Gangster movies bankrolled generations of writers, directors, actors and all manner of supporting casts and studio bosses. None was more controversial than the original “Scarface,” based loosely on a book about Al Capone.  The 1932 B&W version stars Paul Muni, an impeccable Academy Award winner who had the rare privilege of choosing his roles. Believe it or not, in the roll-up to WWII, Hollywood was in many ways the arch custodian and protector of American morality. The highest qualities of human character were often lionized. Depravity was trashed, decency treasured. Good extolled and evil reviled. With rare exception, that Hollywood is “dust in the wind” as rock legend Kerry Livgren noted in the 70’s. Just before the 1932 movie Scarface rolls its opening credits, the following Prologue appears in a newsy font:

This picture is an indictment of gang rule in America and of the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace to our safety and our liberty. Every incident in this picture is the reproduction of an actual occurrence, and the purpose of this picture is to demand of the government: ‘What are you going to do about it?’ The government is your government. What are YOU going to do about it.?

The last sentence is an accusation, aimed directly at the American theater audience. That same accusation is light years more pertinent today, but for an entirely different reason. The Scarface Gang of Chicago eventually went down in a hail of bullets. But Tony Camonte’s (Capone’s) 1932 crimes, and those of many other organized crime gangs to follow, were child’s play compared to the villainy of government like the Washington D.C. Beltway Gang, circa 2019. Capone was a racketeer. His business was protection, bootlegging, narcotics, prostitution and graft. His crimes affected lots of people — thousands. By comparison, the Beltway Gang’s business is fraud on an epic scale through misappropriation and misapplication of taxpayer funds and subverting The Constitution of the United States. These crimes affect lots of people — millions upon millions — and the very life of a nation. For a new gangster movie, therefore, the 1932 Prologue would read more like this:

This picture is an indictment of gang rule in Washington D.C. and of the callous indifference of the Government to its constantly increasing menace to our safety, security and liberty. Every incident in this picture is the reproduction of an actual occurrence, and the purpose of this picture is to demand of the Government: “What are you going to do about it?” The Government is OUR Government. “What are WE going to do about it?

Yes, that last sentence is an accusation, aimed at Americans who claim they love their country. Their answer appears to be a resounding “NOTHING.” Continually ignoring history, well-meaning Americans believe that electing new politicians will clean house in Washington. How many times will  they listen to and believe this kind of election hype?

“This is the most important election in American history.” Really?

“We have come to an historic crossroads.” Truly?

“Please help us save America with your $25, $50, $75, or $100 gift.” Seriously?

Then you hear opinions from those same quixotic Americans, infected by instant gratification, who view the Trumpster as a Superhero. They actually believe Donald will drain the swamp and make Government Great Again. To Trump’s credit, he hasn’t promised the impossible. Give the real estate street fighter credit. He’s the Lone Ranger and Josey Wales, come to town. But he can’t cure cancer. And Washington is eaten alive with it. Socialism already occupies the seat of government and that will not change until the American people rescue The Constitution and the Rule of Law. Easier said than done, Matlida. Don’t make book on it ever happening. The odds against it are astronomical. If you think this pessimism is based on exaggeration, read the tea leaves.

The U.S. national debt is $22 trillion. Tick. Tick. Tick.

The U.S. unfunded liability (Social Security, Medicare Parts A, B, and D, Federal Debt held by the public, Federal Employee and Veteran Benefits) is $122 trillion, projected to be $157 trillion by 2023 — a $35 trillion jump in just four years. Tick.Tick. Tick.

U.S. spending of $4.75 trillion is higher than revenue of $3.65 trillion. Tick. Tick. Tick.

12.5 million illegal immigrants and their 4.2 million citizen children cost Federal and State Governments $166 billion annually. While U.S. Sanctuary Cities insolently subvert the Law.

The U.S. DOJ has been corrupted at the highest levels by unlawful activities to take down a sitting President.

Corrupt Federal officials, past and present, have lied under oath, obstructed justice and walked away untouched, nullifying our cherished “Equality Before the Law.”

As the financial asteroid speeds toward earth, there is some good news for the can kickers. The Democrat Party is honest and proud enough to show its true colors and raise the flag of Socialism for all to see. Their gang doesn’t hide in the shadows of pretense. Ducking and weaving, the GOP gang knows all about pretense and sleight of hand, preferring to hoist a white flag to see which way the wind is blowing at any given time. Grudgingly, you must admire gangsters who gamble and risk  their freedom and their very lives. While in Washington, the only way gangs play is with House Money.

www.conventionofstates.com

 

 

Generally, when you’re faced with a new experience, you will underestimate it. Either it will be far worse or far better than your imagination, seldom matching a realistic expectation. In 2016, 1.2 million Millennial women gave birth for the first time, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Each of them knew giving birth was the natural order of things. Their mothers did it; countless others did it. Experts told them what to expect. Many of them attended birthing classes that consisted of lectures, discussions and exercises. But for each, giving birth was a unique experience for them and them alone. Pain couldn’t be shared. Neither could your first day at school, first kiss, first public talk, first broken bone, first attempt at the big trick. You get the idea. Then along comes dental implants. The ADA says U.S. dentists place more than five million implants every year. Now that you own four of them, you were never naive about the procedure. Drilling holes in your maxilla would be no trivial matter. Numbing both left and right maxilla most likely would be a teeth clenching adventure except no one can clench with a gaping mouth. That was your first guess. Next you imagined it would be a noisy, but relatively simple matter of drilling the implant holes directly through gum and into bone, followed by screwing in the implants themselves. Doubtless there would be other minor details. But you dismissed them. Because when you asked about conscious sedation, nurses and Doc alike shrugged off the option as unnecessary. Thinking back decades, you remember the British dentist in Tokyo asking if you wanted Novocaine for a mouthful of cavities. You opted not and over several visits endured the singular pain of touchy nerves, proving you were nothing, if not pain amenable. That was then. As it happens in life, you’ve since been wrong about almost everything. Almost. The injections were — clench — clench — clench — clench — clench — clench — as predicted. The rest was pollyanna imagining. Reality proved that Doc had to “remove” your gum to reveal bone. On both the left and right side of your face, it sounded like a harsh scraping, a chiseling process. He used something called an “elevator” to push and peel back each flap of gum tissue, so the bone underneath was exposed. Bloody awful, you thought, visualizing the carnage. The drilling regimen was complicated to the bone (pun intended). You lost count of how many separate drillings there were per implant — maybe three or four — each successively larger in diameter than the previous. Your mind wandered through the noise, the pain and the fluids seeping down your throat. Almost sleepily, with no intent, you conjured a scene from 1976 flick Marathon Man, when Dustin Hoffman is captured and tortured by Laurence Olivier who plays the role of vicious, sadistic Nazi war criminal Christian Szell. In 1945, drill wielding dentist Szell ran the experimental camp at Auschwitz where he conducted pain experiments on an unlimited supply of defenseless prisoners. This is silly, you thought. Just because your Doc decided to incomprehensibly stretch the corner of your mouth back to your ear doesn’t make him a sadist. Perhaps an unfeeling mechanic, but not a fiend. Shutting out delusional thoughts, the first implant drilling seemed over and you waited for Round 2. Unfortunately, the bell didn’t ring ending Round 1. And out came The Hammer. In dental lexicons, the instrument has a more friendly name — Dental Mallet. This is a device commonly used for each and every implant. No one told you — or warned you — about The Hammer. According to medical journals, you learned that “an abutment is fastened into an implant to provide an anchor for the prosthesis — that the method of application involves placing a blunt mechanical punch against that abutment and tapping the end of it with a dental mallet.” As always, these written procedures are purposefully benign. Because in truth, your surgeon pounded the punch at least seven concussive times for a single installation. Welcome to instant headache, pal. You feared your scalp would split. You swore blood was seeping from your eyes and ears, but Doc and assistant didn’t seem to notice; and in fact were discussing cupcakes and other pastries in the kitchen. The irony didn’t escape you. Enduring torture while the torturers themselves discussed sampling confections. That’s when you began to giggle . . . and giggle . . . at the absurdity of it all. By this time, Doc was well into the second installation. And out came The Hammer. By then, between blows, you pondered only one thought besides permanent brain damage — you were paying a small fortune for this uniquely delivered headache. Lesson? Respect  sedation — unconscious sedation.

Elizabeth Warren says everyone in America has the right to healthcare. She’s no fool. The world can suffer fools. You’ve acted the fool often enough to offset any saving graces. Warren is an academic autocrat, a socialist ideologue who in 2011 famously suggested that the rich should pay more taxes (than they already pay)because no one grew rich on their own — they depended on the U.S. infrastructure paid for by the rest of society. Yes, you thought that was B.H. Obama’s social thesis. Nope, he got it from none other than your most famous Native American. Her exact words:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody … You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize . . .your factory . . . because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

You see, that’s how a windbag who does nothing talks to people who do something.  Warren, who never built anything, wants to confiscate the wealth of  builders who do everything. Ayn Rand (R.I.P.) would rip her a new one. You have to love the bone Warren threw the “factory” owner. “Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific . . . God bless.” She didn’t say “you busted your ass for a lifetime to make it something terrific.” No, “it turned” into something good. Presto, Houdini. “It turned.” She might  also have said that the second you popped out of the womb (if you were lucky enough to survive Planned Parenthood), you owed your future earnings “because of the work the rest of us did.” “Us?” This from a woman who never built a thing, not even a Lego dollhouse. A woman who was a high school and college debate champion, who married, got divorced (God, was he lucky)and went to law school. Incomprehensibly, she managed to hook up with another husband (well, a law professor); then became a career academic, teaching law at several universities. Along the way, the pair accumulated a net worth upwards of $11MM. Not bad for a couple of teachers. As Evan Sayet once smartly offered, “She rose to the top of her profession by choosing a profession where she didn’t have to (actually) do anything.” However, like H. Clinton and Obama before her, she did learn to make a speech — to sound scholarly — and thus, self-superior. Now this self-appointed sophist proclaims that everyone has a right to healthcare. This pronouncement is the decisive doctrine of her presidential campaign. True to her native heritage, she beats the drum of class warfare. Play on the age-old feelings of resentment, inequality and unfairness. Gin up mob mentality. Funny, Liz, some “deplorables” are under the delusion that they only have three “rights” — Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. What Pocahontas and all dictators fail to confess is that if healthcare is a “right” for all, it by necessity must be an obligation for the doctors and everyone else who happen to provide that healthcare. The last time you checked, you had not met one physician standing in line to work for the Federal Government. But Socialist politicians like Warren don’t care about equity or liberty. They just want to be in charge. They want to control you because they know they’re smarter than you and therefore should tell you how to live and what you should contribute to society. It so happens socialist politicians have only one pathway to power — they must attract votes by giving away “free” stuff. Like drug peddlers, they know millions of people can’t resist the “fix.” They know millions will sell their self respect and their freedom for the handout, for what other millions pay for through their blood, sweat and tears. Warren and other despots would never call raising taxes “stealing.” She just thinks it’s fair for you to give a “hunk” of what you make to pay for your neighbor’s healthcare or education or housing or food or abortion — what she calls “your social contract.” During the darkest of days, the handout was routinely avoided at all costs. Families in poverty would not lower their pride to accept charity. Today, millions not only accept charity; they demand it, as a right. The Founders would be dumbfounded. Nonetheless, Pied Pipers Warren, Harris, Booker, Sanders and their ilk, gleefully play their addictive tunes, tempting their junkies to follow along like good little lemmings. But you don’t blame left-wing politicians for pushing a socialist agenda. For decades, they have made it pay off in the African American community, promising everything and delivering nothing. For their part, the majority of African Americans still tread water, either too stubborn or too afraid to throw off the shackles of dependency, preferring to embrace the pathology of racism — something Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton rely on to remain perched on their witch doctor thrones. Your common sense tells you that a majority of Americans won’t fall for Warren’s socialist drivel. But look around. Common sense has been rejected so often, it may just take a hike. Anyway, who said that everyone in America has the right to common sense. You can bet it wasn’t Pocahontas.