Bush Wants $50 Billion More for the War

Bush Likes to Keep Wasting Your Money on Illegal, Unjust Wars While People at Home can GO TO HELL (and to the hospital emergency room if you don't have health care or health insurance).

JUST SAY NO!

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT ASK BUSH & CONGRESS IF THERE AREN'T BETTER THINGS AT HOME WE COULD USE THAT MONEY FOR:

• What about our crumbling infrastructure?

• What about New Orleans?

• What about the 49 million americans (at least) without access to health care and health insurance?

• What about all the decent-paying jobs that have been replaced by minimum wage part time jobs at Wal-mart and Mcdonalds?

• What about seriously restoring our now third-world educational system?

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: WHAT ABOUT THIS:

Let's use that 50 billion dollars to re-create a new:

'Re-Build America Project'

A new type of public/private partnership -- a new WPA that uses all the talent we have here to:

create real jobs while re-building, improving, repairing our failing physical and energy infrastructure;

get us off of foreign oil (the REAL reason we are in iraq);

protect our ports and borders HERE from REAL terrorists not the pretend threats manufactured by racist xenophobes;

protect our food supplies and re-build our agricultural food production (and family farm systems);

get americans some much-needed health care, and while we're at work and getting health care --

you watch america start losing all that weight and lard-asses from the crap cheap fast food working people have to eat while working at crap minimum wage jobs.

How come we don't hear any candidates -- not even the Democrats -- (because Jesus knows the Republikkkans would never even think of it much less advocate it) -- but why isn't anyone talking about that kind of plan for america?

Technorati Tags:
economy, worst health care system, WPA, Rebuild America, Jobs

End of the Sopranos: Is that all there is? (follow up to initial reactions to Made in America)

One Final Post Script (follow up to the previous post which includes an mp3 of Miss Peggy Lee singing"Is That All There Is?"

Chase's brilliance seemingly remains intact after all is said and done. After all, so many of us Sopranos afficionados are still chewing it over, taking second and third and continuing bites from the apple....revisiting, re-thinking, re-analyzing (probably re-watching the repeats?) ... it's even more complex and confounding the more I think about it. More depressing in some ways, in fact.

The final scene: Tony looks up, immediately fade to black, we hear the tinkling of the door as presumably Meadow walks in. Nothing. More. Only dark silence. Was Meadow the last thing Tony saw? Was the tinkling bell Tony's last conscious sound on earth?

Didn't Bobby ask in the first episode of this final season, (a memory Tony recalled just previously in The Blue Comet) while they were sitting in the boat on the lake, something along the lines of "You probably never even hear it when it happens to you do you?" ... In other words, Life fades to black. Period. Shades of Livia. Rebuttal to Tony's peyote-induced claim to Melfi that "there's something else beyond this."

So maybe there is no Sopranos movie after all. Maybe the menacing guy going into the bathroom was an homage to Michael Corleone's initiation into becoming a 'made' guy, committing his first 'official' blood ritual murder in the unforgettable restaurant scene in the Godfather, when Michael the American War Hero became made into his father's family business by retrieving a hidden gun from behind the toilet in the men's restroom, going back into the restaurant and blam! He blows the corrupt police captain and the other mobster guys away. Michael becomes made in America.

Or maybe the title "Made in America" is a sly insider riff on the Sopranos eating out -- for the first and only time I can remember -- in an all-American style cafe -- they're not eating Italian dishes: ziti, chicken parm, pasta with gravy, gabagool -- nothing remotely Italian. It's 'made in America' hamburgers and onion rings at a juke joint (actually an ice cream parlor from what I've read). And earlier, during the discussion about Carlo (insignificant in mytharc, another Chase 'trick'), Tony and his lawyer were eating burgers and fries from the Bada Bing (or wherever they were meeting). And Bobby's funeral -- weren't all the catered dishes shown 'American' only?

But then whaddo I know? Except that the desire to 'get it' to truly understand the point of it all continues for now. Was this a worthwhile JOURNEY* after all? Yeah, sure it was. What is the point if not the journey, the voyage, not merely the destination? Did Chase answer all -- or any -- of our questions? Leave us hanging sadistically? Or encourage us to consider whether the point of the mundane daily struggle is to do more than just exist, more than merely survive while hoping for more than the nihilistic cynicism of Livia Soprano's legacy. Or is Chase's point simply that the mundane IS all there is? And if so that we simply find myriad ways to entertain ourselves, to waste our lives, waste our time on frivolous entertainments? While the David Chases of the world laugh all the way to the bank (and to France, Italy, wherever they buy their European mansions). Who can say?




*(Journey was the band playing on the jukebox -- Carm and Tony's special song from High School if I recall from a long ago episode; the final one ending with the words "Don't Stop" as Tony sharp-cut fades to black)

Initial reactions to Made in America: Is that All There Is? Sopranos Final Episode

First reaction. An initial state of stupefaction (then a slightly fainter echo of Timothy Noah's vehemently expressed opinion already up on Slate (see below for link). Best expressed by the inimitable Miss Peggy Lee.

Press Play to Listen >> Is That All There Is?

Second reaction. It's not so bad. Okay, so there's definitely the extremely strong possibility of leaving the door open for a Sopranos movie. Whew. Chase did end on Journey's Don't Stop Believing, specifically on the words "Don't Stop." Then dead silence. A very interesting choice indeed.

Third reaction. Maybe Chase really is quite cynical about human nature. Darnit. I'm often cynical (cyclically cynical, these days being on the downside what with Bush, Cheney, et al). But it also means I'm mostly okay for now upon realizing that both of Tony's families continue, warts, self-delusions, psychoses and all. Probably getting worse, not better. Did you notice how easily AJ was distracted from such overwhelmingly serious life and death issues to the most superficial, venal and equally corrupt and dehumanizing of ventures as T.'s own enterprises? (i.e., Hollywood; once again Chase having his cake and eating it too).

But then again what 'typical' American parents (especially on either coast) aspiring for their children's futures wouldn't desperately want to talk/manipulate/entice/bribe their precious young childling out of joining any war, especially this immoral gawd-awful, unending, body-maiming, unjust, cursed war?

And being bought off. Well, it's also 'typical' of so many middle/upper middle class/wealthy/privileged/entitled American teens isn't it? How they're socialized? It's what mass media reinforces up the 'Ying Yang' as Tony might say. Meandering if not flitting from one craze or distraction to the next, what with ADHD and the infinite possibilities of so many consumer choices. Consuming, buying, gas-guzzling right along with Mom and Dad, (and all the rest of us). At least that's the message we're left with. Again, pretty cynical of Chase. Crikey. They're supposed to be our future and all that.

And was Tony's cynical view of women as recently discussed with Dr. Melfi about to be 'borne' out with possible news of Meadow's pregnancy??

Tony's self-referential hijacking of the therapy session was a reminder of how uninterrupted his narcissism remains. That was a classic scene with a classic Tony. Worth the price of admission for that scene definitely.

James Wolcott has some interesting first impressions too.

A few quick points about the Sopranos finale: too much overlaying of soundtrack top-40 tunes and TV/movie clips, as if the creatives were trying to cut and paste a thick collage of Added Significance and Cultural Associations, and the reaction shot of the guy puking after ----'s head was melon-squashed by the car wheel was a cheap fillip. And all the A.J. stuff--useless; pointless. Liked the cat, though; it showed commendable poise and dignity in the face of Paulie's patented snarl of churlish hostility and overacting.

...All of the muddle was redeemed by the supreme construction of tension in the diner--such crosscutting!--and its lack of resolution, as if David Chase, chuckling maliciously, was denying forever the audience's desire for climax and catharsis.

I don't agree that the A.J. stuff was ALL useless -- maybe a little too much, but I think it made the point about the cycles of family development, the most venal aspects of growing up in such excessive capitalism, etc. I too loved the cat. Loved it. (Chase's sly foreboding warning to us that only the smile of the Cheshire Cat will remain?)

Then again with so many loose ends (we've learned to expect them from Chase even if we hate them -- like Timothy Noah's most recent Slate post expresses so vociferously), the door is open for future adventures in Soprano-land. For me, for now, that's enough.

At least it wasn't as bad as the horrible Seinfeld finale. Still ... disappointment lingers. Can't help having wanted something more satisfying. Chase seems to have wanted a little to much to tweak Tony's adoring fans and the series loyal viewers. Yeah, a little too much bafungoo from Chase in the end. Ingrate.

Footnote: After what felt like some sort of unsatisfying ambiguously contradictory yet sorta satisfying betrayal by The End of the Sopranos (not completely sure yet if it is but darn if I don't feel a little like Carm right now -- maybe it's a gut-reaction pushback to Chase's choice to force us into Cold Turkey, his having the last laugh...the joke's always on us in Soprano-land isn't it?) -- anyway, John from Cincin-whatever...definitely disappointing. How could it be otherwise?

But wait! What does it all mean? Was Tony whacked? Were we whacked (metaphorically speaking) by Chase? It's looking deeper and more loaded with weighty symbolism and messages all the time. An allegory for us, for our times, for our culture, nation, world all the time.