Joe and McAuliffe Event

 I sat and watched the 28-minute piece, from four days ago.  My four observations:

1.  Joe was physically up and showed a fair amount of energy.

2.  About every 30 seconds....he hyped 'Donald Trump', which reached a point after ten minutes....I just kept thinking you were there to help McAuliffe.  You should have been talking about his plans, or his vision.

3.  His job (I believe) was to work on independents, and based on the text/chat....he did a miserable job selling McAuliffe.

4.  Around the 18th minute, he gets into how major companies don't pay taxes and how he's going to force change.  Funny thing....he didn't mention that he and the other Senators write the tax code and helped the companies achieve this. Even now....they are writing the new 'code' and will help regular Americans pay the tax.

The Arrival and Decline of Opium Dens

 So this is a short essay over how the Opium 'world' arrived in America, and how it declined.

Basically....around the mid-1800s....as California became a magnet.....the Chinese began to arrive, and 'Dens' began to get set up.  San Francisco?  It was the chief draw for well over fifty years.  Toward the last quarter of the period....NY City became the second magnet.

Acceptance?  Most everyone agrees that the dens flourished all the way through WW I, into the 1920s and 1930s, then the acceptance business started to fail as WW II started up.  From that point on....acceptance was on the decline. 

The last raid of a known Opium Den in NY City?  Mid-summer 1957.  

I was reading a piece this past weekend over the business aspects (most all of these were run by Chinese members of society....rarely Americans themselves).  

Successful people came to the Dens for a day or two of relaxation, and whatever pain they had (whether real or imaginary).....they felt relief from.  Yes, kinda like the issue with fentanyl or opioids today.  

Where Did Jimmy Carter Fail?

 In recent months, the topic of Jimmy Carter has come up more often, with varying explanations of how he screwed up, or how he fell into a 'pit'.

I would offer three observations:

1.  Jimmy Carter was supposed to be the cleaned-up and 'pure' President after Richard Nixon.  In simple terms....that role was marginalized and the 'act' that you got was the anti-Nixon.  It was a brand name or sales gimmick that just never took off.

2.  Carter was in some ways, the activist President.  He was bringing new positions, new roles, and a new path ahead for the nation.  As an activist.....he just never took off.  

3.  Finally, the nation's problems (mid-1970s to late-1970s).....were more than he or his team could really comprehend.  They seemed to always be a page or two behind the times....never getting the public trust, and replacing a failed policy with a new-so-to-be-new-failed policy.

Trying to compare Carter to Biden?  You might be able to take five or six points....but there are dozens of differences.  I would suggest that the Biden crew is 'sitting' in some airport-reality, and waiting for their plane (yet to arrive).  They keep talking about the future and injecting woke topics into their daily chatter.....but it gets less and less traction. 

All of this.....in just nine months?  Yeah, that's the worrying part of this discussion.  Carter had four years to reach this point.....Biden is already there and we aren't even at the 12th month.  

My Take on the Baldwin Episode

 It's a page 3 type story that still lingers around on page 1....a week later. 

First, you can  ask yourself who really wants to watch a Alec Baldwin 'cowboy-western'?  Out of a thousand people....probably fewer than twenty.  

I think this was a deal done on the cheap with one of the streaming video networks.....with a decent amount of cash but nowhere near the amount for what would have been a theater 'cowboy-western' for say....the 1990s era.

I think Baldwin was attempting to produce this at a certain price.....discovering a couple of weeks into it....that the profit margin was almost non-existent.  So he went even cheaper than normal.

The gun matter?  

I'm always reminded of the 1960s 'Apache Gold' movie.....where tens thousand blanks were fired (one of my top twenty 'cowboy-westerns').  No one was severely wounded in the movie....other than those who fell off the horses. 

That's the thing about it.....you go back through Bonanza, the Big Valley, High Chaparral, the Rifleman, Lone Ranger, Rawhide, Death Valley Days, Wagon Train, and Kung Fu (yes, it was a western)......there's just not incidents where gunfire killed someone.  You had experts on the set.....guys over forty mostly, who had ironclad rules about the use of weapons.  

So you add it up.....cheaply produced....the weapons-master being fairly young/inexperienced.....prop-guns being taken off the set for real gunfire practice....and people on a schedule to produce scenes.   Someone will get a manslaughter charge, and they will....in turn....sue the production company for various oversight problems.  The odds of the production company being bankrupt by the end of 2022?  I'd suggest that.

Movie being finished....ever?  I'd question this.  The network who financed this?  Screwed, I think.