The Lost Future

The story opens with a band of Stone Age hunters trekking through the forest in search of prey. At one point, the eldest of the hunters calls for a halt, stating they have reached the edge of their territory. Savan insists on going further. The band comes upon a giant sloth, which they kill. While celebrating their success, one of their number stumbles among them with a nasty bite to his arm. In moments, his appearance changes and he begs his comrades to kill him.

On the way back to the village, they are watched by an archer (Sean Bean). As they enter the village, the archer pulls out a pair of binoculars! Yes, it turns out that this is the Post-Apocalypse and a plague has turned much of humanity into zombie-like creatures. The town elders are furious that the hunters went beyond the normal boundaries and are soon proven correct. Insane mutant humans descend upon the village. Many escape to hide in a barricaded cave. Savan, Dorel, and Kaleb escape into the woods.

Savan is a brash youth, in line to be a chief, and the default leader of the trio. He is the slowest to accept new things, like boats, bows, or venturing beyond the homeland. However, he is brave, daring, and ready to sacrifice himself for the good of others. Dorel is his mate, a gorgeous blonde in a leather bikini. Kaleb is the outcast, son of a crazy man who had ventured into the wilds many times before finally vanishing for good. Kaleb is also the last literate person. The trio soon meet Amal, the archer who has been watching. Amal knew Kaleb’s father and tells a tale of the downfall of civilization centuries ago. Amal further explains that Kaleb’s father had found a cure for the plague but Gagen stole it for himself and his tribe. With no hope of rescuing those stuck in the cave without help, the little band set out to recruit those who aided Kaleb’s father and take back the cure that Gagen stole.

The movie is often clunky and very uneven. That Kaleb is literate – thanks to his father – but none of his father’s former associates is literate doesn’t make sense. However, it makes Kaleb indispensable for deciphering his father’s work and perhaps making more of the cure. Right, so when the plague was ravaging the world, the best medical labs couldn’t develop a cure but, in the Stone Age technology long afterward, one man was able to concoct something that is both a cure and a vaccine against future infection? Call me a skeptic. Also, why didn’t his father introduce the bow to his tribe while he was teaching his son to read?

When Amal signals for reinforcements, half a dozen men arrive on horseback, a band of horse archers. So, Gagen stole the cure from these guys? Fine. Meanwhile, Savan, Dorel, and Kaleb go to Gagen’s island and manage to abscond with the cure. These three mostly clueless kids accomplished what Amal and his allies could not? When Gagen chases after the cure, the most precious thing he owns, he takes three men with him. On foot, no less! That’s it? That’s all you are willing to commit to recovering the cure? How did he steal it again? Imagine if Gagen and his party stumbled on Amal and the horse archers; he’d be toast.

In the climactic battle where Amal and his band are slaughtering the mutant humans who are loitering around Kaleb’s village, Gagen arrives. He is alone. His crossbow has one shot. He shoots at Kaleb, the only person with any hope of recreating the cure. Genius!

The idea of the movie was interesting, kind of like I Am Legend, only a couple centuries later. The execution was lacking. However, the most interesting thing about the movie is that Sean Bean does not die (check out this video that shows why his survival is worth mentioning). Though it looked like he might be done a couple of times, he pulled through to the finish. Way to go, Sean!

 

Not worth watching unless, like me, you are a Sean Bean fan.  I've been a fan since I first saw him in Sharpe's Rifles and all the Sharpe's movies that followed.  To me, that is his signature role though Boromir comes in as a close second.

The Lost Future on YouTube.

The Four Stages of Jihad

AnsweringMuslims.com is a website that examines the documentary evidence found in the Koran and other Islamic writings.  One video was particularly informative.  Citing the Koran extensively, there are several stages of jihad.  Interestingly, they coincide very much with Mohammed's life and can also be seen throughout the world today.

 

Stage 1: Stealth Jihad.  This describes Muslims who are in an area completely dominated by peoples of other faiths.  Open jihad would result in total defeat and is thus counterproductive.  In this stage, the Muslim must present themselves as friendly and deserving of respect.  State a willingness to live and let live and explain how Islam is a religion of peace.  This is the stage where many American-based Muslims find themselves.  This stage correlates to Mohammed's time in Mecca, when he began preaching.

 

Stage 2: Defensive Jihad.  Once the Muslim community is sufficiently protected, the level of intolerance for critics of Islam rises.  Speaking ill of Islam can provoke assassinations and terrorism.  Many places in Africa, Asia, and even Europe are at this stage.  This stage correlates to Mohammed's time in Medina when he practiced banditry against Meccan caravans and killed or expelled critics of himself or Islam.

 

Stage 3: Offensive Jihad.  The Muslim community is now the majority.  Non-Muslims must convert, pay a tax to practice their religion, or be slaughtered.  No churches or synagogues may be constructed within Muslim-controlled territory.  Conquest is desirable, if possible.  Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Islamic State are at this stage.  This correlates with Mohammed's conquest of Mecca and then the rest of Arabia.

 

Stage 0: Clueless about Jihad.  These Muslims are mostly cultural Muslims who have not read the Koran and are thus largely unaware of what it commands.  These people are similar to many Americans, who are culturally Christian - this includes the new pagans and atheists - but not actively attending church and only have a vague notion of what's in the Bible.  There is also a large chunk of the American Jewish community that is culturally and ethnically Jewish rather than religiously Jewish.

 

There is an obvious bias but David Wood has clearly read the source material.  He makes an excellent argument and the stages fit nicely with the world as we find it.  Moreover, it fits with my knowledge of history and follows closely with Mohammed's life.  The three stages of Jihad are practically a biography of Mohammed.  The video is just under half an hour but most enlightening.

The Big Short

A quirky documentary-like dramedy about the housing collapse of 2007. The story follows several characters who learn of the weakness of the various mortgage-based bonds and seek to profit on their inevitable collapse. It starts with Michael Burry (Christian Bale), an MD who runs a hedge fund. He is the first to see weakness in the subprime mortgage market and invests the majority of his fund in credit default swaps. As such, he was betting that the subprime market would crash. Per the film, his purchases attracted the interest of other investors, first Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling). Vennett sold credit default swaps to FrontPoint Partners, run by Mark Baum (Steve Carell). There are also a couple of young men with dreams of grandeur who happen upon a Vennett prospectus concerning the coming subprime meltdown. With the help of a former banker (Brad Pitt), the two also manage to acquire credit default swaps. When the collapse comes, all of them become rich while the economy nose dives.

Mark Baum is perhaps the best character from the viewer’s perspective because he expresses the outrage that many viewers likely feel. While the other characters are out to profit, he is the one trying to uncover how deep the rot goes. He is the one who finds that Standard & Poor's offers AAA ratings to crap bonds because, if not, Moody’s will; why drive business to the competitor? Realtors are selling houses with no regard to credit because the mortgage is just going to get bundled with countless other mortgages. The home buyers are buying because the houses appreciate so much that they earn rapid equity, can quickly refinance, and draw money out! He later discovers that a $50 million collateralized debt obligation (CDO) – which is a bundling of all these mortgages – could have as much as $1 billion associated with it through even more technical and abstruse financial instruments. The rot goes to the bone. He concludes that the banks knew the subprime market was a time bomb but didn't care because the government would bail them out. Taxpayers, not the banks, paid for the banks’ reckless, even fraudulent, behavior.

The movie has a vibe to it like The Office (2005-2013). Characters, even minor ones, will turn to the camera and offer asides, sometimes explaining that it didn't actually happen as shown. The breaking of the fourth wall is most common for Vennett, who serves as a narrator for the backstory and offers pithy commentary through the film. Then we have random cameos by Selena Gomez and Margot Robbie to explain arcane financial concepts in a way that retains the viewers’ attention. Clever but again a fourth wall breach. The movie comes across as an effort to educate in an entertaining way.

I enjoyed the film but it gives a one-sided view of the crash, blaming the banks and Wall Street but generally giving a pass to the government. Sure, there is an SEC regulator who is actively seeking a job at one of the big banks and it is clear that whatever agency is meant to keep the banks in line is asleep at the wheel. What isn’t brought up is the Community Reinvestment Act or the threats by Janet Reno of potential action against banks if ‘redlining’ didn’t stop. There was no talk of Bush’s Ownership Society. The Feds spent the previous 10 to 15 years demanding that banks loosen the requirements for home loans or else. Or else what? No law was passed but the banks got the message. Banks made it easier to get a loan. These eased requirements, which provided loans to people less likely or able to pay them, are the basis for blaming the ‘poor and immigrants.'  The movie does mention the accusation but doesn’t provide the background to the claim. Hmm.

Though I clearly learned some things about the subprime meltdown that I didn’t know, it didn’t cover some things that I did know. Take it as a primer but not as a conclusion. The story is more complicated still. Check out this Podcast from Russ Roberts about the financial crisis.

The Expanse

This new SyFy series takes place in the 23rd century, after humanity has managed to colonize the moon, Mars, various outer planetary moons, and the asteroid belt.  The story opens with a woman stuck in a cell in a weightless environment.  She manages to breakout and explore.  When she sees something inexplicable, she screams!

The story resumes on Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, where Detective Joe Miller is given an off-the-books assignment to find a missing rich girl, none other than the woman in the opening scene.  Elsewhere, the ice hauler Canterbury is returning to Ceres from Saturn where it collected giant blocks of ice from the rings.  They receive a distress call, which they initially ignore but later investigate.  A team of 5 take a shuttle to board the stricken ship.  It proves to be a trap!

 

Solar politics is a big theme in the series, mostly explored through Chrisjen Avasarala, a UN bigwig who has no qualms about being ruthless despite her apparently affable facade.  The UN governs all the moons and outposts through the solar system except for Mars, which is independent.  There is a movement among the 'Belters' to likewise become independent.  Belters appears to be anyone who is neither an Earther nor a Martian, the largest population of them being on Ceres.  The Outer Planets Alliance (OPA) - a group that claims to represent the Belters - is generally viewed as a terrorist organization.  There is a lot of tension between Earth and Mars as well.

 

The setting feels very real.  The technology doesn't seem quite advanced enough but still beyond what currently exists.  Ships have gravity by accelerating, not by some magical artificial gravity machine; there are times when characters are weightless.  It felt a lot like 2001: A Space Odyssey without the psychedelic light show at the end.

 

If the first 4 episodes are indicative of the first season, this is going to be an awesome show.  Highly recommended, so far.

Pirate Latitudes

This posthumously published Michael Crichton book seems very unlike his other work.  It is a straight forward pirate adventure tale and does not seem interested in instructing the reader.  I've read a fair number of his books and his villains are typically shallow and underdeveloped, his heroes are often similarly two-dimensional, but his storylines are often complex but rarely fully-developed.  Most of that is true here as well.  It is possible that, were I not already quite familiar with the region and the period, the book would seem more educational.  He does touch on a lot of facets of the period in a fairly short novel.  Where Timeline and Sphere felt like science lectures, Pirate Latitudes was more of a refresher.

 

The story opens at the governor's mansion in Port Royal, Jamaica.  Governor Almont has a busy day ahead of him.  In a chance conversation, he learns of a Spanish treasure ship that did not make the voyage across the Atlantic with the rest of the Spanish fleet.  Opportunity!  At this point, the story shifts to Captain Charles Hunter, a privateer on good terms with the governor.  Hunter goes in search of the perfect crew to accomplish an impossible task.  It seems rather like the Dirty Dozen which then transitions to the Guns of Navarone.  Oddly, getting the treasure is not the finish.  No, now it becomes The Odyssey as Hunter must return to Port Royal, overcoming treachery, a hurricane, a pursuing Spanish galleon, and cannibals.

 

Though sometimes outlandish, it is a fun read. 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

The movie is good but unfocused and repetitive. Our story opens on the desert planet of Jakku where Poe Dameron is acquiring a map that will allow the Resistance to locate Luke Skywalker, last of the Jedi. Just like Leia in the original movie, Poe’s location is attacked and he must hide the map in a droid before he is captured. The droid then falls into the hands of a young woman named Rey. The Force Awakens could as easily have been named A Newer Hope. Yes, it has an amazing number of similarities to the first movie. Here is a description I found on the Star Wars message board of IMDB:

A rag-tag group of heroes on a desert planet finds a droid with important information. They smuggle it off-planet to the resistance, who are fighting against the imperials. During the climax, they have to rescue the female of the group, disable the shield generator, and destroy the weak spot of the imperial's super weapon, which has the power to destroy planets. During the climax, the old mentor of the group is tragically cut down by the main villain, an evil force user. Despite this, the resistance manages to destroy the super-weapon and temporarily defeat the imperial army.

Yeah, lots of similarities. Our group on the desert planet is Rey and Finn. Rey is shown to have been left – for reasons unknown – on Jakku as a child. She lives in the ruins of an imperial walker and makes a living by scavenging parts from a crashed imperial cruiser. She rescues a droid from another scavenger. Finn the former Stormtrooper arrives on scene and joins her. The two then flee as the First Order seeks to recover the droid. They steal a ship that Rey judges to be garbage; it’s the Millennium Falcon. No sooner have they evaded the First Order and gotten into orbit when the ship is caught in a tractor beam and taken aboard an unknown ship.

Enter Han and Chewy. Han offers a brief explanation of how the Falcon was stolen and it has taken this long to track it down. Of course, we have hardly made introductions than Han’s bigger ship – which is never named – is boarded by two sets of criminals looking to collect money from Han. This actually bothered me. Han comes across as a newbie smuggler looking for the big score rather than a seasoned veteran who doesn’t make such rookie mistakes. In the original trilogy, Han had to dump Jabba’s cargo before his ship was boarded. He was competent but he got unlucky. Here, with his weakly comic fast-talking to the two sets of criminals, he comes across as incompetent. This is not the right way for Han to be comic relief. This is a very mellow and dispirited Han Solo. That is explained with later reveals but he felt a shadow of his former self. His death is telegraphed long before it occurs, which drained a lot of the tension. By the time he walks out onto the bridge, it is anticlimactic. I think I would have preferred the fiery old Han lecturing his son about being a damned fool to follow that old fossil Snoke and Ben suddenly snapping and killing him. Anyway, it is widely known that Harrison Ford wanted to be killed off during the original trilogy so his wish finally being granted here is even less of a surprise.

Rey grows in the force at an alarming rate. We first saw hints of her force ability when she flew the Falcon. Then, she really came to life when she resisted Kylo Ren’s interrogation. Though he has had training, he soon finds that Rey turns the tables and reads his mind! He has hardly left the cell when she mind controlled a Stormtrooper (played by Daniel “James Bond” Craig) into releasing her. Soon thereafter, she stomps an admittedly wounded Kylo in a lightsaber duel. Heck, she is already well beyond where Luke was at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back and he had had some instruction from a Jedi Master. Obviously, she is the character that the title references but it did seem that her advancement in the force came entirely too quickly and easily.

Fin is an oddity that wasn’t explained. Is he the only Stormtrooper to ever balk from butchery? What makes him different? If he has been ‘conditioned’ since childhood, why is he so normal around non-conditioned people? Are all Stormtroopers this affable once you take off the armor? Also, I found it irritating that the enemy didn’t just shoot him. During the fight at the ruins of Maz Kanata’s, he is called a traitor and then attacked. Okay, so that Stormtrooper recognizes him. Why not just shoot him? It isn’t as if Fin could have blocked blaster fire with the lightsaber. No, the Stormtrooper converted his weapon into some sort of energy club that could block a lightsaber. If you are the kind of guy who guns down unarmed villagers, why aren’t you the kind of guy who guns down traitors? Obviously because that would have killed off Fin. Screenwriters need to stop rescuing important characters by having villains act stupidly.

Poe, who is the first hero we meet, vanishes for much of the film. When he is brought back, he takes the role of lead pilot. It isn’t Star Wars unless you have some exciting space battles and our other characters aren’t yet suited for that. So in comes Poe and his squadron of x-wings. He is pretty exclusively a pilot in the movie.

Kylo Ren is initially very intimidating but, as we get to know him, proves to be a conflicted and moody villain. His tantrums are hilarious. Where his grandfather would Force choke underlings to death to release stress, Kylo hacks inanimate objects to shreds with his lightsaber. In the wake of his betrayal of the Jedi, he is used to being the only person who can use the Force but he has a rude awakening when he squares off with Rey. His lightsaber with its almost flame-like blade strikes me as another sign that he is still unskilled. The blade is unstable which, though scary, also implies that he didn’t put it together quite right. Though a lot of grief is being heaped on the character, I liked him. He is what Anakin should have been in the prequel trilogy: very conflicted, at times menacing, at times vulnerable. Anikin was just one long woe-is-me it’s not fair the Jedi are evil whine. Piling the chemistry-free love interest with Padme only made it worse. So, Kylo is a vast improvement and I expect he will mature into a more Vader-like villain by the next movie. Killing his father puts him solidly on the Dark Side of the Force and should purge his conflicted feelings.

General Hux is an arrogant and surprisingly young leader. I was initially surprised at how he spoke down to Kylo Ren but that only further demonstrated that Kylo wasn’t a Vader clone. Where Grand Moff Tarkin insouciantly stayed on the Death Star despite being told “there is a danger,” Hux was the first to evacuate Starkiller Base. Wow, these are some villains. The First Order is proving to be a pale imitation of the Empire.

Captain Phasma decided to shut down the shield because a traitor – who had recently demonstrated that he couldn’t shoot unarmed villagers - held a gun to her head. The fate of Starkiller Base is sealed by her decision. Phasma is shown to be a sad excuse for a Stormtrooper and utterly undeserving of her conspicuously shiny armor. Doubtless, she will return but her character has been damaged.

What is the political situation thirty years after the deaths of the Emperor and Darth Vader? General Leia appears to command a single base with a few dozen X-wings. She is part of The Resistance. Resistance to what? The Empire is gone, right? There is a New Republic. We saw the capitol planet of the New Republic destroyed, right? Why aren’t Leia, Akbar, and all the rest part of the military of this New Republic? Where are the capital ships aligned with the Republic or the Resistance? The planet where Leia is based is going to be destroyed and the best she can muster is a couple of dozen fighters? Wow, that’s pathetic. It very much seems like the First Order is the governing body though, at the same time, they are talking about conquest. But there is virtually nothing standing in your way? Why did you bother with the planet killer if there isn’t anyone actually opposing you?

The First Order comes across as generally incompetent. Not one but two of our heroes escape in separate incidents. During one of those escapes, another team has simultaneously infiltrated the base. Their impressive Starkiller Base, like previous planet vaporizing weapons, manages to take one shot before it is destroyed by a handful of enemies. The First Order has great set designers but they aren’t so great at the fighting. Of the many battles that First Order fought, they only won one, which was when they attacked a mostly unarmed village. Not an auspicious beginning for the forces of darkness.

There is a new and bigger death star. Wow, we haven’t gone there before. Granted, that first one was really quite cool. It was unfortunate that it was destroyed before it got to really instill terror across the galaxy. The second one was pathetic and a death trap. It blew up ships here and there but never got to target a planet. This new one is stupid. I can accept a moon-sized space station with a cannon that is powerful enough to destroy a planet. Hey, it’s just physics. A big enough gun will turn a planet into an asteroid field. But Starkiller Base is different. First, it is in System A while the target planet is in System X. The ‘projectile’ is fired and traverses who knows how many light years in mere moments. Moreover, the projectile – which appears as just an energy beam – has a guidance system that allows it to turn toward the target planet. Maybe that was gravity pulling it to the targets? No, at the speed it was going, a black hole would have trouble modifying its trajectory. I would have gone for a massive torpedo. Yeah, that would be doable. Modify some obsolete frigate, fill it with explosives, and have it hit a planet at light speed. The Starkiller just defied physics. Worse, there was that stupid visual of the planets exploding. If a planet around Alpha Centauri exploded, we wouldn’t know about it on Earth for years. And we certainly wouldn’t be able to see the explosion during daylight with the naked eye! Even though this is science-fantasy, this really grated on me. Much as I think it has been done quite enough, I would have preferred Death Star 3 to this travesty.

This far, far away galaxy has never heard of a history book. In the first trilogy, characters have never heard of the Jedi and find the Force to be something bizarre. But in the prequels, the Jedi Council is a branch of galactic governance, its members are the generals during the Clone Wars. Heck, Chewy fought alongside Yoda! Now in this one, Rey thinks Luke Skywalker is a myth! That Han has to confirm Luke’s existence is just odd. “The Berlin Wall, the Cold War. It’s all true.” Even in the prequels, this problem persisted. In such a technologically advanced society, how did a whole star system just vanish from the star charts and only some short order cook knew about it?

Speaking of star charts, what was with that kooky map? In the super high-tech world of Star Wars, there is no such thing as email. The map is on a memory chip of some kind and can never be copied or transmitted. Moreover, shouldn’t it just be galactic coordinates. I’m sure there must be some mapping system similar to latitude and longitude that would map even unexplored regions. Even when the data is at the Resistance base in the dormant R2-D2, it is inaccessible. How does technology work in this galaxy? Of course, this could now be a complaint of the original movie. Why didn’t Leia just email the Death Star plans to the Rebel Alliance? Email was virtually unknown in 1977. In 2015, we can watch a movie on a phone that fits in our pocket. It is troubling that some of our current technology exceeds that of the Star Wars universe.

Luke does not appear until the final scene. He was kept out of the story because including him would have undercut the new characters. Really, once Luke is on scene, he becomes the central character while everyone else is a sidekick. Though I understand the reasoning, it makes Luke look bad. One of his apprentices has just turned to the Dark Side and killed the other Jedi trainees so Luke runs away and hides? Moreover, he left some sort of map to find him? Are we playing hide and seek? It is going to take some good writing to rehabilitate Luke from this apparently cowardly act.

The most important thing about The Force Awakens is the absence of a Jar Jar Binks character. Nor was there any mention of midi-chlorians. And, as already mentioned, the central character wasn’t a plaintive Anakin. Yes, it is a rehash, it has lots of unanswered questions, it used some weak plot devices, but it was fun. Most of the characters have lots of promise for future development.

How you speak makes a BIG difference

This is absolutely hilarious.  It is amazing how much more erudite Trump sounds with a British accent.  The words are the same but the tone and the delivery are completely different.  Here, he doesn't sound brash and arrogant, rather he comes across as a snarky professorial type.  It is interesting how an accent can dramatically change how words are interpreted.

Macbeth

A generally faithful retelling of Shakespeare's famous tragedy.  Scotland is in a civil war, King Duncan (David Thewlis) against Thane Macdonwald.  Macbeth (Michael Fassbender), Thane of Glamis, is Duncan's leading general.  Their forces clash in a bloody and gory battle where Macbeth slays the rebel thane but finds that his only remaining son died during the battle.  In the aftermath of this battle, he encounters the witches who foretell that he will be Thane of Cawdor and then rise to kingship.  He dismisses them but, when he is granted Cawdor by King Duncan, he is set on a dark path.  His wife (Marion Cotillard) embraces the idea of kingship and pushes her hesitant husband to slay Duncan.  Long a loyal and honorable warrior, Macbeth's sanity cracks in the days and weeks after his foul deed.

 

The story is powerful and there are lots of opportunities for action but the movie somehow runs at a snail's pace.  The overwhelming score is all whole notes that only increase the feeling of slow and ponderous motion, even during battle scenes.  However, the breakdown of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is done quite well.  Macbeth's fracturing sanity soon spreads to his wife.  Her pleasure at their new status is quickly destroyed as she sees what a monster her husband has become.

 

No reason to see this on the big screen.  Wait for cable.

Bernie Sanders: Economic Illiterate

Looking at Bernie Sander's website and his views on Income and Wealth Equality, I discover that his plans didn't survive some back of the envelope math.

Putting at least 13 million Americans to work by investing $1 trillion over five years towards rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, railways, airports, public transit systems, ports, dams, wastewater plants, and other infrastructure needs.

 

Although I thought Obama had already dealt with this with his trillion dollar stimulus - no, wait.  He said shovel-ready wasn't as shovel-ready as he thought.  Okay, this still needs to get done.  That being the case, let's check the numbers.  $1 trillion dollars over a five year period will be $200 billion a year.  That $200 billion paid out as salary to 13 million (he said "at least" so we'll go with the minimum) would be $15,384.62 each.  Wow, that's not much, certainly not enough to raise a family.  And this doesn't even account for the materials needed to do all the rebuilding, so that is a maximum salary.

 

Increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour by 2020. In the year 2015, no one who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty.

 

$15 per hour would lead to $120 per 8 hour day or $600 per 5 day week.  That would amount to $31,200 a year, more than double what he plans to allocate for workers on his infrastructure project.  Well, let's look at that number.  $15,384.62 a year comes to $295.86 per week and $59.17 per day.  That would be $7.40 an hour, just above the current minimum wage.  Could that be a coincidence?  Extremely unlikely.  Of course, if he gets his minimum wage increase, we'll just have to allocate $2 trillion to the 5 year plan.  Easy as pie.  It will work much better when Bernie spends twice as much as Obama did.  Maybe they are finally shovel-ready?

Creating 1 million jobs for disadvantaged young Americans by investing $5.5 billion in a youth jobs program. Today, the youth unemployment rate is off the charts. We have got to end this tragedy by making sure teenagers and young adults have the jobs they need to move up the economic ladder.

 

They may be disadvantaged youth but they require the new minimum wage too, right?  Therefore, that $5.5 billion divide equally (Bernie is big on income equality) among the million youths would be $5,500 each.  At $15 per hour, that is 366 hours and 40 minutes of work or about 9 weeks of full time employment.  Is this a summer jobs program?  If it is meant to be year round, it will be 7 hours a week.  If not, these disadvantaged youth will be unemployed for 43 weeks of the year.

 

Requiring employers to provide at least 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave; two weeks of paid vacation; and 7 days of paid sick days. Real family values are about making sure that parents have the time they need to bond with their babies and take care of their children and relatives when they get ill.

That sounds very compassionate but increases the cost of labor.  How?  Let's break it down.  Looking at my minimum wage employee who is paid $31,200 a year, even if he and all his family is perfectly healthy, I am only getting $30,000 of labor, the other $1,200 going to his paid vacation.  Since I don't get those 80 hours of labor, I have to amortize that over the rest of the year.  It works out that I am really paying $15.60 per hour.  What if he takes all 7 paid sick days?  Now he is costing me $16.05 per hour.  Gads, what if he is out for the 12 week paid family medical leave too?  Now he is costing $21.31 per hour.  Sure, that is the worst case scenario but any woman in her childbearing years will use most or all of her 12 weeks.

 

With this huge and continuous shift of costs onto employers, is it any wonder that manufacturing is moving overseas?  As the cost of labor domestically rises relative to foreign labor, the issue becomes the cost of shipping.  With the proliferation of free trade agreements that erase tariffs, that cost is dropping.  Voila, China becomes the new manufacturing hub of the world, increased shipping costs are more than offset by the reduction in labor costs, and corporate profits skyrocket.  Corporations can move.  They will only stay while it is profitable to do so.  Bernie's prescriptions will accelerate the exodus.  Oh, but Bernie thought of that.

 

Reversing trade policies like NAFTA, CAFTA, and PNTR with China that have driven down wages and caused the loss of millions of jobs. If corporate America wants us to buy their products they need to manufacture those products in this country, not in China or other low-wage countries.

 

Not only is Bernie going to more than double the minimum wage, he's going to engage in protectionism.  The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was supposed to get Americans to buy domestically manufactured goods and spur growth after the 1929 market crash.  Instead, it cut imports and exports by half through a trade war.  Didn't do the Great Depression a bit of good.  But maybe it will work for Bernie.  The World Trade Organization - of which we are a member - is going to love that.  Ignoring all that, let's just ponder where this goes.  The price of all goods in the US is currently based upon the importation of a large percentage of our manufactured goods.  Merely undoing that will cause the price of goods to rise dramatically as US labor costs are already higher than overseas.  Add to this the greatly increased labor costs.  To make up for this upheaval, corporations are going to have to raise prices dramatically.  And though government will have been the architect of the disaster, business will be blamed for gouging and being greedy, just like is happening with Obamacare now.

 

At the end of Bernie's proposed path is an economy worse than what currently exists, perhaps a great deal worse.

The Art of the Haggle

Anyone who has prepared for an interview and received advice from friends and family is familiar with the idea of asking for more salary than required.  The employer will offer something less but higher than would have been offered if the 'real' goal salary had been revealed.  This is standard negotiation, seen in films and on TV with such regularity that everyone knows that haggling gets a better deal.  But what about legislative policy?  Are the wildly unlikely proposals of Donald Trump nothing more than an opening bid?  He proposed deporting 10 to 20 million illegals in his first year, something that would require a massive effort and considerable cost if done the way government traditionally does such things.  With this as President Trump's demand, what would Congress offer to satisfy him and his supporters; newly elected presidents have a lot of political capital to spend.  Or, what of his complete shutdown of all Muslim immigration?  Again, this is likely just the beginning of a negotiation.  Trump may even believe his stance is extreme but if he offers something more reasonable, he might get less than he really wants.  Recall, this is a man who wrote The Art of the Deal in the 1980s, a book that was a #1 best seller for a year.  Rather than being a nativist crackpot, perhaps Trump is bringing his business negotiation skills to politics.  He certainly can't negotiate worse deals than the Republicans have over the last 7 years.

Extreme Policy!

In the wake of Obama's milquetoast speech that was more concerned with an American backlash against Muslims than with ISIS killing Americans, it is no surprise that Trump offers the other extreme.  Where Obama wants to bring in Syrian refugees over the objections of many governors and legislators, Trump wants to shutdown any Muslim from entering the country.  Pick your bad policy.  It is only because of Obama's failed foreign policy that Trump is able to get cheers for his proposed policy.  Much the same is happening in Europe.  The left-leaning parties have been shown to be unserious about the threat posed by Islamic terrorists so the citizens, with no other option, are voting for reactionaries who will bring a whole host of other issues but at least they appear to be serious about the terror threat.  Obama's repeated abdication on illegal immigration and Islamic terrorists has made the rise of Trump possible, even inevitable.  Given a choice between being flooded with Muslim refugees who may be infiltrated by ISIS operatives or barring all Muslims from the country, what does the rational person choose?  One choice is reckless and one is unjust.  Pick!

 

Has Trump gone too far this time?  Probably not.  Those who support him are unfazed by his hyperbole.  And this sort of hyperbole was recently practiced by the Democrats.  In the wake of Dylan Roof killing 9 black churchgoers, there was a push to strip every Confederate symbol from every public place throughout the south.  It went so far that reruns of the Dukes of Hazzard were pulled from TV Land because the General Lee sported a Confederate Flag on the roof.  So, if it is appropriate to attack all things Confederate over Roof, is it not in the same spirit to deny Muslims access to the US in wake of San Bernardino?  The extreme on the one invited the extreme on the other.

 

After the American Revolution, the Founders had such fear of a powerful central government that they created a pathetically weak one under the Articles of Confederation.  They soon learned that government needed to be more powerful to keep the peace but still wanted a limited government.  This time, having seen both the extremes, they modeled something more toward the middle which proved to be good policy.  Perhaps somewhere between Trump's nativism and Obama's borderless world, there is a good policy to be had.  Maybe Ted Cruz can offer that policy.

Krampus

This new Christmas movie doesn't really know what it wants to be.  It opens with a very negative view of the consumerism of the season, showing shoppers at some Wal-Mart like store stomp an unfortunate greeter underfoot before getting into brawls over who grabbed this or that first.   Stuffed animals are ripped asunder and security guards use tazers with glee.  With this, we know a dark Christmas is coming.

 

The story centers on Max and his family.  Max is at an age where belief in Santa is unexpected.  He is tormented by his cousins for having written a letter to Santa.  Feeling embarrassed, he tears it up and tosses it out the window.  Moments later, dark clouds arrive and soon a blizzard of epic proportions knocks out the power.  Then it gets really weird.

 

There are times when the movie wants to explain the pathos of each character, playing like some family drama.  We learn that Max's parents have been drifting apart, he is no longer as close to his older sister as he once was, his Uncle Howard wanted boys which is why his older daughters dress and act as they do, and so on and so forth.  This family background proceeded beyond the introduction phase of the movie, which was awkward.  Max's grandmother spoke almost exclusively in German though everyone else spoke to her in English.  That was awkward, especially when she explains the plot to everyone in English halfway through the movie.  Worse, she initially gets subtitles and then it stops.  Actually, I didn't learn German in the first 20 minutes of the movie; why have the subtitles stopped?  The movie was sometimes comical, especially with Uncle Howard.

 

Krampus is a goat-legged fellow who is the evil Santa in Germanic lore.  Where Santa gives presents and spreads joy, Krampus punishes the naughty.  And it turns out that Krampus has a number of helpers.  There are gingerbread men, an evil teddy bear, a voracious jack-in-the-box, an animated robot toy, a bunch of masked elves, and a never-seen beast that burrows under the snow and drags off characters.  This vast menagerie of monsters was exasperating.  The movie might have been better called Minions of Krampus.

 

For a horror film, it wasn't scary.  After all, Krampus is coming for the naughty people and it is hard to feel much sympathy for many of them.  Max - the central character - spends much of the film as a bystander while the adults fight off the latest Krampus goon.  The movie ends very badly but then there is a twist which doesn't really improve the ending.  This was written and directed by the man who penned the disastrous Superman Returns (2006).  Skip this one.

Mass Shootings double Under Obama

I stumbled upon a fascinating spreadsheet compiled by Mother Jones.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data

Obviously, I am not a regular reader of Mother Jones but I must commend it for the logical and complete data that has been compiled.  As most of my co-workers know, there are few things that I like more than an Excel spreadsheet.  Data in a spreadsheet can reveal a great deal if pressed into a pivot table or sorted by one factor rather than another.  There is the opportunity to get subtotals for certain factors and then compare that to subtotals from another factor.

 

Mother Jones counts 73 mass shootings since 1982, slapping down the Washington Post's claim that San Bernardino was the 355th mass shooting just this year.  Of course, one must define the terms.  Mother Jones only included those incidents where 4 or more were killed and it wasn't gang or drug-related (i.e. the victims had no reason to expect they were at risk of being killed).  In those 73 mass shootings, 595 people were killed and 543 were injured.  The state with the most mass shootings is California (12), followed by Florida and Washington (6 each), then Texas (5).  When looking at the shooters, 43 of them showed prior signs of mental illness.  Those 43 shooters accounted for 63% of the fatalities and 71% of the injured.  In fact, the mentally ill had a higher average number killed (8.7 victims per shooting) than those who were not mentally ill (7.1 victims).

Now let's drift into unfair and unreasonable territory.  Yes, let's ask what portion of the carnage has happened since Hope and Change entered the White House.  It turns out that more than a third (26) of the mass shootings have occurred since President Obama was inaugurated.  There were only 15 mass shootings during the George W Bush administration, 18 during Clinton, and 7 each during Reagan and George Bush.  Let's consider fatalities per month.  Reagan saw 0.7 mass shooting fatalities per month during his two terms.  Bush I had 1.3, Clinton 1.2, Bush II 1.3, and Obama 2.7.  Wow!  The number of fatalities per month has more than doubled under Obama.  If there was this sort of rise with a Republican in the White House, it would be front page news and appearing on every newscast.

Now here is where we head into the tinfoil hat stuff.  This increase in frequency of mass shootings during the Obama Administration does - from his repeatedly stated perspective - add weight to the gun control message.  Some speculated that Fast and Furious was meant to get guns into the hands of bad actors, increase gun crime along the border, and provide an impetus for gun control.  The very idea reminds me of The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) in which a US intelligence agency plots an attack on America to increase next year's funding from Congress.  That doesn't really happen, right?

DHS, Terrorist Haven?

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/72-dhs-employees-on-terrorist-watch-list/

This does not inspire confidence in government.  The agency created to protect the homeland in the wake of the 9/11 attack has hired people on the watch list.  How tough is it for the human resources department at DHS to check applicants against the terrorist watch list?  Why didn't the FBI give them a heads up?

FBI: Hey DHS, we were checking out someone on the terrorist watch list and discovered he was working as a screener at TSA.  What's up with that?

DHS: What?  Again?  I'll have a chat with Muhammad down in HR.

FBI: Yeah, about Muhammad in HR...

The Department of Homeland Security comprises Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the US Border Patrol.  These agencies are responsible for keeping the wrong people out of the country or off our airplanes.  And they have failed to keep the wrong people out of the department!  If 72 people on the terrorist watch list infiltrated the department, how many sneaked by Border Patrol, snookered ICE, or slipped past TSA?

 

Of course, it is possible in a department of 240,000 people that 72 of them shared names with known terrorists.  But if it was just mistaken identity, why did the inspector general report it and Representative Stephen Lynch (D. Mass.) make an issue of it?

"Conservative" Billionaires for Hillary

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/elections-2016/article48067815.html

What does this say about JEB?  It says that JEB is closer to Hillary than to Trump is.  It says that JEB supporters can more easily swing over to a leftist Democrat than a non-traditional Republican.  Really, both JEB and Hillary are in favor of Amnesty and Common Core.  Hillary says that Obama's executive amnesty (lawlessness) didn't go far enough!  JEB and Hillary could be running mates, which is why JEB's campaign has floundered. 

Fernandez calls Trump the next Hitler or Mussolini.  Gee, Republicans aren't used to being called fascists on a regular basis.  I can't count the number of times that George W. Bush was compared to Hitler or called a Nazi.  Of course, the very ones who hurl the fascism/Nazi label usually demonstrate their ignorance.  Mussolini was a Socialist who later combined with Nationalism to create National Socialism.  Which party has the Socialists again?  Isn't Bernie Sanders a self-declared Socialist?  But the Republican is the Fascist.  Whatever.  But let's look at the evidence so far.

What are Trump's declared policies that are either posted on his website or regularly mentioned in his stump speeches?

 

US-China Trade Reform: Trump thinks we have a bad deal with China as far as trade goes and wants to dramatically reset the table.  He makes a lot of good points and has some prescriptions that I like.  Notably, he suggests fixing our debt as a means of closing our trade deficit (there is an economic proof that shows that trade deficits are related to debt).  I'm doubtful of regaining lost manufacturing jobs but a stronger stance would be generally beneficial.

Veterans Administration Reform: This was briefly a scandal for the Obama Administration and Bush before him.  Trump proposes to fix it but so did the current and previous administration.  Will Trump follow through?  Government agencies are, by their nature, doomed to inefficiency and waste.  Trump may be able to improve it but privatization and reimbursement would probably work better.

 

Tax Reform: Simplify the tax code.  He has proposed 4 brackets and a shift in who pays the burden.  He particularly mentioned hedge fund managers.  Sounds like he wants to tax Wall Street more.  Isn't that was Elizabeth Warren wants?  Is she a Nazi?  I've reviewed Trump's tax ideas in another post and don't need to retread it here.

Second Amendment Rights: He believes in the 2nd Amendment.  Trump has bragged about having a gun and even claims to have a concealed carry license.  Hitler was a gun-grabber, the better to oppress the citizens.  Who else wants to limit the citizens' access to guns?  President Obama!  Sounds like Obama and the Democrats are closer to Hitler than Trump is.

Immigration Reform: Here's the big one, the one that launched Trump into the lead that he has held for months.  Secure the border and eject those who crossed it illegally.  Let's enforce the laws that Congress passed.  US Immigration should primarily benefit Americans, not foreigners.  Why import cheap labor at the expense of increasing the unemployment rate among inner-city youth?  Yep, that sounds like Hitler.  OMG, the Horror!  The Fascism!

War on Terror: Though not listed among his positions on his website, Trump is very strong on this.  He has called for bombing ISIS out of existence and not bringing Muslim refugees into the United States.

All of these are popular overall positions with the American electorate.  That's why he is viewed as a Populist.  However, none of them are Fascist.  You might call his immigration policy Nativist, his trade policy Protectionist, or his Tax Reform a giveaway to the wealthy but none of these policies jibe with Hitler.  Anyway, Trump is less of a danger than Obama, because Trump actually like America.

Ideological State of Iraq and Syria

Syed Farook was born in Illinois to Pakistani immigrants.  He had worked at the San Bernardino public health department for 5 years.  Two years ago, he married his wife, Tashfeen Malik, and they had a baby girl 6 months ago.  Then, out of the blue, he and his wife shot more than 30 people, mostly Farook's co-workers.  Sure, they were both Muslims but that had nothing to do with it.  No, this was probably work place violence.  Oh, the wife pledged allegiance to ISIS on Facebook during the attack?  But it still has nothing to do with Islam.  Islam is a religion of peace.  ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, Al-Shabaab, Ansar al-Islam, and all the rest are doing Islam wrong.

 

It turns out that ISIS is not Islamic.  Which must mean that all of those other groups aren't Islamic either.  There is an interesting article on Think Progress that explains it:

 

http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/09/11/3566181/why-isis-is-in-fact-not-islamic/

 

Well, that cleared things up.  So Mohammad wasn't a Muslim.  You see, he was a warlord who led his 'peaceful' followers into a score of battles.  His followers began as bandits who struck Meccan caravans, the better to get wealth and power.  After a successful battle against a Meccan force where he was vastly outnumbered, his following grew.  Eventually, he conquered Mecca and then Arabia.  It was all done very peacefully, because Islam is the religion of peace.

 

But back to Farook.  Though he has been described as 'very religious,' we know that his path led him not to true Islam but to Ideology!  Yes, it was an evil Ideology that somehow exclusively afflicts Muslims.  Those terror groups have all wrongly appropriated the title of Islam.  Of course, no one should ask why Muslims are so susceptible to Ideology.  Just be satisfied that Ideology is not Islam.  There is no link.  If you think otherwise, you are an Islamaphobe and may be subject to prosecution by the DOJ!

 

http://www.dailywire.com/news/1593/loretta-lynch-vows-prosecute-those-who-use-anti-james-barrett

 

Maybe Attorney General Lynch could use that same reasoning to protect Christians and Jews?  Maybe?

President Broken Record

I say this every time we've got one of these mass shootings. This just doesn't happen in other countries,

Barack Obama after San Bernardino Shooting

 

So quickly we forget Paris, Mr. President.  On a per capita basis, there are half a dozen European countries where the odds of getting killed in a mass shooting are higher than in the US.  Of course, a mass shooting in Europe has to be much bigger to get any coverage here in the US.  Four people killed in Serbia is hardly going to play on the evening news but that same thing in Chatanooga, TN, can run for days.  The bias of the news to report US shootings rather than similar shootings in Europe gives verisimilitude to the president's claim.  No, the only European shootings reported here are the big ones, like Paris last month, or the massacre of 77 Norwegians - mostly teenagers - in 2011.

 

As with every such incident, President Obama suggests gun control.  It is irrelevant to him that the guns used in the San Bernardino shooting were illegal in California.  California has been ratcheting up gun control for years, for the safety of its citizens, don't you know.  What gun control does, as I have mentioned time and again, is to disarm the law-abiding while providing a safer environment for the criminals.  Criminals hate when their victims shoot back.

 

Every time Obama broaches the gun control issue, gun sales go through the roof.  EVERY TIME.  He is a gun store's best advertisement.  He can't not know this.  No one has done more for gun proliferation in the past 7 years than Barack Obama.  If he had been a gun advocate instead, he would not have been able to convince so many to buy guns.  When it is counterproductive to even mention a policy, maybe that is a policy best avoided.

Dump Amnesty to Defeat Trump

http://www.kausfiles.com/2015/11/30/why-doesnt-the-gop-elite-give-up-on-amnesty/

Kaus is really onto something here.  Why, when the base of the party is clearly attracted to Trump because of his stand on illegal immigration, doesn't the party just adopt that view.  This is what your voters want.  They want it so much that they will vote for Trump.  Trump!  Trump is looking more and more like the eventual nominee because the voters don't trust insiders.  The party can't wait to try amnesty yet again in spite of their voters.

 

I don't think the party has time to reverse this problem.  With JEB's campaign barely limping along and Rubio under the stain of his Gang of 8 foolishness, there isn't a credible candidate who can seize the anti-amnesty flag from Trump.  The most likely candidate with elective experience who could steal the mantle is Ted Cruz, and the party leaders hate him far more than Trump.

Trumbo

We open with some background offered in text.  Dalton Trumbo was a member of the Communist Party from 1943 to 1948.  In 1947, Trumbo's (Bryan Cranston) career is rocketing, having been signed to the most lucrative contract ever offered to a screenwriter.  Then disaster struck as the Congress started looking for communists in Hollywood.  Trumbo and others were called to testify but refused to answer the question of 'are you now or have you ever been a communist?'  Failure to answer put them in contempt of Congress.  Trumbo served 11 months in federal penitentiary after which he was blacklisted.

 

However, Trumbo continued to make a living as a writer, passing his work to writers who weren't blacklisted and getting a portion of the pay.  He also wrote under several pseudonyms.  He is shown assisting his fellow blacklistees to do the same.  During this time, two of his screenplays won Oscars. 

Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) is the big villain and John Wayne (David James Elliot) proves to be a fellow traveler.  Ronald Reagan is also shown testifying against Communists before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.  Hedda is painted as a particularly foul and mean woman, eager to ruin the careers of communists or, in the case of Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg), those who had associated with communists.  She, not the government, is the villain in this movie.

One of the funnier moments in the movie was when Trumbo's eldest daughter - about 11 at the time - asked if she was a communist.  Trumbo offers a test.  He paints a scene where she has a sandwich and some other child does not.  What do you do?  Tell that child to get a job?  Sell the sandwich at a huge profit?  "Share," she announced.  Yes, you are a communist, her father declares.  And that is the limit of the discussion on what communism is.
 

As far as it goes, the movie tells its story quite well with both humor and drama.  The movie shows no doubts about which side is correct and brings up the First Amendment on several occasions.  Trumbo comes across as an unflinching defender of freedom of thought.  The movie closes with a conciliatory victory speech given in 1970, showing that Trumbo was a bigger, nobler man than one could really expect.

 

And now the rest of the story...

 

Almost a decade before the movie begins, Dalton Trumbo wrote an anti-war book called Johnny Got his Gun.  The book was published only 2 days after World War II commenced.  Only the month before that, Russia and Germany had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty that preceded the two powers dividing Poland between them.  Trumbo's book remained in publication until the Nazis attacked Russia.  Then, both Trumbo and his publisher pulled it.  As a Communist, he now wanted the US to get into the war to assist Russia, the only Communist state at that time.  In the wake of WWII, the Iron Curtain brought about many more Communist states in Eastern Europe, all puppets of the growing Soviet Empire.  In 1949, China fell to the Communist Mao Zedong.  The Fascists - Germany and Italy - at their peak were geographically tiny compared to what the Communists now held.

In WWII, the US liberated France, Belgium, Netherlands, et al.  Russia subjugated Eastern Europe.  Trumbo was on the Communists side!  There was no First Amendment protection in the Soviet block but Trumbo was eager to use it to allow him to propagandize for the Communists here.  His Capitalist counterpart in the Soviet Union ended up in the gulag but the United States is the bad guy.  Right.

Communism - as practiced - was the deadliest ideology of the 20th Century.  It was far deadlier than Fascism and Nazism combined.  Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and their ilk murdered tens of millions.  To lionize a communist propagandist just shows that most people are still unaware - by design - just how bad communism was and is.

But back to Trumbo.  The Blacklist was not some government requirement that such people not be employed.  It was Hollywood itself choosing not to associate with communists.  Freedom of association is also in the First Amendment.  Trumbo brought his troubles on himself and got off fairly easily.

Victor Frankenstein

The story opens in the circus, where a young nameless hunchback (Daniel Radcliffe) is a clown and - quite surprisingly - physician.  Yes, this hunchback has such a gift for anatomy that the circus allows him to treat injuries.  When a trapeze artist falls and is at threat of dying, the hunchback quickly diagnoses the problem and determines a fix that saves a life.  Victor Frankenstein, who is there to witness, is truly impressed.  He steals the hunchback away from the circus and makes him a partner is his great project.  Interestingly, the initial project is a chimpanzee named Gordon with parts from a variety creatures.  After a successful demonstration of the life-giving power of a good electrical jolt, the pair win a sponsor who will allow them to try something much bigger and more human.

 

The hunchback, who turns out not to be a hunchback, is given the name Igor by his new friend.  Igor was Victor's roommate but Victor refuses to elaborate.  Hmm.  For a maltreated circus clown, Igor is inexplicably brilliant and possess an encyclopedic knowledge of anatomy.  He grasps Frankenstein's ideas with ease, though often seeing the trees and ignoring the forest.  He also has a better grasp on how to act in polite company than Victor.  On top of that, it is implausible for such a gifted medical mind to have been unaware that his affliction was not a hunched back but something entirely treatable.

 

Victor (James McAvoy) is a true mad scientist.  He is full of passion and mood swings.  He might be considered manic-depressive, though mostly manic.  Wow, really manic.  He is impatient with those who cannot grasp his genius.  Unrestrained by ethics or morals, he will do whatever it takes to create life.  After all, if he can conquer death, will not that outweigh any ill done on the path to achieve it?

 

Inspector Turpin (Andrew Scott) has an uncanny knack for seeing the truth of things.  When first introduced, he demonstrates a keen ability to intuit the truth from the lies that are offered.  Though it is never explained why, Turpin is obsessed with a case that involves the theft of animal body parts that have occurred.  Though I thought I knew the reason why he was obsessed, it was never confirmed in the movie.

 

Lorelei (Jessica Brown Findlay), the saved trapeze artist, falls madly in love with Igor.  She did the same thing as Sybil in Downtown Abbey, falling for the chauffeur.  It is peculiar that Igor the clown - not a lot of skill required - was pursued as he attempted to escape the circus but Lorelei - a major attraction - was abandoned after her injury, not her first.  Her happy acquisition of a sugar daddy who has no sexual interest in her is perhaps a bit too convenient.  Like Igor, she adapts to polite society with surprising ease.
 

Of course, it wouldn't be Frankenstein without the monster.  The monster does look impressive but doesn't last.  Heck, it didn't get out of the castle to wreak havoc on the peasants.  Like much of the movie, the creation and destruction of the monster is entirely too convenient.  Too much is left nice and tidy.  However, Igor does get a letter from Victor in which Victor declares his plan to try again.  Was there a plan for a sequel?  I rather doubt this will be successful enough to see that happen.

 

The movie was fun to watch and had a surprising amount of laughs - all provided by Frankenstein, not the clown.  Go figure.  James McAvoy's wild and frantic Frankenstein was great fun.  McAvoy's Frankenstein had more energy than the lightning bolt that gave life to his monster.

Mayor Asterisk

13 months after Laquan McDonald was killed by Officer Jason Van Dyke in Chicago, the dashcam video of the incident has finally been released.  The 17 year-old was walking down the street with a knife in hand and refusing officers' orders.  Then Van Dyke arrived.  In the video, he draws his gun and suddenly Laquan is down.  Just looking at the video, I didn't understand the issue.  You run around with a knife and refuse to drop it when ordered by police, you should expect to get shot.  No, what bothered me is how he was just left to bleed.  It wasn't until I read the story that I learned that Van Dyke had emptied his 16 round clip!  Laquan was riddled with 14 bullets, the vast majority of them after he was already lying on the street.  Van Dyke has been charged with first-degree murder for the incident.

 

As it happens, Mayor Rahm Emanuel - former Chief of Staff for President Obama - was coincidentally running for reelection as mayor.  Had the dashcam video been released prior to the February election or the April run-off election, Emanuel would have had a much more difficult path to reelection.  Where he had black pastors working to get him the black vote, he might instead have seen Black Lives Matter protestors at his every campaign event.

 

The big problem here is the mishandling from the beginning.  If the video had been revealed to the public immediately and the murder charge had been levied in November of 2014, it could have been a political asset, a demonstration that the mayor was intolerant of police malfeasance.  Instead, the year long delay makes one wonder what else the mayor is keeping under wraps.  However, there is also the possibility that, even correctly handled, there might have been massive demonstrations that would have hurt Emanuel.  I suspect that is what he feared and why it took so long to come to light.

Spectre

Bond is back and so is Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  After a decades long absence, Blofeld is back as the head of Spectre though his backstory has dramatically changed.  The movie opens with Bond in Mexico City for Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).  He's on a mission to kill a man.  The action that follows is ridiculous to the extreme and a return to the silliness that we saw in Quantum of Solace.  Also echoing Quantum of Solace, Blofeld's secret hideout is amazingly combustible.  Why do James Bond's villains use dynamite, hydrogen, and gasoline as construction materials?

 

Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista) is an excellent henchmen along the lines of Odd Job and Jaws.  He is pure aggression and his dialogue is next to nil.  Where Jaws had steel teeth, Hinx has sharpened steel thumbnails, the better to gouge eyeballs.  Unlike Odd Job and Jaws, Hinx is not some grim humorless thug.  No, he spends a lot of time smiling, especially after killing someone or shooting holes in your plane.  He is also surprisingly well-dressed.  I hope to see him again in the next film.

 

Blofeld has proved a more durable villain in the movies - 8 so far - than in the novels - only appeared in 3.  In the novels, Spectre and Blofeld were introduced in Thunderball (9th novel).  Bond killed Blofeld in You Only Live Twice (12th novel).  The movies opted to replace the Soviets with Spectre right from the start so that Blofeld and his fluffy white cat appear in almost every Sean Connery Bond film.  I did like how Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) is made the architect of the previous 3 movies.  The mysterious Quantum group was just a facet of Spectre and the chief villains in each of those films was just a minion of Blofeld.  Blofeld is mostly unemotional and unmoved by whatever is happening.  He is never angry and rarely shows anything beyond mild amusement.  He plays a good host but it is just an act.  Reminded me a bit of Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler.

 

The Daniel Craig period as Bond has seen a lot of more depth to the character and very few of the post-kill witticisms.  In Casino Royale, we saw his first love - Vesper Lynd - and her death.  Quantum of Solace was basically a waste though it does fold into the storyline of Spectre.  In Skyfall, we see his childhood home and learn how he was an orphan.  Here in Spectre, we learn of Hans Obenhauser, a man who adopted him after his parents' death.  This was only ever mentioned in the short story Octopussy in the novels but is greatly expanded here.  Wow, I really didn't see that coming.

 

Another interesting development is that this Bond is part of a team.  M (Ralph Fiennes), Moneypenny (Namoie Harris), Q (Ben Whishaw), and Bill Tanner (Roy Kinnear) have sizeable roles that span the movie, not just the opening office bit when 007 is dispatched on his mission.  Part of this has to do with how the modern world works.  As Bond can't be an awesome computer hacker - very important in modern intelligence - that facet goes to Q.  Also, the proliferation of cellphones means that the office is always available, thus contact to M or Moneypenny is as easy as pie.  This is a departure from the novels but I welcome it.

 

A rarity for Bond movies, none of the Bond girls died.  Daniel Craig has not shown himself to be the lady's man of previous Bonds.  Though he has a beauty with him at the start, he leaves her in the room before anything happens and never returns.  His only love interest here is Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), who appears not to be just another ship passing in the night.

 

All in all, a fun Bond flick with more weight to it than others in the franchise.  The series has moved into an overarching storyline, fitting it more to the mold of the Borne movies or Harry Potter.

Turkey Shoot

The Turks have shot down a Russian fighter jet and NATO asks why didn't Turkey just escort the jet out of Turkish airspace.  The evidence in the aftermath is that Russia only just clipped a strip of land that projects - like a peninsula - into Syria.  The incursion was only a few seconds.  Really, Turkey, why so trigger happy?

It seems that Russian jets have been making a habit of drifting into Turkish airspace.  Here's a story from October 6th:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/06/nato-chief-jens-stoltenberg-russia-turkish-airspace-violations-Syria

Moreover, it should be remembered that Turkey and Russia have a long and troubled history.  They have been at war with one another 12 times in the past 450 years.  Much of the Balkans were lost during wars with the Russians.  Though it has been nearly a century since they last clashed in war during World War I, they remained belligerent toward one another.  Turkey became part of NATO during the Cold War, continuing the adversarial relationship.  Russia is just as aware of this history and should have known that repeated poking would provoke a response.

 

Though no fan of Erdogan, I'm generally on Turkey's side here.  Whether or not there were warnings this time around, there had been warnings in the recent past.  This was not some passenger plane that was a little off course, this was an armed fighter.  Russian pilots dismissed them and have paid the price.  I am willing to bet that there will be an end to the airspace incursions.

 

That aside, this is the first time in over half a century that a Russian plane was shot down by a NATO member.  Precisely this was feared when Russia joined the Syrian Civil War.  Russia and NATO allies have different objectives in Syria and it is inevitable that there will be clashes.  It is unlikely this will be the only one.

 

Theodore Roosevelt said that one should speak softly and carry a big stick.  He was accused of being a jingoistic warmonger.  However, there were no wars during his presidency.  In fact, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating a peace between Russia and Japan during the Russo-Japanese War (1905).  He sent the Great White Fleet - consisting of 16 battleships and various escorts - around the world to display American naval power.  With such an outward show of strength, the warmonger never had a war.  That was by design.

 

By contrast, Barack Obama has shown nothing but weakness and withdrawal.  He talks of smart diplomacy and the right side of history but the conflicts multiply and our enemies grow stronger.  For the last 7 years, we have negotiated with adversaries (Iran, Russia) and undercut our allies (Poland, Israel).  The incident on the Turkish border is a direct result of the catastrophic foreign policy of the Obama Administration.  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shares in this disaster and promises to stay the course.

Ouroboros

An ouroborous is a snake that eats its own tail.  Such creatures have existed in many mythologies though the most noted is probably Jormungandr, the Norse serpent that encircles the world.  It is fated to slay Thor during Ragnarok (Norse Doomsday) while also being killed by the thunder god.  I mention this because the Democratic Party is starting to resemble an Ouroboros.  A few months ago, I noted here that most Democratic Presidents would be found lacking as far as racial sensitivity was concerned.  At that time, the problem was Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.  Now the issue is Woodrow Wilson.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/18/princeton-students-take-over-presidents-office-demand-erasure-of-woodrow-wilson/

As more and more Democratic Presidents are attacked by Democratic constituencies, the foundation will erode.  Recall, it was the Democratic Party that defended segregation and Jim Crow into the 1960s.  It was Orval Faubus - Democrat Governor of Arkansas - who opposed racial integration and Dwight Eisenhower - Republican President - who federalized the national guard to enforce Brown vs. Board of Education.  Eisenhower also signed the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960.  Today, the only one anyone remembers is the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  It should be noted that Strom Thurmond - then a Democrat - filibustered the 1957 Civil Rights act for more than 24 hours, setting a record for a one man filibuster.  What about the infamous Bull Connor?  Yeah, he was a Democrat.  Governor George "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" Wallace was a Democrat.

 

The Ku Klux Klan was an ally of the Democratic Party from its founding, achieving its highest membership in the mid 1920s.  Let's look at Klansmen who entered politics:

Harry Truman, Democrat President: Briefly dabbled with the Klan in the mid 20s, when it was at its peak.  If he did join (it is in doubt), it was in order to get votes for his reelection campaign of 1924.

Robert Byrd, Democrat Senator: Achieved title of Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops but left organization in 1940s.

Hugo Black, Democrat Supreme Court Justice: Joined in early 1920s to gain votes.

Theodore Bilbo, Democrat Senator: Stated in interview that once a Klansman, always a Klansman.  One had to take an oath to that effect.

Bibb Graves, Democrat Governor: Joined to improve electoral chances.

Clifford Walker, Democrat Governor: Revealed as Klansman in 1924.

George Gordon, Democrat Congressman: First Grand Dragon of Tennessee.

Benjamin Stapleton, Democrat mayor of Denver: Appointed Klan members to most positions in municipal government.

David Duke, Democrat (pre-1989) & Republican (post-1989) Legislator: Democrats' favorite Klansman because he has an R after his name these days.  According to Duke, he left the KKK in 1980, which puts him in the Democrat column.

Truman is going to have to go.  Half the government buildings in West Virginia are named for Robert Byrd; need to rename them all.  Democrats prior to the 1960s are almost certainly going to be unacceptable to the Black Lives Matter crowd.  The ones after 1960s should also be unacceptable but thanks to the deft political skills of LBJ and a compliant media, everyone now thinks that it was the Republicans - party of Lincoln, the party founded to oppose slavery - who were the slave owners and segregationists.

 

The Democrats have championed Political Correctness and been only too happy to attack minor incidents in their opponents' past as a reason such people should be reviled.  They never expected this to be used against them, especially by those they had inculcated with PC.  Oh, the irony.  The poetic justice.  I am curious to see how much more this ouroboros is able to devour itself.

Illegal Immigrants can also be Terrorists

Apparently, some of those refugees that President Obama wants to admit to the country over the objection of half the governors are impatient.  Yes, they decided to cross the border independent of the president's demands for Syrian asylum:

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/18/report-8-syrians-caught-at-texas-border-in-laredo/

Keep in mind that these are the ones we caught.  Recall that 10 to 20 million - perhaps more - illegal immigrants have already sneaked into the country.  These are the people that George W. Bush, Barack Obama, JEB, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, et al. can hardly wait to legalize via amnesty.  Let's do a bit of calculation here.  Back in 1986, three million were granted amnesty, so this current crop of 10 to 20 million (or more) have crossed the borders since then.  Say 30 years, just for a nice round number.  Also, let's stick to the 10 to 20 million range.  That means anywhere from 330 thousand to 670 thousand foreigners manage to sneak across our borders EVERY year since 1986.  On the low side, that is about a thousand a day who are successful!  And we just caught 8 Syrians.  How many did we NOT catch?  I'm sure it's nothing to worry about.

The Nuance of JEB

Yet again, Jeb has taken a stand at odds with the people who must vote for him if he is to win the Republican nomination.  While Republican, and even Democrat, governors are lining up in the wake of the Paris attacks to refuse to accept Syrian refugees and Speaker Ryan is suggesting a pause in such refugees, Jeb announces that he would not stop accepting refugees.  No, he says he would deal with the problem in Syria.  Gee, that's great Jeb but, with Obama as president, that isn't going to happen.  Deal with what is, not what you wish it was.  Again and again, Jeb appears to be completely oblivious to the current political realities.  He calls illegal immigration an 'act of love' and looks ready to try to push his brother's failed 2007 Amnesty.  The voters keep announcing what they want and Trump espouses it.  Voila!  Trump is in the lead.  Jeb then bashes Trump and his poll numbers sink further.  Despite repeated restarts of his campaign, he remains tone deaf to his electorate.

 

Jeb is ever eager to announce his prior gubernatorial experience in a year when candidates with no political experience at all are leading by double digits.  The voters have seen the wonders worked by 'experienced' politicians with decades in government and the results speak for themselves.  Trump and Carson, two men with zero elective experience lead the field.  In such an environment, running on elective experience is counter-productive but Jeb still hasn't figured that out.

 

It is time for Jeb to join fellow governors Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker and bow out.  Jeb is in the mold of Romney, Dole, and McCain.  They were all moderate Republicans with plenty of experience and no desire to attack the Democrat nominee.  Jeb has more venom for Trump in the primary than he will ever have for Hillary in the general election.  That is a losing strategy.  Even his brother would likely have lost in 2004 if not for the Swift Boat Veterans attacking Kerry.  Given a choice between the perfect candidate who will lose and an imperfect one who will win, choose the winner.

Crashing the Party

During the tenure of George W. Bush as President, the Republican party suffered down the ticket.  Nine Senate seats (and control of the Senate in 2006), 42 House seats (plus control of the House in 2006), 7 governorships, and 324 seats in the various legislatures & assemblies through the states. which saw the switch of control in 13 chambers.  When the Democrats took the Presidency in 2008, James Carville looked at this recent history and viewed it as a generational switch to the Democrats, a new period like that from 1932 to 1952 of Democrat control of the Presidency.

 

During the tenure of Barack Obama as President, the Democrats have suffered down the ticket.  13 Senate seats (and control), 69 House seats (and control), 11 governorships, and 913 legislators at the state level, shifting control in 30 chambers.  President Obama has been a disaster for his party's elective offices.  Will anyone, other than me or someone on FOX News, ask Carville about his prediction?

 

This clearly demonstrates that Obama is not as popular as he is portrayed in the media.  Following his prescriptions for the nation, his party had suffered massive setbacks, far worse than the supposedly hated Bush inflicted upon his party.  If the Republicans manage to retake the Presidency and the new president is just as unpopular as Bush was, the Democrats will still be in the hole from where they stood in 2008, especially at the state level.  This shift in power at the state level does not bode well for the 2020 gerrymandering that will greatly impact the Congress from 2020 to 2030.

 

Looking at this, it makes one wonder why the Republicans in Congress are so cowed by the President.  With all this growing strength, why the continued spinelessness?

A Tale of Two Stories

French TV BLASTS Racist Republicans for Blaming Attacks on Refugees

http://usuncut.com/world/france-24-blasts-republicans-blaming-attacks/

At least one man linked to Paris attacks registered as refugee

http://news.yahoo.com/two-men-linked-paris-attacks-registered-migrants-greece-195255102.html

I did enjoy how the first story claims to have the correct response to Islamaphobia.  Of course, I don't think there is any such thing as Islamaphobia.  Let's look at the definition of a phobia:

A phobia is a type of anxiety disorder, usually defined as a persistent fear of an object or situation in which the sufferer commits to great lengths in avoiding, typically disproportional to the actual danger posed, often being recognized as irrational.

 

There is nothing irrational about fearing Islam, even for a Muslim.  Sunnis and Shi'ites have been slaughtering one another for centuries.  ISIS is actively seeking to infiltrate other countries to commit exactly the sort of atrocities that just occurred in Paris.  Certainly, the governments of the West have not gone to disproportionate lengths to avoid Islam.  No, they view Muslims as victims who need special treatment and understanding.  It is obvious that the West has failed to take adequate precautions against Islam.  There is no phobia when the fear is entirely justified.  Of course, the term was created to allow Islam access to victimhood and the right to not be offended.  Ah, multiculturalism and political correctness, is there no end to your bounty?

 

Though Europe is up in arms now, I fully expect this to die down and things to drift back to the status quo.  After all, the US absorbed a 9/11 attack and quit fighting without winning.  Europe will do the same.  It will have to get much, much worse before the West commits to victory.

The Rising Tide of Terrorism

"We have contained them."

- President Barack Obama regarding ISIS, Good Morning America this morning

A few hours later, Paris erupted in violence with Muslim men screaming Allah Akbar as they gunned down and blew up more than a hundred French citizens in various locations in the city.  It is not yet known if the attacker were faux refugees from Syria.  In February, ISIS did declare plans to infiltrate Europe with terrorists.  Mission accomplished?  How many hundreds of thousands of refugees have already arrived in Europe and what portion are terrorists.  Germany has seen many new refugees vanish from venues provided to house them.  Might some of those have made their way across the mostly borderless Eurozone to join the attack?

 

I don't keep up with French politics and therefore don't know what has been done in the wake of Charlie Hebdo attacks in January of this year.  I would say that the evidence shows that not enough was done.  At the moment, a curfew has been imposed and the borders have been closed.  But the problem is already inside the borders.  France has a Muslim population of 6% as of 2007.  Where might that stand now?  What percentage of those 4 million Muslims are likely to be 'radicalized?'  Even at the low number of 1% of them, that is 40,000 Jihadists already within the borders.  Sadly, the number is higher than 1%.  That's a big problem.

 

Elsewhere in Europe, England is 5% Muslim, Spain is 3.7% Muslim, Italy 2.6%, Sweden 5.1%, and - prior to the big push - Germany was 1.9%.  This is not to accuse all Muslims of being terrorists but the terrorist come from this population.  The Lutherans, the Roman Catholics, and the Anglicans aren't causing the problem.

 

With this in mind, the US is almost 1% Muslim and this is the fastest growing migrant population.  We have already seen radicalization in the population and yet the president is pushing to have 10,000 Syrian refugees resettled in the US.  The Tsarnaev brothers (Boston Marathon bombers) came to the US as refugees.

 

Like it or not, there is a religious war in progress and one side doesn't realize it.  The aggressors use religious words and phrases: Infidel, Allah Akbar, Great Satan.  The timing could hardly be worse with the West suffering a civilization breakdown with the rise of multiculturalism (no culture is better than another), political correctness (self-censorship), and victim culture (large subsets of the population are now victims who have a 'right' to not be offended).  Heck, Jihadists have been adopted into the victim culture, an oppressed group that we must understand, not destroy.

 

Sadly, like we have done as 9/11 has faded further into history, France will likely get into the fray briefly and then lapse back into apathy.  I especially don't expect President Hollande to become the next de Gaulle.  These attacks will certainly benefit the more nativist parties throughout Europe.  Look for Hungary's example to spread.