I'm going to hell, of that there is no doubt..

When I finally get there, it will be a large shopping center with myriad escalators and levels,
and all the shops I will need will be on the other level, and there will be those map things, which I will only ever be able to spot when they are on a different level. And I'll spend eternity going up and down escalators, trying to either get to a shop I want, or trying to get to one of those map thingies which will invariably send me in the wrong direction, when I mis-interpret the "You are Here" as "where the man near you who is facing in the opposite direction" is.. There will probably be kids in tow as well, I mean we are talking Hell here, so I suppose 2 or 3 little brats nipping at your heels like 2 little jack russells pleading to be carried and fed, and everybody suffering from chronic tiredness, and all you want to do is get out to the car and drive, but then you'll forget where you parked and when you finally do get back to the car you get lost in a maze of roundabouts, and you begin to wish you had lived a better life and you could be drinking tea in heaven now with the good people like Dana and Daniel.

The Meeting

RMN What the Hell is going on over there? Where did they all go?

TM Its gone very quiet sir, especially since the old Sea-Dog disappeared from the radar. no pun intended sir.

RMN and that God-Damned dope-Fiend Monkey?

TM He's been -ahem, gone for a while now sir.
Yes sir, he's been taken care of..

RMN Well explain to me then what in the name of all that is mighty is going on over there?

TM Well it seems that some of them have been returning to their blogs sir,
` sir, some of them have been linking directly..

RMN What the hell kind of outfit are you runnning over there? Have some SS guys go over and burn these god-damned
Blogs to the Ground! And if they start up again, Drag them from their beds into the streets in front of their
homes, strip them naked and beat them like dogs until they comply!

Now, is there anything esle i should know?

TM Well, its Crea sir, intel indicates he's been reading Thompson again. He's been seen pacing the sidewalk
outside his home at 4am jabbering into a cell-phone about the need for editing and something about
Haemorrhoids!

RMN Have you-know-who take care of him.

TM Sir, your not recording this conversation are you?
How would the transcripts look?

RMN Exactly like this Pig-Fucker!

Gangs of New York

I just re-watched this and have to say it is great.
I remember not liking it at the time, but its worth a re-view,
Day Lewis is at his best, and there are some great gory battle scenes,
and of course we Irish love being mentioned in any Film..
See can you spot Marty Scorcese's Cameo..

where have I been?

Isnt it funny how all the lazy, half arsed bloggers who sniffed around the Twentymajor.net blog, all stopped blogging at around the same time. Namely when the forum started up, and suddenly 3 lines was a long offering and their own blogs just became too much work, and hardly anybody read them anyway, and now by using The Majors name on his forum they could post and get lots of comments..

or was it just me..

Peaceful President?

I spent ages yesterday watching youtubes of the vice-presidential election, and the spoof version thereof. I also watched the many little snippets of Sarah Palin interviews, and of all the crazy statements she seemed to make. The main ones in my opinion were

• When asked about Georgia and Ukraines admittance to NATO, if she thought the US would go to war with Russia should they invade either of these countries(as members of NATO), she answered "I guess so"
• Asked about withdrawal of Troops from Iraq, she spoke of how they would be re-deployed to Afghanistan to hunt down extremists
• asked about breaching Pakistani borders without their consent in the pursuit of Terrorists, she said she believed they would do whatever was necessary to hunt down these evil Terrorists..

These are just 3 examples. They are all foreign policy/ National Security Issues. But they were the three things that came to mind last night as I watched the Presidential debate. All day I had in my mind how important it was that the American people vote for Obama. That Palin and McCain were evil war mongerers and Bullies, and would be dangerous people to have in the White house.
Then I watched the Presidential Debate from Tennessee.

I heard Obama talking about a lot of issues, but the ones that struck me were

• his insistence that Georgia and Ukraine should be admitted to NATO regardless of consequences for US/Russian relations
  
• he talked about a structured withdrawal from Iraq, but then a re-deployment to Afghanistan, to hunt down Osama BinLaden.
• He said when asked, that The US should do whatever is necessary to attack terrorists operating in Pakistan, with or wothout Pakistani government cooperation.
• He said he would hunt down and kill Osama Bin Laden. He talked of how these poeple were plotting right now to kill Americans. He talked the old Fear talk, and I lost faith there and then..

Maybe you could argue its none of my business who runs another country. But up till this debate last night I thought we had a real possibility for change, a real possibility for a new era in American forign policy, but I was wrong. Obama is as belligerent as Palin or McCain, he just has a more polished way of saying things. So who they vote for now, I dont care. It doesnt matter to me who gets the tax breaks in the US, or who gets the best medicare deal, its their Foreign policies that affect us the most, and it seems to me that it will continue as before, regardless of who is in the Oval office.

Wider thinking..

It could be argued that I am no expert on the Demographics of the United states.
But surely Sarah Palin is limiting the scope of of her appeal by singling out moms who play soccer, and men with well-toned abdominal muscles? shouldnt she broaden her field of vision?

A crook of Wall street.

Do you remember that famous tongue in cheek statement made by every mobster in every mob film that ever came out of HollyWood? Just at the End when they had been arrested, after ninty minutes of watching them murder, maim and maraud you could hear them say to the arresting officers:

"Why dont you go down to Wall Street and arrest some real Crooks"

and of course you'd laugh at their ironical brazenness. The very idea that these street thugs who had no respect for law and order could call in to question people who worked hard and within the confines of the law, was laughable.

But , as we all know, Hollywood is there to educate as well as to entertain. Film makers dont just want to keep you amused for 90 minutes, they want to convey a message. They are as you are well aware, Artists. The Guardian Film reviewers who studied english at Oxford, will talk about juxtapoistion, and correlations and even subtle ironies. But of course what we learned this week is this:

"Wall street is full of crooks"

I think what the film makers were trying to say when Their cheeky mobster tells the cops to go arrest some real criminals down Wall Street was:

"Wall Street is full of Crooks"

Older viewers may have gotten this already, but some of the younger ones like myself, had to experience the recent accounting scandals, and more recently the fraud carried out by the big banks in America, before we realised these mobsters were not being ironic.

I say fraud, because that is exactly what has been carried out by the likes of Lehman Brothers. But I just cant decide who they were defrauding:

• Was it the Ninja (no income no job or assets) customers who they sold mortgages to on properties in some cases worth less than the mortgage?
• Was it the US government, who you would presume by definition were ensuring they were carrying on business responsibly?
• Was it their employess who worked long hours, and were loyal to a company who spat them out like sour grapes. (I'm not talking about the high ranking decision makers here)
• Was it themselves (I am talking about the high ranking decision makers here)

The important question now is, Who will pay for this awful mess? This mess which was created by a criminal enterprise. I am not getting all conspiricy theorist here, or going lefty nuts. This was a crime carried out by criminals. It was a fraud. It is illegal to loan money to somebody who cannot pay it back. They did this on a huge scale. They made huge short term profits on the back of the sale of all these "Products". They ( the high ranking decision makers at Lehman) paid themselves exorberant bonuses and got very rich, on paper at least. What happened next and how the bank came to collapse, none of the egg-head economists in the papers or on tv can explain. They will talk of how these "Products" were repackaged and sold on the "International Markets" as securities or some other Bollocks. But what I dont understand is, if they were sold on to somebody else, then Hows come theys gone bust?

I am beginning to think that people who I took to be experts, are just about as expert as me, and dont really know what the fuck happened this bank? But the long and short of it was, that they lent money to poor people so it bolstered their loan book, and their share price rose as did the many bonuses of the the top brass. But when the poor people couldnt make the payments, and this was the case it seems in an awful lot of cases, it all went to Fuck, as Shakespear might have said.

So back to the question. Who will pay? Well who is already paying? Yes you guessed it, Joe Public. The US goverment is rowing in with 700 billion dollars to stop the US financial sytem collapsing. (it doesnt matter that I dont understand what the 700 billion is for, i'll just make a sweeping statement, and as I am now an economics commentator you'll take my word for it)
The British government had to bail out Northern Rock, and now even Biffo and the boys are increasing their deposit guarantee from 20k to 100k. We dont want a run now do we??
And who will pay for all of this shit in the from of taxes, higher interst rates etc. etc. (I told you I'm a commentator now) Yes, you and me. Joe and Josephine.

This has gone on far too long - this post I mean, so I will sum up. If I go and defraud a little old lady out of eighty grand by selling her a dodgy financial package and get caught, I can go to jail.
And quite rightly. So why not this guerilla of Wall street Fellow. Why is he not being hunted down like Al capone. Is there really 2 sets of rules for 2 sets of people?

It turns out The mobsters were right, Wall street is where real crooks are, but just another strain, no better or no worse.