Money Never Sleeps

I have to hand it to Oliver Stone. Not for a job well done on his first shot at a sequel to one of his movies, but on being a great Director falling short in that effort. The reason I have to hand it to him, is that at least he tried. It would seem that Oliver Stone does not love sequels, but the rampant speculation and "leverage" during the early part of the new century, crystalizing into the financial meltdown (and near worldwide economic collapse) in 2008, he felt compelled to make another movie based upon the famous Gecko mantra that "greed is good".
The fact that the second movie fell short does not matter as much to me as the heavy-handed story line. We're presently with character after character that are simply not real people. And they're not real people in the sense that no one actually acts like the people they are trying to represent, not in the typical movie way in which the characters are overblown representations of reality. Except for maybe a few people, the guys on top at the companies involved in the financial meltdown were nerds. These are guys that went through business school hoping to get ahead, and when they happened to see their shot they took it. Smart guys all, but not smart enough to see the *collapse* at the end of the tunnel.
Frank Langella's thinly veiled portrayal of a partner at Lehman or Bear Stears (more closely Lehman) was not terrible, but his insistence on portraying the character as contemplative when these guys seemed anything but, was a bit too cinematic. The guys in the middle of the financial storm that was taking place, were trying desperately to figure out a way to both save their companies, but more importantly, to save themselves. It was every man for himself at that point, and lifeboats were in very short order (although I must say that most of these guys turned out alright, they just moved from investment banking into hedge funds, and steared clear of the regulations).
Brolin's character lacked any depth whatsoever. I guess I might be a little bias since I'm not a big fan of Josh Brolin (although to be fair, his character in "No Country for Old Men" was very good and convincing. I felt as though the pompous character was all lines, all ambition, but no reality. He was so quick to quiver in the face of adversity. And it's not that there aren't characters like that in other movies (a la Bud Fox from the prequel), but he wasn't portrayed in that way all along, and therefore it did not fit in as being a character trait of his. Brolin's portrayal of a one-dimensional character (written that way), showed a lack of creativity (much as he did with George W. Bush in "W") and ended up making his character have little to no effect on the movie. It's not that his character wasn't involved in the movie, but I didn't care if he continued making money, went to jail, or jumped out of the office window.
Shia LeBeouf, even as the main character, had almost no effect on the movie as a whole. He seemed to be the crux of all of the drama in the story, but participated in almost none of it. Shia has shown one again what an overly ambitious, over acting young person can do to a role. He makes it invisible. His emotions seemed to be acted, his well delivered lines seemed to be done too well, and his demeanor seemed to never change. His character was supposed to care a lot about money, then seemed to care about feelings, then seemed to care about changing the world, then seemed to... There was no focus whatsoever, and the bottom line was that at the end - especially in the final scene - we had no clue who the character was, or any reason for believing that he had ever been what he had purported to be, or if he was, if he would ever change.
Carrie Mulligan did a fine job, although her performance was rather staid. She played the same character through the whole movie, we knew who she was, how she felt, and what she wanted, we just weren't being pulled along that well by her to care.
By far the best acting done in this movie was by the man who made the first movie good. Michael Douglas, like Gordon Gekko himself, may be a bit washed up as an actor, but he still shows that the chops are still there. The idea of having Douglas play Gekko as an older man, who is wise to his once terrible ways, but has little self-control to stop himself from continuing them, is very complex, and makes his character not only believable, but almost salvages the whole movie. While other characters may have more prominent roles, the story belongs to Gordon Gekko. The story is about his personal redemption; not redemption in the sense that he's being forgiven for his past wrongs, but redemption in the fact that he can learn to know himself well enough to understand that he will never be anything but what he always was. When he comes out of prison, Gekko seems to be the propagator of sour grapes about the financial system, and is seen as a sort of nostradamus about the impending collapse. But what we come to recognize is that while Gekko does see the approaching doom, he simply can't help himself when the opportunity arises to not only get even, but get rich; and more importantly, involved. A poignant scene, is one in which Gekko is seeing his daughter for the first time in years, they are sitting in a restaurant, and he asks her a question. In the middle of her response, he interrupts her to say hello to a well-known business leader who has no clue who Gekko is. He wants the clout, he wants the contacts, he wants the notoriety. He loves the game, and we see in the end, that is all he loves, and all he has left.
Overall, the theme of the movie came through, but the characters and the plot were not what did it. In the end it was Gekko.
As a side note, the ending was an abomination, and you could do yourself a favor to skip the last 10 minutes of the movie.

Are you serious!!??

Well, the debate over healthcare reform continues to rage. The Democrat's [and White House's] proposals become more and more watered-down each time the President opens his mouth. While many in the House of Reps think the public option is the defining characteristic of positive reform legislation, the President continues to undermine this perspective by saying that the public option is not only, not the cornerstone of this healthcare reform legislation, but is not the only major part of it either. Alright, Prez, what is?
I understand his desire to make the legislation seem less controversial by staying away from what the conservatives are deeming "socialist" legislation (i.e. the public option), but what I fail to understand is his failure to understand that no matter how ineffective Democrats make the bill, Republicans are simply not going to support it. And actually, this claim is a little bit overzealous, as many Democrats are not going to support either, because they're in the back pockets of the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies (e.g. Max Baucus).
Essentially, the system we currently have in place awards the insurance companies with tens of billions of dollars in profit each year, by insuring the healthy, and dropping insurance (or denying in the first place) for those that are unhealthy, or potentially unhealthy. Therefore, it would certainly be a start to make legislation requiring the insurance companies to take on individuals with pre-existing conditions, and not to drop individuals once new conditions develop, but there's one major part of the legislation that will do more to insure insurance companies' profits and do nothing to curb the high costs (unless we have the public option), and that is the mandate that all individuals will be required to have health insurance. Unless this public option is passed, this will essentially usher 60 million new individuals into the healthcare industry (most of whom are fairly healthy), without providing any option as to how they're going to pay for something that they already couldn't pay for before it was mandated. I'm pretty sure if people could afford insurance right now, they'd be paying for it; therefore, I'm not sure how requiring someone to purchase something they cannot afford from a company that is looking to maximize profits at the expense of the people paying for the required service is helpful to anyone. The President says that people shouldn't go bankrupt trying to pay for medicals bills because they don't have insurance, but what about people not being able to afford to pay their other bills because they're required to pay for health insurance. Don't play the fool, Obama, you already let the cat out of the bag about how smart you are.
That brings me to the next point, which is that if any sort of positive progressive healthcare reform legislation actually made it to the floor of the House, and then actually passed (I imagine along very partisan lines) in the House, there would still be the huge roadblock to any legislation, let alone anything that could possibly be labeled effective, called the United States Senate. You remember the Senate, right; these were the same people who brought you the 2000 election finale, the TARP controvery, and the [*snicker*] stimulus package.
Once the dust settles - and the Dems settle, for a bad bill - we'll probably find that Obama has completely spent all of his political capital and credibility, for essentially ineffective healthcare reform legislation. He's already alienating conservatives (misrepresented, misconstrued, and misplaced or not, it's still happening), he's alienating liberals, and those in the middle just want things to go back the way they were; back when they could buy a house, buy a car, work a crummy job, and be generally unhappy, without having to worry about their taxes going up and down, the economy in flux, or the healthcare needs of a mere 50 million uninsured Americans (only some 16% of the population).

Highly Rational.....

Folks, listen up, I've got a great plan.
What we're going to do is cut taxes to the point of making government ineffective, and then you're going to blame government when they can no longer provide the services that your taxes were initially setup to pay for. How does that sound?
Ridiculous, right?
Well, as we've seen in the case of California, slashing taxes and yet still trying to maintain government programs has not only made the programs themselves fail, but has practically bankrupted the state treasury (literally). The people of California have decided through referendum, that cutting taxes is a good thing, and this idea has been supported and re-supported by Republicans and Libertarians. While it has become a political disaster for Democrats to support raising taxes, they're the only rational group in this whole mess, understanding that to pay for necessary government programs, the government needs money to operate.
However, I suppose Republicans don't find schools, healthcare, or police and fire protection important. Legislatures slash to expenditures on necessary programs, meanwhile the federal government continues to expand the Pentagon and military budgets which puts us further and further in debt, with no prospect of things changing anytime soon.

I think the real aim of Republicans, and especially Libertarians, in cutting these necessary government expenditures is an effort to cut these programs so much that privatization therefore becomes necessary, giving corporations the chance to make huge profits in providing necessary services that government should be providing. The reason the regular populace votes for cutting taxes but for increased services, is because they fail to understand that one pays for the other. The federal government (and often state governments as well, but to a lesser degree) operates on such a high deficit-spending model for such a long period of time, that we've become accustomed to accepting services for something we didn't pay for. This also brings into question the accountability of the taxes we are paying; while we cut these programs, the money is still being spent somewhere, but where exactly is that money going. On what is our government, both state and federal, spending our tax dollars on? I think that if we as a populace knew exactly where are money was going, we would be much more inclined to stop spending it on wasted expenditures (does anyone remember the Bridge to Nowhere?), and start spending it on useful social and public interest institutions that will create the greatest good for the great number (can anyone say Utilitarianism?). Raising taxes would not even become necessary if our government started spending money on those things that benefitted society, instead of acting with impunity and behind closed doors, and spending money on whatever our legislators find to be politically convenient within their respective districts/regions, etc.

A day will come, mark my words, when the United States federal treasury will collapse, the burden of debt to income will simply overwhelm it, and it will cease to function in any meaningful way. At this time our dependence upon foreign borrowing, specifically from countries like China and Japan, will come home to roost, and when we can no longer support our debt load, the country will collapse economically and militarily. That will be the end of the United States empire.

And to think, all we have to do is start paying taxes; or in simpler terms, all we have to start doing is paying for what we receive (and more importantly receive what we pay for).

Will it Ever End?

I can't believe we're still stuck in the midst of this Democratic Primary. I guess we should have known at the outset that Barack Obama - if he was going to have any shot at all - was going to have to contend with the Clintons - I say Clintons because Hillary's running on the coattails of her husbands presidency. How this whole charade will pan out I think is completely up in the air; even the pundits change their opinions from week to week, and even day to day. I guess the frustrating thing for a person of my specific political persuasion is that I don't understand how the majority of people can be so willing to turn a blind eye to the glaring reality that the government - any government, but especially the current administration - no longer reflects either the will or the interest of those whose duty it is to serve. It's true that people will respond affirmatively if you ask them questions about lobbyist power, insider politics, and government greed, but even in answering they still fail to accept that their government is moving in a completely opposite direction of where we as the people would like to believe. Eventually this once great country of ours, founded upon the principles that we need to reinstill - democratic values, equality, and true liberty - will reach a point where the people must make a choice to either let their government continue to be controlled by an oligarchic regime, or whether or not we as citizens (in the true meaning of the word) will take back our government from those aristocrats who have unlawfully stolen it, and place the power back in the hands of the people. I think that the latter is inevitable. Just like Marx's assertion that the revolution was inevitable, so do I say that eventually the corruption, poverty, inequality, and overall degregation of the majority of the population of this country will become so extreme that United States citizens will no longer connect with their government, and will in turn create a new one. A coup d'etat will take place, in which and incendiary force will rise to the forefront of the revolutionary force, and will take command of the new government as a vanguard for positive change. In the end, it will be what it always should have been (but never was), a true democracy, where the will of the people truly rule; no two-party system, no electoral college, no faulty ballots or rigged machines, no super-delegates, and no more divisive politics that put people in corners from which to fight, instead of putting people together in the middle to have positive discussion about what will uplift us all. Greed, corruption, hate, inequality; these things will become as antiquated as slavery, and we will move forward with not an imperialist, neocolonial strategy, but instead a grand idea for welcoming, embracing, and uplifting all people's throughout the world. Then and only then, will we be able to call ourselves the greatest nation on earth - the nation of humankind.

The Rudimentary Musings in Madness

I sometimes feel like I'm going crazy. Crazy from the city, crazy from my life, crazy from my relationship, crazy from my friends. In general I would say that I tend towards general levity with regard to life, but lately I've become so disenchanted with the prospects for a "successful" life. What is a successful life? I have no ambitions toward excess wealth, and yet find myself in an awkward position where my genuine ambition to help the poor has unfortunately put me in the ranks of them. Maybe it's the nature of New York City that creates a certain maladjustment of priorities with regard to ones life goals, but I find myself desiring (let me restate that I have no ambition toward excess wealth) to write a book just to be able to support my pragmatic endeavors to help the world's downtrodden and oppressed. In reality, I think that I will just have end up supplementing my meager income with a second job while I attempt in my feeble way to save the world one obese child at a time.

Soundtrack

I know that I've talked about this many times before, but it's amazing how certain songs become part of the soundtracks of our lives. It's especially interesting living in New York City, how so many songs seem to reflect the speed and bustle of the city perfectly. I'm not saying other songs don't represent other speeds and cities as well, but I think the prevalence of the Ipod as a standard of city life adds to the sync. Walking down the street wearing an ipod, everyone's steps seem to merge into a grand clatter that buttresses the idea of the unity of all things. However, it's also an interesting contrast that in a city where everything is loud and in your face, you can have a sense of your own personal respite down the cords or your headphones. Back to the original point about the soundtrack however; I got to thinking about my old commute on the Metro North, and how I was often mesmermized looking out the window watching the scenery move swiftly past, and how when a song like Simon and Garfunkel's America comes on, or something even more philosophically stimulating like Enigma's Return to Innocense, that I all of the sudden realize that songs are written deliberately for that cause, because they usually come from the life experiences of the individual writing them. Certainly this doesn't necessarily hold true for pop songs, but real music artists (like visual or written artists) write what they know - personal experiences; love, heartbreak, lust, beauty, splendor, death, they're all perfect topics because as humans we can relate and make those songs ours if we're not lucky enough to be blessed with the lyrical talent to write a poem or a ballad. In the end we realize that music is a unification tool used by individuals who wish to express themselves to the rest of us in the best way they know how......and you know what, we love it.