As If He Were Orson Welles' Feckless Grand Nephew . . . .

[Glenn Anders]

Mike: I'm nonplussed that, not only Fox News, etc. but CNN and MSNBC are shedding crocodile tears over Andrew Breitbart. Do they mean that this man who used social media to lie and commit fraud for his causes should be honored and given Momento Mori's? Regardless of all the Government liberal mediums and individuals whose reputations he destroyed, Breitbart took a meat-axe to what is left of our legitimate journalistic facility, and he was only getting started!

It will be interesting to find out what actually killed him. I suppose his heart just gave out, but he always looked to me like someone who used stimulants of some kind to keep him going.

As for all the sympathy given his widow and four children, that's well deserved. But I must say, in all the public appearances I witnessed, he never mentioned his family, except in passing, if that. Perhaps, I was just nodding.

As in the past, I wonder what Orson Welles would have thought of his phenomenon?

Glenn

[Le Chiffre]

Glenn, your plausible theory about Brietbart and the drugs has been refuted by the coroner's report, although a forensic technician died himself under suspicious circumstances the day it was released:
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/336112/ ... eories.htm

Meanwhile Newt's finally thrown in the towel-

1. You are a moron, Newt. You shoulda quit a long time ago. SHEESH!!

2. What the heck has the buffoon been waiting for? Good riddance, my dog Shamrock was a more viable candidate and at least could keep track of where he buried his bone.

3. I, for one, am grateful for Newt and Callista and their family. When people like Barak Obama, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and all the rest -- seek to persuade voters of their qualifications and aspirations, we all benefit from the dialogue.

4. Where will Newt's 23 followers go now?

5.. I firmly believe that New would have made the best president. He has the experience, the knowledge, the insight, the foresight, the problem recognition skills and the common sense solutions to turn this country around and get it headed on the right track.

6. Is that you, Callista?

To steer this back towards Welles a bit, Newt, back in October likened Mitt Romney to Nelson Rockefeller:
http://blog-to-book.com/blog/books/post ... --Politico

In 1960, 1964, and 1968, Nelson Rockefeller sought the Republican nomination for president, as numerous New York governors had before him. He came up short each time - outflanked on the right, particularly in 1964, when Rockefeller’s best chance vanished under the wheels of Barry Goldwater’s conservative band wagon.

Newt Gingrich brought up Rockefeller’s name Sunday, opining on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Republican front-runner Mitt Romney can’t win the GOP nomination because he, like Rockefeller before him, has a “ceiling” within the GOP.

[Glenn Anders]

Mike: Unless more substantial evidence of any kind is produced, I'm willing to believe that a hard-living guy of 43 like Andrew Breitbart, with a past history of alcohol and stimulant abuse, might find his heart failing while walking the dog.

Newt probably was the most all around Republican Presidential Candidate, but he could not hide his vindictiveness and thin skin for criticism. I think Ron Paul may yet produce some thorns in Mitt Romney's side.

Orson Welles would no doubt have enjoyed the present Presidential race as it is shaping up, if America and the World were not in such dangerous waters.

Glenn

[Le Chiffre]

"Rocker Ted Nugent recently earned himself the scrutiny of the Secret Service when he said that if Obama wins in November, he would either be dead or in jail"

Nugent’s remarks have some recalling the overheated anti-government rhetoric that existed before the Oklahoma City bombing in 1994. This takes us into a murky waters between the the Tea Party, the NRA, and the survivalist movement, all manifestations of conservatism in general.

1. What's the difference between Ted Nugent, Tim McVeigh, and Osama bin Laden? Ted's plot got caught in time.

2. Let's treat the gun nuts the way they deserve to be, like scared survivalist pee-pantsies.

3. Oh bless your poor tormented little heart, all those responsible gun owners who took courses to be safe and accurate with them, are upsetting you? They aren't the people who will be reduced to wetting themselves, it will be you and yours, as you wish you had one of us with you when some paranoid schizoid goes rabid and decides all of you should have 3 eyes instead of 2.



Huffington Post:
"Rocker Ted Nugent, a Romney supporter and vocal advocate for hunting and gun rights, lauded Ryan for his record as a sportsman, and said that the finely tuned skill needed to wield a bow competently enough to take down a deer would translate over to the executive qualities needed to serve as vice president."

1. I think playing all those state fairs has finally started to take it's toll on the "Motor City Has-been"

From CNN:
"An elected county judge in Texas is warning that the nation could descend into civil war if President Barack Obama is re-elected, and is calling for a trained, well-equipped force to battle the United Nations troops he says Obama would bring in."

**********************************************************

The GOP bitches about class warfare, and then goes on and wages class warfare. Their base, the richest in the land, will use their power, money and influence to not only protect what they have now, but to take more in the future. Anyone who makes less than 6 figures and votes for the GOP ticket is either crazy, or dumber than a pile of bricks.
*
Progressive policies have proven failures all around the world.....even Wisconsin said enough is enough and re-elected Walker.
*
Then please tell us how Bush's neocon policies were a success? FDR's New Deal system worked well for years until your right wing twits decided to start torpedoing the hell out of it in favor of banking, wall street, oil, big pharma and the health care industries. Now go back to your think tank so they can tell you how to reply.
*
Clearly, Medicare as we know it is not sustainable, especially with more than 70 million Baby Boomers starting to enter the program at the rate of 10,000 a day.
*
Care to explain how Ryan's budget of spending cuts (firing more workers) and tax cuts (for people who won't invest the money) will lead to economic recovery?
*
It's really pretty damn simple. If you create an environment that is favorable for business (the only true job creators) to invest their capital such as lower taxes and fewer regulations then they will start hiring again. This is not rocket science, its just understanding that the job creators are businesses big and small (entrepreneurs), and not government.
*
Then why, with the lowest taxes ever, have the "job creators" not been creating jobs? Why did they create so many jobs in the heavily taxed and unionized 1950's?
*
It’s because of the uncertainty created by this administration with all the new crippling regulations, that's why. And, what is this “lowest taxes ever” crap? The USA has the highest corporate tax rates in the world. A little fact checking would be nice.
*
Please list the "crippling new regulations."
And while we DO have the "highest corporate tax rates in the world" we also have the most corporate loopholes that allow them ALL to essentially pay the LOWEST taxes in the world. You'd be wise to do your OWN fact checking.

Economics 101 in a consumer society:
1. Demand creates jobs.
2. Consumers with money to spend create demand.
3. Government programs help create demand in tough economic times. If the private sector isn't hiring (like right now), then how are the people supposed to get money to spend to re-start the engine of the economy? It's really quite simple unless you believe our government should be run like a business.
*
False. You couldn't be more wrong. The problem is the government interfering with the natural business cycles. By interfering they always make the situation worse and delay the day of recovery. A growing public sector crowds out all the private equity that would go to creating more private sector jobs. The next thing to happen because of all the stimulus and money creation by the Fed will be runaway inflation and stagflation. Bank on it.

FROM ORSON WELLES'S SCREENPLAY, THE BIG BRASS RING:

MENAKER'S VOICE: ...As a science, economics is on the level of phrenology - the hope is for a tiny boom. But then we'll all be waiting for the giant bust.

BRANDINI: Then enter Pellarin on a white horse?

MENAKER: God knows who'll be on that horse, Brandini - but he'll be somebody Blake will have to run against...Plus a coalition of bible thumpers and survivalists.

BRANDINI: Survivalists?

MENAKER: Surely you've heard of them: the stockpilers of machine guns and canned food, all ready to repel the hungries and the commie hordes. They're digging hidey-holes up in the high hills and practicing how to fight off the Apocalypse...There'll be a lot of those, and none of them vote for Blake (democrat). Not if the cities start to burn.

BRANDINI: Then what hope is there for him?

MENAKER: The world is full of liars and fools. Quite often they're the ones in charge. Like the rest of us, when that happens, all that a president can do is buy a ticket for the show.

BRANDINI: And the alternative?

MENAKER: The president takes charge.

BRANDINI: On his white horse.

(Menaker laughs)

*
It was Glenn Beck and Paul Ryan talking on Beck’s show, Ryan was the one who said progressivism was a cancer and of course Beck had an orgasm right in front of his audience.
*
The world is not static. Technologies, societies, economic systems, attitudes, morals, everything evolves. There is a term for things that do not adapt to a changing environment: extinct.

[tonyw]

The left still should be titled "Ernest goes to the NRA."

[Glenn Anders]

I've been re-reading the posts on this topic, and although Glenn Beck seems to have faded from the scene (as we predicted he would), the points made about the Republican Election Campaign turned out to be pretty well on the mark.

Thinking about Representative Todd Ryan's comments on "legitimate rape," and the fact that he sits as a senior member of the House Science Committee, suggest just one of the problems which lies ahead if the GOP wins big in the coming election. Think of Representive Ryan tipping the Senate Republican, if he wins that contested Missouri seat!

Still, the country may be thankful that the Democrats did not pick Tampa for their Convention. Think what Evangelical Republican leaders (not to mention the Reverend Pat Robertson) would have made of that!!

I've always said, when I was young, at least, "The Conventions are going to be fun." Unfortunately, in recent decades, the issues and our influence in the World have made my laughter rather increasingly hollow. I can see the End of the Trail for me now, but my children and grandchildren are going to have to live through "pure Hell," and sadly, they're going to wonder, despite the best efforts by a few of us, why it had to turn out that way.]

Ambrose Bierce wrote somewhere (paraphrasing): "Every generation of young look at the mess the older generation made for them to clean up, and they wonder . . . Why?"

This time, we'll have to literally move off the Planet Earth!

[Which is why Orson Welles was so interested in H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds." He spent his life trying to clean up the mess we called World War II and Fascism. As I said to a fishing boat captain, off the coast of Mazatlan one morning, "Looks as if the Nazis and Fascists won World War II, after all." He replied, "Yes, Señor, you can't take your eye off the Fish! It's the little fish, as well as the sharks, cause the trouble!"

Glenn Anders

[tonyw]

Today, even Ann Coulter has distanced herself from the candidate in Missouri. But if the GOP platform banning abortions for any reason, including "legitimate rape" and incest goes through then a Republican win will have disastrous consequences for everyone.

The current malaise is the result of the younger generation who believed "it can never happen again" (whether the Great Depression or Fascism) and who identified themselves with the oppressors despite not having the big bucks of those who pull the strings.

Thus, the critical essays of the late Gore Vidal and the interview legacies he has left us on youtube are essential "warning bells." But it may be too late even now. If the bi-partisan occupant of the White House and successor to Louis Lepke Buchalter gets his second term by playing on fears of the Republicans you can be sure, he will adopt those policies after the November elections.

[Glenn Anders]

I would not quite go so far as to identify President Obama with Louis Lepke Buchalter -- different Big City Mob, for one thing -- but I do think Our President is a term server. He's not up to the job before all of us. Strangely enough, Representative Ron Paul has taken over the Republican Convention, no matter how briefly, as the Republicans batten down for the Hurricane in Tampa, well fortified with Cuba Libras. I have just listened to his "Nomination Speech," and more strangely, I thought it magnificent -- the most truly patriotic of its kind I've heard in decades. If, by some miracle, he were nominated, I'd vote for Representative Paul and his New Revolution Movement. I think he's dead honest . . . really very logical, as he lays out his plan. [Paul shows considerable breadth of intellect, and he might have found much in common with Gore Vidal.]

Try to find the "Nomination Speech," Tony, on line. You might like it.

Glenn

[tonyw]

Since he has turned the Oval Office into the HQ of Murder Inc. putting out contracts of U and non-Us citizens, suspended the Bill of Rights and the Constitution Ietc I think the analogy is correct.

[Le Chiffre]

Glenn Beck seems to have faded from the scene (as we predicted he would)

But his legacy lives on at Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1xFCwQKX7w


I'll repeat the Welles quote that Ray posted recently about men having built civilization in order to impress their girlfriends ("The women let us play with our toys"). This calls to mind several statements:

"Man without technology is not man" - Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1939

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)

"Magic is nothing but playing with toys" - Orson Welles, "Magic as a Hobby", 1947

In his article, THE NAKED AND THE TED (a different "Ted"), Evgeny Morozov, a leading critic of the dark side of technological progress, leaves Welles alone, but bashes Newt Gingrich, the Tofflers, and Glenn Beck, all in the same review. Here are a few excerpts:

Parag Khanna established his reputation as a wannabe geopolitical theorist, something of a modern-day Kissinger, only wired and cool. For almost a decade he has been writing pompous and alarmist books and articles that herald a new era in international relations. He has also been circling the globe in a tireless effort to warn world leaders that democracy might be incompatible with globalization and capitalism. And that the West needs to be more like China and Singapore. And that America is running on borrowed time. And that a new Middle Ages are about to set in. (“When I look at the 21st century, I reverse the numbers around and I see the 12th century.”)

All of these insights are expressed in linguistic constructions of such absurdity and superficiality that Niall Ferguson’s “Chimerica” looks elegant and illuminating by comparison, for example: “cloud computing—not big buildings and bloated bureaucracies—is the future of global governance”.

Khanna and his wife fashion themselves as successors to Alvin and Heidi Toffler, an earlier fast-talking tech-addled couple who thrived on selling cookie-cutter visions of the future. Today the Tofflers are best-known for inspiring some of Newt Gingrich’s most outlandish ideas as well as for popularizing the term “information overload”—a phenomenon which, as numerous scholars have shown, was hardly specific to 1970 (which is when Alvin Toffler mentioned it in Future Shock) and is probably as old as books themselves. To embrace the Tofflers as intellectual role models is to make a damning admission: that one is far more interested in inventing half-clever buzzwords than in trying to understand the messy reality that those buzzwords purport to describe.

They say the Tofflers have much to teach us about the origins or the consequences of the current financial crisis? This of course is laughable. The fact that, three decades later, their glib, abstract, and pretentious writings can still serve as a template for the likes of the Khannas says more about the state of public debate in America today than it does about the accuracy of Toffler-style futurism.

TOFFLER-WORSHIP and futuristic kitsch aside, what does Khanna's new book Hybrid Reality actually argue? There are several disjointed arguments. First, that technology is supplanting economics and geopolitics as the leading driver of international relations; a silly argument, but wrapped in tech-talk it sounds almost plausible.

Technology, they say, is the magic wand that lifts nations from poverty, cures diseases, redistributes power, and promises immortality to the human race. Nations, firms, and cities that develop the smartest and most flexible way of doing this are said to possess Technik—a German term with a substantial intellectual pedigree.

Today, they believe, we are entering a new era, when humans will be so intricately dependent on technology that “human-technology coexistence has become human-technology coevolution.”

This is what the Khannas mean by the “Hybrid Age”—a “new sociotechnical era that is unfolding as technologies merge with each other and humans merge with technology.” They proceed to outline its inevitable consequences. Designer babies? Check. Cloned humans? Check. Sex robots that “can be made to look like anyone you want”? Check. A paradise!

The problem is that...To posit that we are moving into the Hybrid Age is to assume that there was once a time when such hybridity was not the case, when man and technology trod their separate paths. On the contrary, we have always been no more autonomous with regard to technology as we have been with regard to language, oxygen, or gravity.

As Ortega y Gasset wrote more eloquently in 1939: “Man without technology ... is not man”?

But still the Khannas roll dizzily along. The Hybrid Age, they say, is the transition period between the Information Age and the moment of Singularity (when machines surpass human intelligence) that inventor Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, estimates we may reach by 2040 (perhaps sooner). These are end times. The Hybrid Age is the preparation for the apotheosis of that Singularity...And in case you wonder where you might turn for assistance in “managing this transition,” the Khannas run a for-profit consulting firm called Hybrid Reality Institute.

Perhaps this is what the Hybrid Age is all about: marketing masquerading as theory, charlatans masquerading as philosophers, a New Age cult masquerading as a university, business masquerading as redemption, slogans masquerading as truths.

THIS BOOK is not just useless piffle about technology; it is also an endorsement of some rather noxious political ideas. China is one of the Khannas’ role models, and they have the guts to write that “a decade from now we will look back at China’s 12th Five-Year Plan as the seminal document of the early 21st century.”

And what makes the Five-Year Plan so seminal? “It pledges $1.5 trillion in government support for seven ‘strategic emerging industries,’ including alternative energy, biotechnology, next-gen IT, high-end manufacturing equipment, and advanced materials.” Would it really surprise anyone if in a few years some of that $1.5 trillion were to trickle down to the Hybrid Reality Institute?

Technik, as they use this term, is something so expansive and nebulous that it can denote absolutely anything. Technik is the magic concept that allows the Khannas to make their most meaningless sentences look as if they actually carry some content.

Technik is every pundit’s wet dream: a foreign word that confers an air of cosmopolitanism upon its utterer. It can be applied to solve virtually any problem, and it is so abstract that its purveyor can hardly be held accountable for its inaccuracies and inanities.

Likewise, a catch-all term such as “technology” might be helpful, but analytically it is useless, in the way that lumping Warhol, Chardin, hip hop, Chaplin, Haydn, and science fiction under the term “arts” is useless. At such a level of generality every fool can sound brilliant.

We easily fall for grand theories about the universe, be it the Singularity, Toffler’s Third Wave, or the Hybrid Age. Much like Glenn Beck’s magic blackboard, it connects everything to everything without saying anything significant about anything.

II.
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design): Ideas Worth Spreading, is no longer a responsible curator of ideas “worth spreading.” Instead it has become something ludicrous, and a little sinister.

Today TED is an insatiable kingpin of international meme laundering—a place where ideas, regardless of their quality, go to seek celebrity, to live in the form of videos, tweets, and now e-books...until any shade of depth or nuance disappears into the virtual void. Richard Dawkins, the father of memetics, should be very proud. Perhaps he can explain how “ideas worth spreading” become “ideas no footnotes can support.”

The TED ideal of thought is the ideal of the “takeaway”—the shrinkage of thought for people too busy to think.

Parag Khanna’s writings on geopolitics never amounted to much of anything even before his turn to technology, but it is instructive to see how his presentation has changed now that he has embedded himself in the TED firmament. Save for a hackneyed nod to the “world’s chessboard,” he now makes only cursory references to power structures and strategic alliances. Instead he strikes all the right chords to elicit approval from the TED crowd.

The Khannas are typical of the TED crowd in that they do not express much doubt about anything. Whatever problems lurk on the horizon are imagined primarily as problems of technology, which, given enough money, brain power, and nutritional supplements, someone in Silicon Valley should be in a position to solve.

On the other hand, a short talk on inequality given by a venture capitalist was something that TED refused to release for fear that it might offend too many rich people.

In TED world, tech entrepreneurs are in the business of solving the world’s most pressing problems. This is what makes TED stand out from other globalist shindigs, and makes its intellectual performances increasingly irrelevant to genuine thought and serious action.

Given TED’s disproportionate influence on a certain level of the global debate, it follows that the public at large also becomes more approving of technological solutions to problems that are not technological but political. Problems of climate change become problems of making production more efficient or finding ways to colonize other planets—not of reaching political agreement on how to limit production or consume in a more sustainable fashion. Problems of health care become problems of inadequate self-monitoring and data-sharing...problems of aid and development are no longer seen as problems of weak and corrupt institutions; they are recast as problems of inadequate connectivity or an insufficiency of gadgets. According to the Khannas, “centuries of colonialism and decades of aid haven’t lifted Africa’s fortunes the way technology can.” Hence the latest urge to bombard Africa with tablets and Kindles, which would make it harder for the African savages to say “no” to the civilization of MIT (and TED). This is la mission civilatrice 2.0.

It is hardly surprising that the Khannas’ deep admiration of Singapore’s technocratic authoritarianism is well-received by the TEDdies—after all, they prefer to fix broken countries as if they are broken start-ups. The idea that solving any of their favorite global problems would require political solutions—is not something that the TED elite likes to hear. Politics slows things down; but technology speeds things up. TED’s techno-humanitarians - “The White Savior Industrial Complex”—would bulldoze entire villages in order to build another Foxconn plant rather than bother with the slow progress of political reform.

The Hybrid Age ... might also become a Pax Technologica, but …Techno-humanitarianism is much more techno than humanitarian.

Evgeny Morozov is the author, most recently, of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (PublicAffairs). This article originally appeared in the August 23, 2012 issue of the magazine.

[Le Chiffre]

Well, Ted Nugent thinks the majority of voting Americans are "pimps, whores and welfare brats".  because 100,000,000 Americans spoke their mind on Tuesday and the majority of these Americans chose Obama, and as Ted Nugent puts it, "economic and spiritual suicide", adding "What subhuman varmint believes others must pay for their obesity, booze, cellphones, birth control, abortions & lives?"

Meanwhile Glenn Beck is warning conservatives to buy farmland and guns:
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics ... guns-farms

Newt publicly predicted a Romney landslide, but privately there was this curiously prescient email that was "mistakenly" sent to his supporters five days before the election:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/errant-e ... d=17618977

The "Third term" paranoia in a strange way recalls SECRET HONOR by Donald Freed (who worked with Orson Welles on a screenplay called THE ASSASSIN, a story about the assassination of Robert Kennedy). At the end of Secret Honor:

Nixon admits that he has been the willing tool of a political network he alternately calls "the Bohemian Grove" and "The committee of 100". The alleged interest of the committee is the heroin trade with Asia...However, after the 1972 vote he received new orders from them: they wanted Nixon to keep the Vietnam war going on at all costs, then go for a third term in office, so they can continue their business with the president as their strawman. (Wiki)

[RayKelly]

The Daily Beast/ Newsweek has an interesting piece on Glenn Beck remaking his image as a libertarian at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/12/glenn-beck-attempts-a-laughable-make-over-as-a-libertarian.html

Glenn Beck is rebranding himself as – get this – the alternative to “far-right, far-left” polarized debates on cable news, dominated by people “yelling at each-other.”
“We're not going to play in that crazy space as a network," he announced earnestly. The irony meter just died. Hypocrisy and chutzpah had a child.

The article includes the observation:

At his core Beck is closer to Father Coughlin than Ron Paul, let alone his hero Orson Welles.

[Le Chiffre]

That's a good observation.

Now it looks like Beck is moving into the same location where Welles and the Mercury were based:
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/m ... es-history

If he's still intent on exploiting Welles's name, why doesn't he at least use some of his money to help finance the completion of TOSOTW?

[Wich2]

(If you listen closely, you can hear Orson's legendary horselaugh...)

-Craig

[GlennandersFraser]

You know, looking back upon this political discussion, the combination of H.G Wells, the Tofflers, and Glenn Beck is a pretty good one. It has legs.

I saw a nice interview with Glenn Beck on CNN (I think) the other night. He didn't look very well, but he explained his change of thought quite clearly. He is clearly a man still in the political arena.

That reminds me that participating in discussions on IMDb about the brilliant MAD MEN series, I came across Don Draper, the protagonist of this six year, critically and mass audience drama, now coming to an end, I discovered, that the cynical advertising "genius" expresses Orson Welles oft quoted line, "We are born alone, we die alone . . . . " without attribution -- found in the First Season, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." He is expressing a play for business-sexual conquest. Later in that Seaspn, Joan -- the Sterling-Cooper female counterpart to Draper, refers to a "feckless" swain as '"a big mouth" when he complains that she keeps referring to him as Orson Welles. I have the impression that Producer-Writer Mathew Weiner (of "Weiner Brothers Productions") sees Welles an idol and a mentor!

Orson Welles, not to mention Glenn Beck, may have another (modern day) emulator.

You're on the right trail, wich2.

Glenn Anders