So I just watched this review.






And I thought to myself, what can guys like Guy Maddin tell us about the future? Can our generational theory apply here?

In view of the similarities that I see between Dwight Eisenhower and Barack Obama in style and substance (and that they are exemplars of the best sort of Reactive leader, the mature Reactive who acts calmly and without anger, we can contrast their successors. Kennedy follows Eisenhower, and Trump follows Obama, which makes the difference between Eisenhower being near-great and Obama only above average.

On November 22, 1963 President John F. Kennedy was to deliver a luncheon speech to the Dallas Citizens Council. As we all know, the speech was never given as the president was struck down by an assassin’s bullet just minutes before his scheduled arrival.

But what is amazing about that speech is that JFK had a vision—maybe a premonition—about the toxic future of America.

Remember, that the day the President landed in Dallas—at Love Field, of all places—there were ads in the local papers, placed by right-wing extremists, draped like funeral announcements, “welcoming” the President of the United States to Texas. This is hardly surprising because, after all, UN Ambassador, and former presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson was physically assaulted in Dallas only weeks before. In retrospect, what we were actually witnessing at the time was the birth of the Alt-Right movement in American politics.

And looking back at Kennedy’s undelivered speech it seems that the president, eerily, looked ahead more than half-a-century to the time of Trump.

One of the trademarks of Trump is how “easy” it will be to change things. Obamacare overhaul would be simple—until it wasn’t: “Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated,” proclaimed a stunned Trump. Tax cuts, too, would be simple. The budget would be simple. Thus far, with total Republican control of the government, Trump’s “easy” agenda is on life-support. Perhaps he should have listened to Kennedy, a man who knew the complexities of a complex world.

Kennedy knew there were no “simple” solutions.

“This Nation’s strength and security are not easily or cheaply obtained,” said Kennedy’s speech, “nor are they quickly and simply explained. There are many kinds of strength and no one kind will suffice.”

Trump and his surrogates—especially the “SNL”-maligned press secretary Sean Spicer—are currently bragging about the success of his trip to the Middle East and Europe. This bragging sounds a lot more like whistling past the graveyard. In Saudi Arabia, one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, there was not a peep out of Trump about human rights. After leaving the Middle East—so he thought—and arriving in Israel, he admitted, standing next to the Israeli Prime Minister, that he had told the Russians secrets that had been supplied to the U.S. by Israeli intelligence. A great start to the greatest foreign trip in the history of the U.S. presidency.

His Chevy Chase-inspired “The President’s National Lampoon’s Vacation” continued on European soil where he arm-wrestled with the French President, insulted the Germans, and generally played the stereotype of the boorish American tourist by pushing the new prime minister of Montenegro out of the way so he could get his mug in the center of a photo-op.

Trump’s foreign policy is defined by its chaos. Here’s what JFK’s speech was to say that day about foreign policy in a dangerous world:

“Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country’s security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason – or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.”

Much more here at Irish Central
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And don't fool yourself: we Americans live in an empire, and the depravity has risen fast. (I speak in part of President Trump, the most decadent person who has ever gotten so far in America!) But he is far from alone in culpability.





Empires do not have a clear date of either birth or death, but they have stages of existence. Empires begin with pioneers establishing a new society, go through an age of conquest spreading the new order into other places, then an age of commerce (transforming raw wealth into something more refined and lucrative), an age of affluence from the profits, an age of intellect (creativity as the definitive white-collar way to make wealth without great capital investment), and finally an age of indulgent decadence.

We are apparently in an age of decadence -- an undisciplined, over-extended military (note the images of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners), lusts by elites for luxury in ostentatious display of wealth, a great disparity in living standards between the rich and the poor, a desire by many (now including right-wingers) to live off a bloated state, an obsession with sex, and (worst and most flagrant) the debasement of currency.

Corruption becomes rampant, and whatever democracy the order ever claims to have had is a sham. (Note my contempt for a legislators in the federal and most state legislatures responsive solely to lobbyists responsible only to the super-rich who hire them to ensure government of the elites, by the elites, and for the elites).

Just when you think that rhetoric from the fraudulently-named Democratic People's Republic of Korea (nothing democratic about it, its people are subjects, the system is an absolute monarchy and not a republic... OK, so it does locate itself properly in Korea instead of somewhere else) can't get worse, it does.

Or is it just another unhinged blathering of a lunatic?

Quote:SEOUL/JAPAN, Sept 14 (Reuters) - A North Korean state agency threatened on Thursday to use nuclear weapons to “sink” Japan and reduce the United States to “ashes and darkness” for supporting a U.N. Security Council resolution and sanctions over its latest nuclear test.

Pyongyang’s Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, which handles the North’s external ties and propaganda, also called for the breakup of the Security Council, which it called “a tool of evil” made up of “money-bribed” countries that move at the order of the United States.

“The four islands of the archipelago should be sunken into the sea by the nuclear bomb of Juche. Japan is no longer needed to exist near us,” the committee said in a statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency.

Juche is the North’s ruling ideology that mixes Marxism and an extreme form of go-it-alone nationalism preached by state founder Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of the current leader, Kim Jong Un.

Regional tensions have risen markedly since the reclusive North conducted its sixth, and by far its most powerful, nuclear test on Sept. 3.The 15-member Security Council voted unanimously on a U.S.-drafted resolution and a new round of sanctions on Monday in response, banning North Korea’s textile exports that are the second largest only to coal and mineral, and capping fuel supplies.
The North reacted to the latest action by the Security Council, which had the backing of veto-holding China and Russia, by reiterating threats to destroy the United States, Japan and South Korea.

“Let’s reduce the U.S. mainland into ashes and darkness. Let’s vent our spite with mobilization of all retaliation means which have been prepared till now,” the statement said.

A draft letter for the firing of former FBI Director James Comey has found its way to Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

New York Times:

Quote:WASHINGTON — The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has obtained a letter drafted by President Trump and a top political aide that offered an unvarnished view of Mr. Trump’s thinking in the days before the president fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey.
The circumstances and reasons for the firing are believed to be a significant element of Mr. Mueller’s investigation, which includes whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice by firing Mr. Comey.

The letter, drafted in May, was met with opposition from Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, who believed that its angry, meandering tone was problematic, according to interviews with a dozen administration officials and others briefed on the matter. Among Mr. McGahn’s concerns were references to private conversations the president had with Mr. Comey, including times when the F.B.I. director told Mr. Trump he was not under investigation in the F.B.I.’s continuing Russia inquiry.

Quote:On the day before President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey, he summoned his vice president, chief of staff, top lawyer and other senior advisers to the Oval Office.

He was ready to get rid of Comey, Trump told them that Monday morning in May, and had prepared a termination letter that laid out in detail his many frustrations, which had boiled over the previous weekend at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

The multi-page letter blasted Comey over his investigation of Trump’s Democratic presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton. And, according to a person with direct knowledge of the contents of the letter, it conveyed Trump’s displeasure that Comey would not say publicly what he had told the president three times privately: that the FBI’s probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election was not focused on him.
Trump ended up shelving that letter in favor of a far shorter one, but the draft has taken on new significance in the probe by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining it as he determines whether Trump’s firing of Comey was part of an effort to obstruct justice, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

Bay Area:

A couple of C-130s from Sunnyvale ANG Base flew out loaded to the gills with supplies, then will assist in regional logistics as needed.

Several Engine Companies from various Fire Districts are en route, by now hitting West Texas.

Water rescue teams from various jurisdictions are en route. Can always use some more air boats and Zodiacs.

Structural Collapse Rescue Team from Menlo Park (HQ'ed right next door to Facebook - a world class team) on scene.

I'm not one or either religion or astrology, but this astronomical event coming at the end of a solar eclipse a month before is troubling as eclipses are historically associated with historical events.