French Revolution: 2026

France is in flames.  Rioters are driving the police from the streets, looting & destroying shops, and burning down buildings.  The video, readily available on YouTube or Rumble, is tragic.  What began as a student protest has expanded.  It is hard not to notice how many of these protesters do not look French.  The importation of foreigners from the 3rd World has created a large enough population that the takeover shall commence.  Europe is long overdue for the Riot Act.

Reading the Riot Act was quite literal.  In the UK, the Riot Act was passed.  When the subjects got unruly, the sheriff or other court officer would read the Riot Act.  If the offenders did not disperse, deadly force could be used to force dispersal.

Looking at some of the video, some protesters are throwing heavy objects at the police.  That is clearly assault with a deadly weapon.  What are the French Police doing?  Withdrawing.  Oh, that should do the trick.

Midway (1976)

Several months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States launched an attack on Japan.  The bombing did minimal damage, but demonstrated that the homeland was not safe from American reprisals.  As such, Admiral Yamamoto (Toshiro Mfune) was allowed to proceed with a daring attack.  With a vast fleet that included 4 aircraft carriers, he set out for Midway Island.

In Hawaii, Captain Matt Garth (Charlton Heston) confronted intelligence specialist Commander Joe Rochefort.  Joe suspected the Japs were up to something.  Even though he could only decipher 10% of the communiques, he had a hunch that they were moving on Midway.  False report about a water filtration system confirmed it.  Or was this an elaborate ruse by the Japs.  Admiral Nimitz (Henry Fonda) trusted Rochefort's hunch and dispatched the remaining carriers - Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown - to Midway.  Now that the battle map is setup and the players have been introduced, it was time to detail the events.

After some melodrama between Garth, his aviator son (Edward Albert), and his Japanese finance (Christina Kokubo), the movie becomes a dramatized documentary on the battle.  Each fleet sending scout planes to locate the other, bombers unescorted by fighters are wiped from the sky, unprotected carriers are sunk, and Midway Island is bombed.  Thought Garth is the main character, the story is not told from his perspective.  There is Admiral Spruance (Glenn Ford) commanding Task Force 16 (which comprised Enterprise & Hornet), a command he received on account of Admiral Halsey (Robert Mitchum) suffering from shingles.  Admiral Fletcher (Robert Webber) commands Task Force 17, which only had one carrier, the Yorktown.  The Yorktown had been seriously damaged at the Battle of Coral Sea and really should have been in port for repairs, but desperate times call for desperate measures.  Of course, there is Admiral Nimitz in Hawaii who gets regular reports on how things are going.

There are entirely too many characters.  The number of noteworthy stars is impressive.  James Coburn gets a cameo as a naysayer to Nimitz's strategy.  Robert Wagner is Admiral Nimitz's chief of staff.  Tom Selleck is an unnamed officer on Midway.  Dabney Coleman is an officer on one of the carriers.  Cliff Robertson, Monte Markham, Christopher George, Steve Kanaly, and Erik Estrada are pilots.  Pat Morita - best remembered as Mr. Miagi - plays a Japanese admiral.

Just okay.  A good thumbnail sketch of the Battle of Midway, the battle that turned the Pacific War in the United States' favor.

Flying Car

Tonight, the Tesla Roadster was demonstrated in MacGregor, TX.  The flying car has arrived.  It doesn't have wings, just thrusters.  Among the tricks that the car performed was to drive upside down.  Yes, it drove up a ramp until it was clinging like Spider-Man.  Next, it raced up that same ramp and flew upside down off of it, but then spun 180 degrees to land gently on the ground.  Astonishing.  Then it jumped over several Teslas without a ramp.  Like Speed Racer's Mark V, it just leapt into the air and cleared 5 vehicles, doing a 360 degree spin as it did so.  Like the Batmobile, it has rockets on the back and those provided it so much acceleration that it could go from 0 to 60 in less than 1 second.  Elon tasked the engineers with achieving a top speed of Mach 0.5, half the speed of sound.  That's more than 380 mph.  He also suggested trying to jump the Snake River, like Evel Knievel tried to do in 1974.

The Roadster enters production in 2028.  As cool as it is, what is the practical use of such a car?  Flying over other cars downtown is likely to be frowned upon.  However, it will also be tough for the police to catch such a car.  I suspect this will be a Bond car when the Bond franchise restarts.  Impractical though it may be, such technological wonders inevitably lead to far reaching applications.

Check it out on YouTube.

Tesla

I had my first ride in a Tesla today.  First impression was that the interior was surprisingly spartan. Since the door windows don't have a frame, they automatically retract when the door is opened and then slide back into the body of the car for a clean seal.  Impressive.  There was a steering wheel and a large screen.  The top was non-opening sunroof.  The dash was almost a table, with no visible vents for AC.  The acceleration was alarming, like being shot out of a cannon.  Luckily, I had been warned to put my head against the headrest before the acceleration.  Then self-driving mode was demonstrated.  The Tesla managed stoplights, lane changes, and navigation with no input beyond the initial programming of our destination.  It was quite scrupulous about using its signal lights.  Impressive.  Throughout the ride, the screen showed the highway with the Tesla - in blue - in the middle and gray icons of all the other vehicles. Humorously, we encountered a Cybertruck which showed up as just a regular truck icon rather than a specialty one.  Upon arrival, the car pulled into an available spot.  The return journey was done without self-driving until we reached the parking lot.  Here, it was just a matter of selecting a parking space on the display.  The car then maneuvered so that it could back into the space.

Wow, this was quite amazing.  Who needs a salesman when you can just take a ride in one.  No wonder this is the most valuable car company.

Trial by Fire (2026)

Keira Frost (Andrea Pavlovic) walks through the woods amidst armed men.  Her wrists are bound.  She is forced to her knees and a gun is placed against her head.

Keira remembers her abusive stepfather.  She remembers running away from home, becoming a petty thief with Stevie (Michala Brasseur), and sitting at a briefing run by Ryan Drake (Derek Moran).  Drake did not have a high opinion of her, or so he intimated.  The mission was to recover some nuclear material at an abandoned Cold War site, but it went badly.  Keira was captured and suffered waterboarding.  And now she was to be shot.

The action is mediocre.  As most of the action is from Frost's point of view, it should have been shown only view the headset cams that she was watching from the van, but that would have really limited the screentime of the other actors.  As with the last outing, Drake and his team don't come off as professionals.

This half-hour short is an origin story for Frost.  She appeared in Rogue Elements (2024), so this is a prequel.  It is strange that we have an origin story for a support character before there is one for Drake himself.  As for her background, it was too run-of-the-mill.  Oh, she had a hard family life, dabbled in criminality, joined the Army where she was a problem soldier, and now she was on an elite black ops team.  Okay.  Typical girl.  Not the background I expected for her.  The conversations between her and Drake are bland and cliche.

There is a twist that makes the episode worthwhile.  Just okay.

Bird on a Wire (1990)

Marianne Graves (Goldie Hawn) is a successful New York lawyer on a business trip to Detroit.  While there, she stops at a gas station/garage and recognizes the gas attendant.  It's Rick Jarmin (Mel Gibson), her fiancé who went missing in Mexico fifteen years ago!  He denies it, claiming to be from Tennessee.  No sooner does she leave - not entirely convinced - than he called the FBI and demanded to be relocated.  Yes, he is in witness protection.  His regular contact unavailable, he is routed to Joe Weyburn (Stephen Tobolowsky), who agrees to move him in a couple of days.  That night, Marianne returned to the garage to take another look.  To her surprise, armed men attack the garage.  She recklessly drives at them and manages to get Rick in the car and race away.

The men were Eugene Sorenson (David Carradine) and Albert Diggs (Bill Duke), former DEA agents.  Sorenson is fresh out of prison, put there by Jarmin's testimony, and is eager for revenge.  Diggs has been on the lam for the last 15 years and would like to kill the only man who could put him in jail.

Rick knew that someone at the FBI had revealed his location.  Worse, the police were now looking to arrest him and Marianne for the shootout at the garage.  They were on the run!  Lou Baird (Jeff Corey) was the only man Rick trusted to sort things out.

The movie is one long chase with romantic comedy between the leads along the way.  The chase takes many forms.  There are car chases, motorcycle chases, a helicopter chase, and finally a showdown at a zoo.  During their cross-country escape, Rick visits several of his previous protection locations, which shows that he has had an interesting career path: carpenter, hairdresser, car mechanic, veterinary clinic pilot, and zoo employee.  Each came with a different name and even a change in personality.

Goldie Hawn was in amazing shape for her age.  There are multiple semi-nude shots or lose skirts that got caught in a breeze to demonstrate that.  The script was not great in explaining her continued presence on this adventure.  Does she view Rick as the one that got away?  Yeah, but she does seem rather annoyed with him for much of the movie.  Does running make sense because the police are after her?  Not really.  It's like the script forgot she was a successful lawyer; I suppose criminal law wasn't her thing.

Mel Gibson is Mel Gibson.  There is a little bit of variety with the change in accent based on what former life he is visiting, but otherwise it is a standard Mel Gibson character.

The villains are introduced grandly and then become cardboard cutouts who prove mostly incompetent.  Sure, it's a comedy - sort of - but the villains can't hit an easy target with superior weaponry and even fully automatic fire.  The finale was a comedy of errors by Rick and Marianne.  They both lost weapons before they could even use them, each either beaten or shot, and yet they survived.  Yeah, these are some really pathetic villains.

Just okay.

Recognizing a Dictator

During the 2016 election, Helen Andrews gave a lecture on How to Spot a Dictator.  The idea was to determine whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton bore the markers of a potential dictator.  Oddly enough, she listed Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the most dictatorial president the United States has yet produced.  FDR implemented two dictatorial strategies.

First, he established a cult of personality.  He was a master of public communication, had a gift for oratory, and convinced people to elect him again and again despite an ongoing Great Depression.  His fireside chats reassured the citizens even as the state of the economy and world didn't much improve.  He was an expert of spin.  In this regard, she said Trump was clearly along this path.  Trump is a salesman who wrote (dictated?) The Art of the Deal.  His entire schtick is to persuade voters to do what was unprecedented; elect a man with neither governmental nor military experience.  Amazingly, he carried that off in the primaries.  Yes, clearly a cult of personality figure.

Second, FDR established clientelism.  Prior to the Great Depression, the government was not in the habit of distributing money to the citizens, either through job programs or handouts.  To tackle the massive unemployment and poverty, FDR championed funds for relief to the states and later Social Security for the elderly.  There was also the Civilian Conservation Corps, a public works program.  Prior to the depression, the government-maintained pensions for veterans and career civil servants.  Afterwards, everyone who lived long enough would get a check from the government.  Once established, it ballooned: Medicare, WIC, SNAP, Drug Benefits, Obamacare, etc.  Now, if you vote wrong, your entitlements might be eliminated by the other party.  Yes, this is a common refrain in many election seasons and created a permanent threat by the government against the voters.  Andrews puts Clinton into this mode.

So, which is worse?  Do you go with the personality or the "gift" giver.  Which is less dangerous to your future?  Check out the video.