filled before the banquet can begin."
(I cannot come.)
I cannot come to the banquet,
Don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments -- that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot come.
Now, God has written a lesson for the rest of mankind,
If we're slow in responding, he may leave us behind.
He's preparing a banquet for that great and glorious day --
When the Lord and Master calls us, be certain not to say:
I cannot come.
(I cannot come!)
I cannot come to the banquet,
Don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments -- that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot come.
---------------------------------
a hymn by American Medical Mission Sister Miriam Therese Winter, based on the parable of the wedding banquet, from Matthew 22.
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------------------ [excerpt, Wikipedia] ------------- Highway 61 Revisited is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 30, 1965, by Columbia Records. Having until then recorded mostly acoustic music, Dylan used rock musicians as his backing band on every track of the album, except for the closing track, the 11-minute ballad "Desolation Row."
Critics have focused on the innovative way Dylan combined driving, blues-based music with the subtlety of poetry to create songs that captured the political and cultural chaos of contemporary America. Author Michael Gray has argued that, in an important sense, the 1960s "started" with this album.
Leading with the hit song "Like a Rolling Stone", the album features songs that Dylan has continued to perform live over his long career, including "Ballad of a Thin Man" and the title track.
He named the album after the major American highway which connected his birthplace of Duluth, Minnesota, to southern cities famed for their musical heritage, including St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, and the Delta blues area of Mississippi.
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--------------------- [excerpt] --------------- After Bernstein had finished, he reached Sloan by phone and read him the draft. Sloan confirmed virtually the entire story.
Bernstein added a few details, including an account of Liddy's "bad apple" speech to his colleagues on the Monday after the break-in.
Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, James McCord
Woodward and Bernstein took the draft to Rosenfeld. At 44, Rosenfeld had been a foreign editor of the New York Herald Tribune and the Washington Post. Brash and tough at times, he is extremely skillful at locating holes in stories written by his reporters.
Since the week following the Watergate break-in, Rosenfeld had been the hard-sell artist, persuading Bradlee and the other senior editors (after satisfying himself) that the reporters had touched every base in their stories. From the day in 1970 when he moved from the foreign desk to become metropolitan editor, Rosenfeld's mission had been to raise the local staff from its second-class citizenship at the Post.
Seizing on the potential of the Watergate story, he had fought for it to remain with the metropolitan staff and had won -- resisting attempts by the national editors to take over.
Harry Rosenfeld
Rosenfeld runs the metropolitan staff, the Post's largest, like a football coach. He prods his players, letting them know that he has promised the front office results, pleading, yelling, cajoling, pacing, working his facial expressions for instant effects -- anger, satisfaction, concern.
He was born in pre-Nazi Berlin and came to New York City when he was ten. He made a successful effort to forget his German and speaks English without any trace of an accent. Rosenfeld went to work for the Herald Tribune after his graduation from Syracuse University and has always been an editor, never a reporter.
He was inclined to worry that too many reporters on the metropolitan staff were incompetent, and thought even the best reporters could be saved from self-destruction only by the skills of an editor.
His natural distrust of reporters was particularly acute on the Watergate story, where the risks were very great, and he was in the uncomfortable position of having to trust Bernstein and Woodward more than he had ever trusted any reporters.
Robert Redford as Bob Woodward; Jack Warden as Harry Rosenfeld in the movie version of All the President's Men
Aware that much of the story was out of his hands, he tried to exercise what control he could: he hovered around the reporters' typewriters as they wrote, passed them questions as they talked on the phone to sources, demanded to be briefed after they hung up or returned from a meeting.
Now, gulping down antacid tablets, Rosenfeld grilled Bernstein and Woodward to find out how solid this latest story was. He was reassured by Bernstein's conversation with the FBI agent. At least the FBI had the same allegations on paper. Rosenfeld always felt better when he knew that somewhere, no matter how inaccessible, there was a piece of paper that could support a story.
And it was a dangerous story. The Post was, in effect, making its own charges -- not only against the campaign officials, but also concerning the thoroughness of the FBI and grand-jury investigations. The charges were, in some ways, more serious than those handed down in the indictment, four days earlier.
His interrogation completed, Rosenfeld approved the story. Bernstein called CRP for its ritual comment. The notation "Insert Denial" was marked between paragraphs two and three -- right after the descriptions of Mardian and LaRue as the head housecleaners.
______________________________
All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. 1974. Simon & Schuster.
__________________________
...Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting --
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them,
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked me how I was doing,
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters, no --
Not unless you mail them from --
Desolation Row
___________________________
Final two stanzas of "Desolation Row," the last song on Highway 61 Revisited album by Bob Dylan
__________________________________
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Hugh Sloan
----------------------- [excerpt] ---------------- He wished he were in Bernstein's place, wished he could write. Maybe then he could express what had been going through his mind. Not the cold, hard facts of Watergate necessarily -- that wasn't really what was important.
But what it was like for young men and women to come to Washington because they believed in something and then to be inside and see how things worked and watch their own ideals disintegrate.
He and his wife believed in the same things they had before they came to Washington. Many of their friends at the White House did, too, but those people had made a decision that you could still believe in the same things and yet adapt yourself.
After all, the goals were unchanged, you were still working for what you believed in, right? People in the White House believed they were entitled to do things differently, to suspend the rules, because they were fulfilling a mission; that was the only important thing, the mission.
It was easy to lose perspective, Sloan said.
He had seen it happen. He and his wife wanted to get out of Washington before they lost theirs.
_______________________________________
All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. 1974. Simon & Schuster.
_____________________________________
When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
And it's Easter-time too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs
When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outta you...
______________________________
Lyric excerpt from "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"
next-to-last song on Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited album
____________________________________
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