Bill and Hillary, NOW Well-Heeled Hillbillies

Bill and Hillary the Arkansas Hillbilly Millionaires--YAHOO!
And a "yeeehaw" goes in there, too. Yep, old Bill and Miss Hill revealed their 2006 earnings, and, yep, old Slick Willie alone made 22 million on speaking engagements. I don't get that; who the hell has money to give the Slick One that much money for a speech! Oh well, I'd forgotten how Ronnie Raygun was given 1 million for 1 lecture one time by the Japanese or somebody. What a ship of fools on which we ride.

So, if Hill Gal wins the presidency, then Slick Willie will be the First Lady. Boy, will old Bill have fun if Hill makes it. You know his hand's going straight up Hill's big, kind'a overbloomed ass and will be working her for all he's worth. Finagling her into the presidency is the Slick One's way of making up to Hillary for all the cattin' around the self-centered primping peacock did while he was Guv'nor of Arkansas (the 51st state in the union in most statistical situations) and making 35 grand a year and then while he was president making 250 grand a year. From those humble beginnings to now both he and old Hill are worth over 30 million bucks, not that they declared that much--believe me. They are now rich enough to feel comfortable around Pappy Bush (Bill's new best friend) and Mammy Babs Bush, who you know despises riff-raff like Hillary RodHAM Clinton. (I'm still hollering, "Where's Chelsea while all of this is going on?" Is she out campaigning on her own, with Mr. Jiggs (Cheeta the Chimp) as her running mate? Did she take my advice?) Mammy Babs is pedigree rich, by the bye; her old daddy was a big publisher or something in Saint Louie--I'm too uninterested to double-check, but she's maybe even richer than Pappy in an inheritance sense. Inheritance, what a waste of the American Workers's hard work--making these worthless families so rich they now control all our earnings, all our savings, and all our futures.

My statement, like Ralph Nader's, that there is no difference between Hillary and Bush except for family wealth still stands--all these creepy millionaire politicians, and it's most of them, all have the same power goals in mind, and now that Hill is a millionaire on her own, she's probably now fascinating about a Clinton Family Empire--based on her jealousy of the Bush Family Empire--and you know Hillary is a jealous bitch--I can read it in her eyes--though further back into her eyes than that reveals a very dull woman, a "Duh" woman--dumb as an Arkansas grade school kid--usually 15 years old and still in the 3rd grade. "If'n he ever does git out'a school, he's gonna be the best edgey-cated fool in the world."

And Obama's campaign lawyer today said he thought Scooter Libby shouldn't have to go to prison. Obama said he wasn't speaking for him--but he kept him on as his lawyer anyway. Obama ain't no progressive, folks; he's kissing Colon's Pal's ass now, that's the same Colon's Pal who was the notorious enemy-and-US-body-counter in Vietnam under his old South boss General "Where's my pickininny servin' boy?" Westmoreland. I wouldn't trust Colon's Pal as far as I can throw him, and he's a big MF-er so I couldn't even pick him up much less throw him. So Obama ain't gonna change nothing but the skin color in the White House--and remember, he's half-white so he's half-untrustworthy.

The bloggers, who just love Al "Big Loser" Gore, are now squealing for a Gore-Obama ticket. Yes, Gore for President, because they know down in their white blogging hearts that Obama probably doesn't have a chance in hell of being president so they've stuck good ole inventor of the Internet Al in their ticket as president--I'm pretty sure old Son of the South Al would never run as an underling to a black man--Al's from Tennessee, remember--the Scopes-Monkey Trials state (read: Snopeses in there, too); yep, Al's right out of the Cracker barrel and I'm quite sure he and Tipper have blacks working around the Gore Family Mansion, but I bet there ain't many blacks sittin' around the old Gore dining table much--I doubt if Al has a close personal friend who is black. I'll betcha on that one. I'm an Old South wolf and I know my forebears--so I'll bet ya on that one.

Al Gore is a LOSER. Bush and Rove are jumping for joy if Al runs again. They know it's as easy to steal an election from Al as it is for John Kerry.

thegrowlingwolf's Sure 'Nuff Losing Dumbocrat Ticket
How about a Gore-Kerry ticket. Two sure LOSERS on the same ticket. Should be a winner, right?

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a very bright man, not only said poets should be anarchists, but he also said our government was a bird with two right wings! I heartily YAY that statement.

By the time the election comes around, who the hell knows whether the human race will still be here?--over a year and a half to go and just think of the millions of our tax dollars these birds are gonna burn up in chartered airplanes, limousines (our politicos are too important to drive their own cars--or if they do use their own Beamers or Hummers they'll drive like Rep. Patrick Kennedy, drunk as a Lord and pilled up to boot; at least, unlike drunken, pill-head, naive, poor little rich girl Paris Hilton, Rep. Patrick Kennedy didn't have to serve one F-ing minute in anybody's pokey--a different kind of rich privilege than little rich dumbass Paris has), their own salaries--oh, yes, these birds give themselves salaries out of their campaign funds. Don't you think Hillbilly Hill has Slick Willie down as one of her campaign aides or something. We are talking about these hyperhillbillies getting their greedy mitts on millions and millions of tax-free dollars--holy Moses, I mean, come on, hands in the till--that's just the surface.

Greed. And Greed is a great book, though, of course, very white--but written by one of those Far West San Francisco dudes like Jack London, also a great stylish writer but an open racist, too. But Frank Norris wrote a great novel called Greed, about a phony dentist named Mac and his wife and their friends--and the eccentric Erich Von Stroheim (he was a phony "von" I think), a pompous total ass to boot, tried to make the novel into a movie--it turned out, Von Stroheim's idea was to make every page of the novel a scene in the movie--and the movie got longer and longer and the sets got outrageously expensive--Von Stroheim's greed for Hollywood recognition ruined his one chance at it with so great a novel to film. I don't think the movie was ever finished--are there even any versions of it left--it may have disintegrated in some film companies vaults. The final version of the film, shown once in its entirety by Stroheim at a private party in 1924--it ran for 9 hours.

Anyway, it's a good novel. I think a woman wrote the screenplay.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

Greed, the Movie (from Off the Web):

In January of 1924, director Erich von Stroheim gathered a small group of friends to view his magnum opus, a film which would become legendary. This was GREED & when the experience was over, all there agreed that they had just seen the greatest motion picture ever created. They were the only audience to see the film in its entirety.

Von Stroheim was, with Griffith & Chaplin, one of the authentic geniuses of the silent cinema. He had an unerring eye for what was visual and how to transfer mere words into astonishing images on the screen. He was also terribly adept at spending other people's money. A notorious stickler for the most authentic minute detail, he ignored concerns for time & financial budgets.

The original GREED ran somewhere between 8 and 9½ hours. While that would be fine for a modern TV miniseries, it is unworkable for a motion picture. The bosses at MGM had had difficulty with von Stroheim before and were in no mood to mess around. GREED was taken out of its director's control and hacked down to 140 minutes. All the excised footage was destroyed. This is the blackest spot on Irving Thalberg's memory. Von Stroheim mourned his lost masterpiece the rest of his life.

The story, although incredibly detailed, is fairly straightforward. The corrupting influence of wealth is examined through the lives of seven individuals. The tragic marriage of Mac, a fake dentist & Trina, an innocent young woman, is compared & contrasted to the equally horrific relationship between the mad Maria & Zerkow the Junkman; and to the beatific love between Old Grannis, owner of a dog hospital & Miss Baker, a sweet old lady. Shadowing Mac & Trina is her cousin Marcus, equally in love with her & the $5,000 she wins in a lottery.

The story of Mac & Trina is the main focus & it is utterly compelling. Seldom has the destruction of a marriage been seen in such detail. Certain scenes stay in the mind a long time: the picnic lunch on the sewer; their wedding, while a funeral procession marches by below; their final bloody confrontation.

The movie ends, as does the book it is based on, in Death Valley. Von Stroheim insisted on actually shooting there in summer. The heat was terrible & it shows on the faces of Gibson Gowland as Mac & Jean Hersholt as Marcus. The ending is as stark & unforgiving as the desert itself.

Mr. Gowland & ZaSu Pitts give the performances of their lives, magnificent in every way. Mr. Gowland shows us the full extent of a simple man being driven insane, while Miss Pitts' change from sweetness to a miserly shrew is truly frightening. Had the film not been butchered and their performances seen in their entirety, they surely would had ascended to the very heights of their profession. As it was, Gowland quickly descended back into obscurity, spending the rest of his career in mostly unbilled bit parts. Miss Pitts became a comedienne, whose vague manner & fluttery hands were seen in many comedies over the next 35 years. Von Stroheim continued with his excesses and finally met his directorial downfall a few years after GREED. He was able to continue on in films as a very good character actor, mostly in Europe.

In 1999, Turner Classic Movies had GREED reconstructed, using hundreds of still photographs taken during production, editing based on an original shooting script, an inspired use of color and tints & a new musical score. The result runs for 4 hours and is wonderful. At last we have a better understanding of Von Stroheim's blighted vision & wasted genius.