WAR GAMES

“War is nothing more than a catalogue of mistakes and misfortunes.” –Winston Churchill

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It’s funny– well, not literally funny — how one thing can lead unexpectedly to another. I’m half-way through another biography….but, unlike the others I’ve been reading recently, this one has led to the sort of post I didn’t anticipate writing when I began reading it.

Its title is THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON (A BIOGRAPHY OF DAVID NIVEN) by Sheridan Morley. NIVEN (1910-83), as you may know, was an American actor who was born/raised in England and came to the U.S. in 1932. When WW II broke out in Europe, he returned to England to serve in the military. In 1941 he wrote a letter to a fellow British-born actor friend back in Hollywood, part of which I quote here from the book:

Thank God we have now got a real government and in Churchill a real leader at last, but there is going to be a little scalp-hunting when the smoke has cleared off the battlefields. I am unimportant, but besides cousins and relations, I have now lost practically all my old friends, and all in the past few weeks….they need never have been sacrificed if the people then at the top had been doing their jobs as well as they said they were doing them [emphasis mine].

Sound familiar? Today, with the corona virus, we have a different kind of world war, but the same (and even more lame) kind of sophistry, gas-baggery, and incompetence resulting in unnecessary casualties:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=trump+coronavirus+down+to+zero&docid=607986001098770809&mid=730D607688499A94FB45730D607688499A94FB45&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

And so I ask you: How on earth does the most morally corrupt President in U.S. history not belong behind bars or in a mental institution rather than in the White House? How is it, after 3 1/2 years of reigning the swamp, that roughly 40% of the American people either cannot, or will not, see through this pathetic con man of a President — a President who thinks he is not only above the law, but thinks he IS the law, who tries to subvert the law to his own ends? Are his supporters deaf, dumb and blind….or simply incapable/too much in denial to look behind the curtain and see that the mighty Oz is the very hoax he labels all that exposes him?

Come November 3, we must turn from the dark side to the other side of the moon, or America will have surrendered all claim to being the “beacon of hope” for the world.

 

ON (THE) MONEY, TO COIN A PHRASE

I rob banks because that’s where the money is.  –Willie Sutton

The history of money is a fascinating subject, if you can afford the time to check into it. According to my Ye Olde Encyclopedia, early people had no system of money, probably because they had to spend all their waking hours hunting, eating, painting caves and avoiding being stepped on by dinosaurs and woolly mammoths. These pre-historic people, known as the Earlyites, used either the barter system of trading, or the no-holds-bartered system of robbing and killing, to get what they wanted. Some things never change.

Speaking of change, the first coins were made in the 600’s B.C. in Lydia, the Tatooed Lady — I mean in Lydia, the extinct country, in what is now western Turkey. In America, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the first to make coins; an English court allowed them to do so in 1652 before permission was withdrawn shortly thereafter. But Massachusetts continued to issue coins for 30 more years by dating all coins 1652 regardless of when made. Apparently England couldn’t make heads or tails out of why Massachusetts never ran short of 1652 coins, so they made the best of it by increasing the Colony’s taxes. Needless to say, this did not suit the Tea Party, so they threw the British into Boston Harbor, declared independence and took control of Congress before you can say New England, which on a clear day you can see from Alaska if the sun doesn’t get in your eyes.

But enough about what I have to say, money-wise. Let us see what others have had to say about money:

The only problems money can solve are money problems.  –Kin Hubbard

Lack of money is the root of all evil.  –Mark Twain or George Bernard Shaw (you pays your money and you takes your choice)

If a fool and his money are soon parted, why are there so many rich fools?  –Evan Esar

Cocaine is God’s way of saying you’re making too much money.  –Robin Williams

If you would know what the Lord God thinks of money, you have only to look at those to whom he gives it.  –Maurice Baring

There is an easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one.  –Jack Yelton

We live by the Golden Rule. Those who have the gold make the rules.  –Buzzie Bavasi

Someone stole all my credit cards, but I won’t be reporting it. The thief spends less than my wife did.  –Henny Youngman

Women prefer men who have something tender about them — especially the legal kind.  –Kay Ingram

I don’t like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves.  –Joe Louis

I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed.  –George Carlin

That money talks/I’ll not deny/I heard it once/It said, “Goodbye.”  –Richard Armour