My life will be in your keeping, waking, sleeping,
laughing, weeping.
laughing, weeping.
— Norman Newell
As a kid, I often watched "Million Dollar Movie," a nightly broadcast on New York's WOR-TV.
The show comprised mostly old B movies like The Crawling Eye, Cat People, Godzilla, Mighty Joe Young and Tarzan and the Mermaids.
My pal Mookie, also a fan, called the show "Hundred Dollar Movie."
One particularly arresting movie aired on "Million Dollar Movie" was a new one at the time, an Italian film called Mondo Cane.
Mondo Cane was a depressing Cold War-era "shockumentary," elevated above other nonfiction films of the day by virtue of its schmaltzy theme song, "More."
The most arresting segment of Mondo Cane depicted the nuclear nightmare America had recently visited upon the wildlife of Bikini, where in the 1940s and '50s the US Air Force had dropped a series of atom bombs—23 in all—to test their lethality. (Click here to watch this segment.)
Who would have thought in 1962 that industry, and not the American or Soviet nuclear stockpiles, would bring about Armageddon?
But it seems like industry will—unless checked by government.
Yesterday, President Biden proposed to spend $555 billion on climate programs designed to check industry, the largest sum ever proposed by any chief executive to address global warming.
He wants not only to cut carbon emissions, but to do more.
He wants to create more forests. More farms. More jobs.
But a two-bit chiseler, Joe Manchin, stands in the way.
Without Republican support in the Senate, Manchin's vote is needed to pass Biden's proposal into law.
Manchin, a puppet of the nation's fossil fuel producers, plans to rip Biden's proposal to shreds.
Have no doubt that Manchin is a crook.
He has not only received more political donations from fossil fuel producers than any other senator—more than twice the second largest recipient—but is becoming rich from coal.
Disclosures show he earned over $5 million as a coal broker in the past 10 years.
If Biden's proposal fails to become law, we know precisely who to blame.
The skunk from West Virginia.
