Good Guys Become Bad Guys, and Bad Guys Become Good Guys

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American Hustler is a film which has a complicated plot. The story centers on Irving Rosenfeld(Christian Bale) a local man who chooses a vocation as a hustler even though he runs several successful legitimate businesses. Irving’s life changes when a young and eager to succeed FBI agent Richie Di Maso(Bradley Cooper), snares and arrests him. The FBI then uses Irving and his partner/girl friend Sydney Prosser(Amy Adams) as decoys to catch a local New Jersey mayor taking a bribe. The mayor, however, is a good guy who only wants to help make jobs for the people of his city by reopening an old casino. The young FBI agent uses Irving to entrap the mayor by introducing him to a fake Shiek from Saudi Arabia. The story gets more complicated though when a mafia man played by Robert Dinero, from Miami, enters the scene as a silent partner. The mafia man advises the mayor to find a way to make the Arab Shiek with the money an US citizen to make the deal legitimate.

The ambitious FBI man seizes this opportunity to entrap bigger fish because fast tracking a citizenship for an Arab will involve US Senators. Irving advises the FBI man to slow down and keep the scam small, but the FBI likes the idea of headline grabbing an US Senator.

The plot gets more involved as the FBI arranges meetings with Senators for the purpose of filming them taking money.

So a bad guy is caught by a good guy, but the good guy turns bad. The new bad guy uses the former bad guy in his scheme and ultimately the new bad guy becomes the villain while the former bad guy becomes a hero.

The story has a happy ending.

Oh, for the men, Irving’s girl friend Sydney Prosser(Amy Adams) has an affinity for wearing deep V-cut dresses without a bra. She certainly kept me awake. Irving’s wife Roslyn(Jennifer Lawrence) plays a perfect bitch who keeps Irving on her line by refusing to give him a divorce.

The film felt long because it is long. Yet, we were totally entertained by all the mayhem that takes place.

Shovel Ready

Remember when POTUS so proudly exclaimed that the trillion-dollar stimulus will be spent on shovel ready jobs? He learned the hard way that shovel ready projects are a myth.

Recently, I had some inspiration about how to spend the same trillion and solve some really huge problems.  If you would be so kind as to indulge me with some Monday morning quarter backing I want to make a proposal.

The stimulus was supposed to create jobs, keep unemployment under eight percent, and get the economy rolling again, but it did nothing but waste the money. Here is what should have been done.

  1. A large percentage of workers who are out of work are in the construction industry. With the collapse of the housing market, who needs construction workers?  Today, I spoke to a roofing contractor. He told me that normally, he puts on four roofs a week in Frankfort. Assuming a twenty-six week construction period that totals 104 roofs. This year only 13 permits were issued for new housing in Frankfort. He did twelve of them. It is pretty grueling to take a ninety-two-roof drop in business. My proposal is to build the GREAT WALL OF AMERICA along the US-MEXICO border from Arizona to The Gulf of Mexico at Brownsville, Texas. Now that would put a lot of unemployed people to work. I’m talking about a wall modeled after the GREAT WALL OF CHINA, not some pithy chain link fence that doesn’t even touch the ground and gives the border jumper hand holds to get over. Think of all the Americans and Mexicans that would be employed laying all that stone.  The Chinese wall has worked for five thousand years; I think a similar wall along our border would accomplish the same.
  2. While thousands of people are happily employed building the GREAT WALL OF AMERICA, I propose that a second project be initiated at the California-Arizona Junction on the Mexican border. This shovel ready project uses real shovels to begin digging a trench to separate California from Arizona.  The dirt excavated from the border trench is trucked to the Gulf of California to fill it in and to join the Baja peninsula to the mainland.  This is necessary to complete because after the GREAT WALL OF AMERICA is finished, the border between Mexico and California will be opened and Mexicans will have free rein to come and go into the USA as they please. Of course they are limited to getting into California.

The trench is widened as digging proceeds northward to the Oregon line. At Oregon, the digging moves westward to the Pacific Ocean. Once the trench meets the ocean the Corps of Engineers sets off a series of explosions in the trench to move California outward into the Pacific.

Are you still with me? Think of how all this construction and geological remodeling will improve the state of the world.

  1. Millions of construction jobs are created for the long term
  2. Caterpillar increases production of earthmovers by the tens of thousands creating even more jobs.
  3. The shovel factory expands production to three shifts; more jobs.
  4. Stonemasons and quarry workers work eighty hours a week.
  5. UAW guys push wheelbarrows of dirt to fill in the Gulf of California; others keep the stone moving to the stonemasons.
  6. Mexicans are ecstatic about the open border and the expanded market for drugs in the USA. Of course the Market is limited to California, where there is no end to the amount of shit they need.
  7. Both Arizona and Nevada benefit from the newly created ocean front property. Nevadans suddenly see a need for an ocean going cruise harbor and gambling casino on the New Sea of Obama. Nevada real estate agents become millionaires by selling the ocean front lots. Harry Reid moves to The Sea from his shantytown of Searchlight, and spends his remaining campaign funds gambling at the casino.
  8. The winds coming down the New Sea of Obama from the Pacific creates a new weather pattern bringing rain into the deserts of Nevada and Arizona providing cooling and fabulous farming opportunities.
  9. Oregon, and California also benefit from the expansion of waterfront property.  Movie stars create a new community on the Sea of Obama that out does Malibu, Carmel, and Santa Barbara in opulence.
  10. The digging and explosions uncover the world’s largest reserve of oil, which eliminates our dependence on foreign oil.
  11. Death Valley becomes the Garden of Eden. With a new water supply feeding the aquifers below the desert, the Park Service renames it Living Valley. There is a free flow of cheap labor coming from Mexico to harvest the abundant crops growing there.  A segment of the valley turns it into a wine growing terroir that out does all the wine regions of the world including Napa Valley.
  12. A huge benefit can come from a geological disaster. I have assumed that California will hang onto the mainland of Mexico. After the trench is completed, and the Pacific rolls in to form the New Sea of Obama. There is such a small connection to Mexico that it might just break off thus allowing California to float into the Pacific as a new island state rivaling Hawaii. The downside of this is that the open border is closed with a sea of water and the free flow of labor and marijuana ends.
  13. California already has a large Hispanic population and speaking Spanish is not a problem for them. The new immigrants will assimilate into California society seamlessly. They can have all the freebies that California can provide.
  14. Californians are forced to take care of themselves, and to figure out how to deal with the rest of the world.

Now, that is what I call shovel ready! This proposal creates jobs, fixes the illegal immigration problem, finds new oil, opens arid desert land and makes it prime property. Creates a new weather pattern for the desert states.

Since California usually does what it wants to do regardless of what the rest of the country does, they can handle the new situation anyway it sees fit to do.