The Death of a Mr. Bond

Roger Moore was MY James Bond, in by that I mean he's the Bond I grew up with.

My introduction to the character James Bond was a suave, just on the high side of cool, just shy of silly gadget carrying world hopping spy who always had a bit of quick wit when the situation called for it. It wasn't until college that I really had a chance to get into the character and realize that Connery's more bare bones and ruthless Bond was closer to the how the character was written. But by then it was too late, because in my mind Bond had gone to space, jumped off a mountain and had car that turned into a submarine. Roger Moore's Bond was a character of it's time, although I'm hard pressed to look back at most it and think it's still cool. The submarine car though.

I realize now that the movie scene I wanted to shoot with all the Bond actors is now NEVER really going to happen for real. Although, they are doing wonderful things with CGI. But that would be cheating.

And although he soured a bit at the end, with the spurious reasoning as to why Idris Elba shouldn't play Bond, I liked him. Moore's spoofs of himself, both in Cannonball run and playing the bumbling Inspector Clouseau in Curse of the Pink Panther after Peter Sellers died, where quite funny, even for a kid from the sticks like me. I thought he made a good action hero in ffolkes ( also known as North Sea Hijack). I even liked him Boat Trip, a film which I'm still not sure why I watched, although I'm fairly certain Roselyn Sánchez had something to do with it.

To a degree I miss his Bond. Maybe that's what Daniel Craig is missing.

Manchester

I'm not quite sure how to voice how upset I was to hear about the bombing Manchester.

It maybe that the modern day terrorism we've experienced so far has hardened us, numbed us a bit to the reality that there are people out there who want to perform acts of violence and cause chaos to further their own ends. So when I first saw this on my twitter feed, I was like "damn, now what?"

But then I got the facts, starting watching the feeds, and to be honest something about this bothers me deeply. I'm no expert on Islam, but I think that even where it authorizes/directs/suggests(?) the use of force, it specifically prohibits its use against the innocent. So when young girls...children...are attacked, it feels over the already dim line we like to imagine is still there. Maybe this was an effort to push us back into a state of shock. A mental state where dangerous things happen. That part of the argument where we say things we regret later, even though we meant them at the time. A mental state someone hopes will trigger something.

The sad part is we've been down this road as well.

I'm not sure what to say here. Had it been an office or a subway I would still be angry, upset, outraged. But this has a special quality of anger about it.

 
Note: What's interesting is that this happened the day before hearings in the US Congress that are demonstrating that the Presidential Transition Team may have been in deeper with the Russians than we know AND the new budget is released which slashes Medicaid. And I don't hear a single peep out of the "conspiracy mad right wing" about a false flag operation. Because this wasn't. Some asshole with a holier than thou cause did this. Sometimes things we wish wouldn't happen just do. And they happen all around the same time.

Feels like 1973 All Over again

This is a political post. 

So, that happened.

I keep trying to figure out when this precariously balanced house of fraud is going fall apart. For a while I was upset the Democratic Party wasn't metaphorically setting fire to the place in protest, save Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Shumer and a few others. But surveying the situation at this point, by the time to the rest of the party gets it's shit together all of the groundwork needed to save democracy will have been done for them. Oddly enough, by the people who to the untrained eye look like they're trying to destroy democracy.

Let's review.

There is increasingly clear evidence that a foreign power "meddled" with our fair democratic election process.

The President seems miffed that the inquiry into this whole "meddling" situation just can't be over. 

If I remember correctly, we just spent a little over three years looking into an incident on the Northern Coast of Africa. Three whole years! And that inquiry uncovered no evidence of wrongdoing or treasonous activity at all, despite every effort, but was continually renewed and revisited. By contrast this new inquiry into the election shenanigans continually turns up questionable practices and actions as well as artful forgetfulness on the part of those being investigated. And it has been ongoing for less than six months!

Then the Head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations is fired by the President. This occurs in the midst of the Head of the FBI's investigation into the aforementioned claims of "meddling."

The method for the termination stunk of stagecraft and the reasons behind it are murky at best. Shortly after it was announced the White House Press Secretary literally hid in the bushes rather than talk to reporters. (Note: I'm sorry, that's since been corrected to "among the bushes," whatever that means.) First the official explanation was that the firing was on the recommendation of the Deputy Attorney General, who balked at that accusation. Then the story became that the President wanted to fire the Head of the FBI since taking office. A rumor floated that the President only became angry after the Head of the FBI testified about his feelings concerning his actions during the election process, actions which at the time were completely out of sorts for a person in that position. Later still, the White House spokespeople claimed it was because the man had lost the respect of the rank and file under his command, a charge immediately refuted by the new Acting Head of the FBI. 

Then, and not joke, within 36 hours of the firing, the President meets with a representative from that same foreign power accused of meddling in the election in the White House, specifically the Oval Office. But because the President apparently hates anything but lackey media, the only press allowed in accompanies the guest. That particular press also just happens to work for the same foreign power suspected of the "meddling." Of the election.

This could very seriously mean that the Oval Office, one of the most secure rooms in the world, now might be bugged by a foreign power.

One would almost think this a synopsis of a an episode of the trashy night time soap Empire and not the goings on of the leadership of the most powerful nation in the world.

I am aware that a lot of people who voted for him did so because he was, and still is, an outsider. That he'd shake up the system. The problem is that we're not talking about the family hardware store, we're talking about the United States of America. And it turns out we've got a guy in office who doesn't understand the basics of life, much less the basics of government. And that bodes ill for us all.

I'm not sure where I want to go with this....