The Final Countdown

Like many people I have been reading, listening, and even watching the news (BBC via internet) much more often since the obviously mad, as in ‘insane’, Rootin’ Tootin’ Putin

https://curioase.ro/2022/03/03/milionar-rus-recompensa-pentru-gasirea-lui-vladimir-putin-viu-sau-mort/

started World War Three. For those of you who wish to argue the point about this being the beginning of WWIII please consider the following exchange between the Politico senior editor Maura Reynolds

https://www.politico.com/staff/maura-reynolds

and Fiona Hill,

Fiona Hill testifying in an impeachment hearing of Donald Trump. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo

“…one of America’s most clear-eyed Russia experts, someone who has studied Putin for decades, worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations and has a reputation for truth-telling, earned when she testified during impeachment hearings for her former boss, President Donald Trump.”

Reynolds: The more we talk, the more we’re using World War II analogies. There are people who are saying we’re on the brink of a World War III.

Hill: We’re already in it. We have been for some time. We keep thinking of World War I, World War II as these huge great big set pieces, but World War II was a consequence of World War I. And we had an interwar period between them. And in a way, we had that again after the Cold War. Many of the things that we’re talking about here have their roots in the carving up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russian Empire at the end of World War I. At the end of World War II, we had another reconfiguration and some of the issues that we have been dealing with recently go back to that immediate post-war period. We’ve had war in Syria, which is in part the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, same with Iraq and Kuwait.

All of the conflicts that we’re seeing have roots in those earlier conflicts. We are already in a hot war over Ukraine, which started in 2014. People shouldn’t delude themselves into thinking that we’re just on the brink of something. We’ve been well and truly in it for quite a long period of time.

But this is also a full-spectrum information war, and what happens in a Russian “all-of-society” war, you soften up the enemy. You get the Tucker Carlsons and Donald Trumps doing your job for you.

https://oneclickwatch.org/how-tucker-carlson-went-from-a-cia-reject-to-the-most-watched-person-on-cable-news-accused-of-peddling-prejudice-to-millions.html

The fact that Putin managed to persuade Trump that Ukraine belongs to Russia, and that Trump would be willing to give up Ukraine without any kind of fight, that’s a major success for Putin’s information war. I mean he has got swathes of the Republican Party — and not just them, some on the left, as well as on the right — masses of the U.S. public saying, “Good on you, Vladimir Putin,” or blaming NATO, or blaming the U.S. for this outcome. This is exactly what a Russian information war and psychological operation is geared towards. He’s been carefully seeding this terrain as well. We’ve been at war, for a very long time. I’ve been saying this for years.

Reynolds: So just as the world didn’t see Hitler coming, we failed to see Putin coming?

Hill: We shouldn’t have. He’s been around for 22 years now, and he has been coming to this point since 2008. I don’t think that he initially set off to do all of this, by the way, but the attitudes towards Ukraine and the feelings that all Ukraine belongs to Russia, the feelings of loss, they’ve all been there and building up.

What Russia is doing is asserting that “might makes right.” Of course, yes, we’ve also made terrible mistakes. But no one ever has the right to completely destroy another country — Putin’s opened up a door in Europe that we thought we’d closed after World War II.
(https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-iii-already-there-00012340)

Casablanca

The movie Casablanca premiered in New York City 79 years ago today, in 1942. The film starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, with notable support by Claude Rains and Paul Henreid. It’s the story of a cynical American expat, Rick Blaine, who runs a bar in Morocco’s largest city during World War II. He’s unexpectedly reunited with his former love, Ilsa, who is now married to a leader of the French Resistance. By the end of the movie, Rick finds he still has a selfless heart under his bitter exterior. The movie was originally intended for release in January 1943, and that is when it came out in the rest of the country, but the producers moved up the New York premiere to take advantage of the free publicity surrounding the landing of Allied forces in North Africa.

The film was based on an unproduced play called Everybody Comes to Rick’s, by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison. A story analyst called it “sophisticated hokum,” but recommended it to Warner Bros. anyway. Unlike most movies, Casablanca was filmed in story order rather than out of sequence, because the screenplay was only half done by the time filming began. Ingrid Bergman wrote in her autobiography, My Story (1980): “We were shooting off the cuff. Every day they were handing out dialogue and we were trying to make some sense of it. Every morning we would say, ‘Well, who are we? What are we doing here?’ And [director] Michael Curtiz would say, ‘We’re not quite sure, but let’s get through this scene today and we’ll let you know tomorrow.’” She didn’t know which man her character ended up with until the final scene was filmed.

The movie was filmed almost entirely indoors, because a Japanese submarine had been spotted off the coast of California and everyone was worried that Japan might attack the mainland. The production crew also had to cope with war rationing and shortages of things like rubber and aluminum. They couldn’t use nylon or silk in the costumes, so Ingrid Bergman wore cotton.

Casablanca received great reviews, but at the time most people just seemed to think it was going to be one of many boilerplate movies intended to raise American morale during World War II. The New York Times wrote, “Yes, indeed, the Warners here have a picture which makes the spine tingle and the heart take a leap.” The Hollywood Reporter called it “a drama that lifts you right out of your seat” and added, “Certainly a more accomplished cast of players cannot be imagined.” Variety wrote, “Casablanca will take the [box offices] of America just as swiftly as the AEF took North Africa.” Another reviewer said, “It certainly won’t make Vichy happy — but that’s just another point for it.” It was nominated for eight Academy Awards, and won three of them: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

Not every critic since the movie’s release has considered it a masterpiece, however. Pauline Kael said, “It’s far from a great film, but it has a special appealingly schlocky romanticism, and you’re never really pressed to take its melodramatic twists and turns seriously.” (https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/twa-the-writers-almanac-for-november-26-2021/)

The Difference Between Donald Trump and Jimmy Carter

Having watched the first thirteen seasons of Ancient Aliens

https://www.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens

I had fallen behind. Needing something to occupy my time, and divert attention from the news, I checked out AA and, to my surprise, found it was in the fifteenth season. It was amazing to see the fourteenth season contained twenty-two, the most ever in one season, episodes. I have binged on them to the point there is only one episode of the fifteenth season to watch. Fortunately, the season continues…

The last episode watched was The Immortality Machine, which aired TV Mar 14, 2020. During the episode a story was told of a gentleman who lived inside Big Rock, the name of the huge rock. I learned something not previously known while watching. During World War II there was a draft for men aged between 50 something and 64. When the deputies came out to bring him in, the guy who lived in a rock pressed two wires together and blew himself to smithereens.

If the current POTUS, the Trumpster, were to call for a “geezer force” I would laugh, because everything he says these daze makes me laugh…to keep from crying.

If former Governor of the Great State of Georgia, and President of the United States of America, Jimmy Carter, were to call for a “geezer force” I would be the first to join. This would be done because I know Jimmy would be right their beside me, shoulder to shoulder, leading by example, just as he has all his life. One example among many would be the work he has done getting his hands dirty with the Habitat For Humanity (https://www.habitat.org/).

Jimmy Carter back to building houses after hip surgery

By Devan Cole and Betsy Klein, CNN
Updated 9:51 AM ET, Tue August 27, 2019
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/27/politics/jimmy-carter-habitat-for-humanity-homes-hip-surgery/index.html

The Habitat for Humanity Build Jimmy Carter Called His Favorite

Where have you gone, Jimmy Carter? The nation sure could use a man like you right about now…

Because of the calamitous situation in which we find ourselves I urge you to to give strong consideration to watching a program about viruses:

Ancient Aliens
S 14 E 9
The Alien Infection
42m | 2019 | TV-PG | CC
In 2016, scientists made the astonishing discovery that 30 percent of all protein adaptations since humans’ divergence with chimpanzees have been driven by viruses. Could ancient aliens have shaped human evolution by introducing viral epidemics on Earth? And if so, for what purpose? Are they making us more like them?
https://play.history.com/shows/ancient-aliens/season-14/episode-9

All episodes can be watched free of charge. You can thank me later…

Hollywood’s Chess Master

There is a TV Guide special edition of “American Icons” for sale at a price of $9.99 focusing on “100 Years of Our Nation’s Greatest Actor.” The choice of TV Guide is Humphrey Bogart. This point is debatable. Many consider Ronald Raygun the best actor of all-time simply because of the fact that of all the actors to have played the President of the U.S. he was the best at acting like a President. For my money the greatest was John Wilkes Booth, for obvious reasons. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that Humphrey Bogart was “Hollywood’s Chess Master.” He is considered to be the strongest players of the Royal game among those in the know in the movie making industry. The magazine quotes Pete Tamburro, “…of Chess Life, the official magazine of the U.S. Chess Federation,” who says, “In the 1940s, chess was extraordinarily popular in Hollywood, and Bogart was one of the best players.”
The author of the article, James Ellis, continues, “For Bogart, chess was a constant companion throughout the course of his life. And it wasn’t just the game-it was a way of putting food on the table when he was down and out in New York.”
“He used to hustle for money,” Tamburro says. Bogart’s playing style could easily belong to one of the crafty and cunning private eyes from his noir films. “No matter how good you think you’re playing, he’s going to swindle you somehow,” Tamburro says. “It’d be like playing Rick in his cafe.” One of the pictures in the magazine is of Humphrey as Richard Blaine in his cafe, Rick’s Café Américain, looking at a chess board with Peter Lorre, as Ugarte, looking at Rick while lighting a cigarette.
I have lost count of the number of times I have watched the movie. Humphrey would have to be on my short list of favorite actors, but how much is because of my awareness of his fondness for the Royal game I cannot say. I can still watch it, but can no longer watch the two other movies on my top three list, “Cool Hand Luke,” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” because they are too depressing.
There are pictures of some postcards Bogart used in correspondence games “…with friends around the world, including GIs serving overseas in World War II.” There is a picture of the July, 1945 Chess Review with Bogie and Lauren Bacall on the cover, as well as Bogart’s chess set, a small wooden, well worn, board and over sized wooden pieces.
“More than just an avid player, Bogart threw himself into organizing tournaments to promote the sport. He served as a tournament director for the United States Chess federation and, with the help of other celebrity chess fans such as Basil Rathbone, sponsored the Los Angeles Pan American Chess Conference in 1945.”
“They were creative people, and creative people are fascinated by the game and its competitive nature,” Tamburro says.
The era of Bogie and Bacall is a relic of the past. How long before the Royal game is thought of in the same way?
“Key Largo”
Wrapped around each other
Trying so hard to stay warm
That first cold winter together
Lying in each others arms
Watching those old movies
Falling in love so desperately
Honey, I was your hero
And you were my leading lady

We had it all
Just like Bogie and Bacall
Starring in our old late, late show
Sailing away to Key Largo

Here’s lookin’ at you kid
Missing all the things we did
We can find it once again, I know
Just like they did in Key Largo

Honey, can’t you remember
We played all the parts
That sweet scene of surrender
When you gave me your heart
Please say you will
Play it again
‘Cause I love you still
Baby, this can’t be the end

We had it all
(We had it all)
Just like Bogie and Bacall
Starring in our old late, late show
Sailing away to Key Largo

Here’s lookin’ at you kid
(Here’s lookin’ at you kid)
Missing all the things we did
We can find it once again, I know
Just like they did in Key Largo

We had it all
(We had it all)
Just like Bogie and Bacall
Starring in our old late, late show
Sailing away to Key Largo

BERTIE HIGGINS- “KEY LARGO” (W/ LYRICS) – YouTube

“Released as a single in September 1981, the song became Higgins’ only Top 40 hit in the United States in early 1982, when it peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song spent 17 weeks in the Top 40 and was certified Gold by the RIAA.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Largo_%28song%29