Suicide Squad

The movie opens with our anti-heroes in a secret prison somewhere in the swamps of Louisiana.  There is Deadshot (Will Smith), an assassin with uncanny accuracy.  Next there is Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), a former prison psychiatrist who fell in love with a patient.  The patient was the Joker (Jared Leto).  Then we have Killer Croc, a fellow who looks to be half crocodile and half human.  For inexplicable reasons, his cell in under a sewer grate and whole animal carcasses are tossed down for meal time.  Uh huh.  Lastly, we see Diablo, a heavily tattooed gangbanger who happens to be a human flamethrower.

In Washington DC, Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) has a meeting at the Pentagon.  One attendee asks what they would have done if Superman had ripped the roof off the White House and grabbed the president.  She wants to make use of these super villains.  Of course, never addressed is the fact that her team of super villains would have been no match for Superman but let's not discuss that.  To demonstrate her point, she calls for Enchantress (Cara Delevingne).  The Enchantress retrieves top secret material from Iran in the blink of an eye.  Of note, Enchantress is not a willing pawn for Waller, who keeps her leashed by having her heart in briefcase.  No sooner is her idea approved than Enchantress goes rogue and attempts to destroy the world.  Who can save us now?

The Suicide Squad is activated and additional members arrive as they don their combat gear.  There is Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney) and Slipknot.  Rick Flag (Joel Kennaman) of Special Forces will command the team with the aid of Katana (Karen Fukuhara) and a contingent of Navy Seals.  The mission is to rescue a VIP from the area where Enchantress is active but not to engage Enchantress.  Go!  Where are Batman (Ben Affleck) and Flash, both of whom appeared in flashbacks in this movie.

Do these villains add value to the Seal Team?  Deadshot makes sense.  The guy is murderous with a gun and has uncanny accuracy.  Yes, he is an asset.  Diablo shoots fire.  He is a walking flamethrower!  Huge asset.  Killer Croc is inhumanly strong, has natural armor, and swims like a fish.  Could be useful.  Slipknot is a skilled climber with a variety of tools to allow him to scale anything very quickly.  Potentially useful in a cityscape.  Captain Boomerang is a burglar who throws boomerangs.  Any super powers?  Nope.  Oh, but he had a boomerang with a camera that served as a drone.  The special forces didn't have an actual drone to do that?  You know, you can buy drones at Walmart these days?  Let's move on to Katana.  Skilled martial artist who specializes in using a soul-sucking katana.  Could be useful in close combat but I don't see her as more useful than a Navy Seal.  Harley Quinn is a mental case who is, for unclear reasons, unusually skilled in close combat (psychiatry training is more strenuous than I thought).  Her favored weapon is a baseball bat but she also has a pistol.  More trouble than she's worth.

The movie is just too cartoony.  Joker was particularly bad.  In the Tim Burton era, we knew that Gotham was in an alternate universe with gothic architecture and perpetual darkness.  It was a place where a villain might have a bunch of machinegun wielding clowns as members of his gang.  His was a dark version of the 60s TV show.  Chris Nolan's universe sought to be closer to reality, allowing greater verisimilitude with somewhat more realistic action and villains.  In Dark Knight, Joker's goons might wear a clown mask but a Panda Suit would be out of the question!  Suicide Squad mixes the two styles, giving a setting closer to Nolan's but characters that would fit better into Burton's.  That doesn't work.

 

Jared Leto is the wrong actor for the Joker.  He has the face of a 17 year-old.  He reminds me of David Cassidy from the Partridge Family.  He is only menacing because the script says so.  Leto does the crazy but not the threatening.  Where Jack Nicholson and Cesar Romero were presentable and Heath Ledger viewed grooming as optional, Jared Leto is the metrosexual Joker.  Maybe his best work was left on the cutting room floor.

 

Now for the utter stupidity.  June Moone is supposedly an archeologist but when she finds an ancient artifact, she immediately snaps off the head and unleashes the evil spirit contained within.  Maybe we could have had it break accidentally rather than through vandalism.  Deadshot has a gun bracelet on his arm which he used at one point to make an impossible shot.  It is a stupid weapon that should be useless beyond a dozen yards.  Once the VIP is recovered, the pickup helicopter flies into the path of the big baddie rather than directly away.  Sigh.  Waller slaughters her staff.  Well, that shows how nasty she is.  Murder charges, anyone?  No?  Enchantress can teleport to Iran and back in an instant and pops in and out so fast that she nearly trounces the Suicide Squad single-handedly.  Why didn't she just grab the briefcase with her heart and thus end Waller's influence over her?  The fact that Enchantress went rogue demonstrates that Waller is incompetent.  She thought she could manage Enchantress and failed miserably, causing all the trouble that followed in the movie.  She should be tossed into a cell between Deadshot and Harley Quinn at the secret prison.

 

It has its moments but rarely rises above mediocre.  There is a lot of good material and interesting characters here but this was the wrong story for them.  Maybe Suicide Squad 2 will turn this around.

Secure Border?

Deported 10 times and 'voluntarily' left another 9 times, Tomas Martinez-Maldonado somehow breached our secure southern border a 20th time.  He managed to get all the way to Kansas where he raped a 13 year-old girl.  Consider, these 19 recorded evictions are the times when we caught him.  Who knows how many times he crossed and returned without our knowledge.  Of course, the border has never been more secure.

 

Stories like this made Trump's border wall a winning issue.

1984

Who controls the past controls the future.  Who controls the present controls the past.

The movie opens at a rally where the latest news of the unending war is reported to the masses.  During the rally, both Winston Smith (John Hurt) and O'Brien (Richard Burton) notice Julia (Suzanna Hamilton) when she flings a book at the image of Emmanuel Goldstein, enemy of the state.  Winston works in a cubicle where he alters newspaper articles, replacing people who have been 'unpersoned' with other people or rewriting reports of reductions as reports of increases.  Not surprisingly, he has doubts about the government and what he sees on the omnipresent telescreens.  He privately keeps a journal in which he expresses these doubts.  Julia initiates an affair with Winston.  Both of them know that they will eventually be caught and admit to whatever crimes the party requires them to admit but Winston asserts that he will never betray Julia.  The day comes that they are caught during one of their meetings.  Winston is tortured by O'Brien until he doubts whether 2 + 2 = 4 and also betrays Julia.  'Cured' of his thoughtcrimes, Winston is returned to society where he holds an abiding love for Big Brother.

Though familiar with the plot and storyline of Nineteen Eighty-Four, I have not read the novel and only just watched the movie.  Nothing in it surprised me and I was very much reminded of Brazil, which came out the following year.  Brazil is more fun while 1984 is just sad and depressing.  Of course, all the newspeak reminds me of trends in language, where some words become 'unwords' and new, more opaque ones replace them.  For instance, disabled became handicapped, handicapped became physically challenged, physically challenged became differently abled.  These are just euphemisms.  Government has learned to couch things in more favorable terms too.  Spending is investment, secrecy is a new standard of openness, increasing the debt is paying our bills, taxing Peter to subsidize Paul is compassion.  As the language becomes less clear, those who use it can make ambiguous claims and stand by them!  The unpersoning process has gone viral in our media-saturated society.  Say the wrong thing and the rats swarm to pick the bones clean.  No one is safe from the trolls.  Both Hillary and Bernie had to bow to the language of Black Lives Matter during the primaries.  Many have been ostracized for having the wrong opinions or using the wrong words.  Profuse apologies may stave off the frenzy but as often as not encourage more of the same.  Then there is the opening line: Who controls the past controls the future.  I have often noted how historically uninformed people are.  This ignorance is by design.  Here is just one example of a modern Winston Smith rewriting history.

 

Certainly worth watching and surprisingly applicable, which is unfortunate.

Assassin's Creed

The opening text explains that the Assassins exist to protect the Apple (of original sin infamy) from the forces of the Knights Templar.  Fine.  But then the story opens in 1492.  Um, the Templars were disbanded in 1312.  Well, the Assassins are a secret order so I suppose the Templars are now a secret order as well.  But then Torquemada, infamous as the Grand Inquisitor or the Spanish Inquisition, declares victory for the Templars when the Apple is in his grasp.  Um, the Templars were burned as heretics in 1312; not really a good fit for a fellow associated with burning heretics.  Maybe this is suppose to be irony.  Okay, I'm drifting.  It is 1492 and Aguilar (Michael Fassbender) has a finger sliced off as part of his initiation into the Assassins.  He speaks the Assassin's Creed, which boils down to 'the ends justify the means.'

 

In the present, Callum "Cal" Lynch (Michael Fassbender) is led to the death chamber in Huntsville, TX where he is executed by lethal injection.  And then he wakes up at the Abstergo Foundation in Spain.  Not clear on the particulars of how this was accomplished though Dr. Sophia Rikkin (Marion Cotillard) was present at his execution and is also the chief researcher at the Abstergo Foundation.  Maybe the switching of the lethal drugs was left on the cutting room floor.  Beyond saying he killed 'a pimp' and he appears to have no regrets about it, we don't get the backstory on how he found himself on death row.  Awesome character development so far!  It turns out that Cal is a direct descendent of Aguilar.  The Abstergo Foundation has a means of reading memories from genes.  The process involves 'synchronizing' Cal with his genetic ancestor and allow him to 'act out' particular incidents.  Thus, we see the wildly outlandish adventures of Aguilar, martial artist and parkour expert.

 

Of interest, Cal is only the most recent of Sophia's subjects.  He meets several others who are generally hostile.  The synchronizing process provides memories, abilities, and attitudes of their genetic ancestors.  That the Abstergo Foundation is aware of this side effect and yet keeps these people around is inexplicable.  The Templars are essentially resurrecting assassins and then letting them wander the halls.  Worse, the facility security guards are bumpkins who are easy prey to these skilled assassins.  No one saw this coming?

The action scenes are epic and mostly done without CGI, they are nonetheless ludicrous.  During an escape, Aguilar leaps from a tower and plunges toward the ground.  Before he can presumably splatter on the pavement, Cal desynchronizes and has a seizure.  Did Aguilar die?  No.  Cal links up again and we see the further adventures of Aguilar.  How exactly did he survive that fall?  Magic?  Why are Spaniards in league with the Sultan and are troubled that the Reconquista is on the brink of its final victory?  Is Aguilar Muslim?  Why is it that the Templars will use the Apple to dominate the world but the Sultan will not?  Are Catholics less respectful of free will than Muslims?  After decades of reversals on the Iberian Peninsula, why is the Apple housed in the last remaining stronghold in Spain rather than Bagdad?  The action is set in 1492 while Granada was the last remaining Islamic state; did the screenwriter know that Granada surrendered on January 2nd?  Spring-loaded wrist blades may be useful as a hidden weapon but are impractical for melee.  Parkour only dates back to the 1980s, not the 1490s.  When Aguilar escapes with the Apple, why would he give it to Christopher Columbus?  Aguilar insisted that Columbus take the Apple to his grave.  Of course, Columbus has had more graves than most.  He was first interred in Valladolid, Spain.  Then he was moved Seville.  From Seville, his remains were transferred to what is now the Dominican Republic.  When France took the island, his remains moved to Havana, Cuba.  When Spain lost that, his remains returned to Seville.  Luckily, the Apple never got lost along the way.

Why is there always a murky fog when viewing the scene from above?  It is like they used cut scenes from the video game that didn't quite work on the big screen.  What is the deal with the eagle?  Constantly, there is this eagle soaring at incredible speed over mountains, valleys, and cities, offering an eye in the sky before zooming to the action of the characters.  Does the assassin turn into the eagle?  Is that how he survived the suicidal jump?  The omnipresence of the eagle required an explanation.  Maybe it would all make sense if I had played the video game.

As if all those failings aren't enough, the characters are universally unappealing.  There is no reason to like Cal beyond the fact that he is the protagonist.  The 'heroes' win not because they are more skilled or smarter but because Sophia and her father (Jeremy Irons) are so profoundly stupid that they allowed a growing cohort of assassins to congregate near the heart of the operation.  It would be one thing if all of them were actively being genetic synchronized but most of them were done.  Why not kill them?  At least send them to another facility.  Villain stupidity saves the world again.

It has its moments but is mostly mediocre.  Skip this one.

Debbie Reynolds

The day after her daughter died, Debbie Reynolds is gone.  It has been a very difficult two days for Todd Fisher and Billie Lourd.  Debbie Reynolds' career peaked in the 50s and 60s.  As I look at her body of work on IMDb, I recognize only a handful that I have seen, many of those where she only had a supporting role.  Of her films, three stand out in my memory.

 

The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964): I saw this a couple of times, the most recent of which would be more than 30 years ago.  Though Molly is famed for surviving the Titanic, that is a small part of the film.  I was reminded of Beverly Hillbillies when I saw the movie, where Molly is mostly rejected by the established aristocrats.  I should see this again and test my memory of it.

 

Mother (1996): I have rarely found Albert Brooks funny but this movie was an exception.  I think that can mostly be attributed to Debbie Reynolds' role as his mother.  I particularly enjoyed her going out on a date and telling him not to wait up or something like that.  Brooks was his normal hapless self, which worked in this movie.

 

Singin' in the Rain (1952): The greatest musical ever made.  Not long after my father bought a VHS, he taped this movie.  My brother and I watched this and Star Wars (I didn't know that Kathy Selden was Princess Leia's mom back then) almost weekly.  Her takedown of Don Lockwood's (Gene Kelly) ego might have served as a model for Leia's scruffy-looking nerf-herder comments to Han Solo 28 years later.  The movie is a joy from start to finish, full of song, dance, and humor.

 

Bonus Votes

During the effort to recount Michigan, it was revealed that some precincts reported a different number of votes than there had been voters.  Votes reported didn't equal ballots counted in the ballot box.  Oops!  Of the 3,047 precincts selected for recounting, 322 had such discrepancies.  That works out to 10.6% error rate.  Yikes, that's kind of high.  This article noted some counties that had higher error rates.  Ionia County - located between Lansing and Grand Rapids - had 24% of the precincts with a mismatch between votes counted and ballots submitted.  Of course, only 26,204 votes were cast there, accounting for maybe one half of 1% of all the votes cast in the state.  Then there was Branch County - on the Indiana border - which had 27% of the precincts mismatch. However, only 16,430 votes were cast, making it even less of a factor than Ionia.  Then we come to the worst offender: Wayne County.  A whopping 37.5% of the selected precincts reported more votes cast than there had been voters.  Of the 332 precincts with discrepancies, 248 were in Wayne County.  Therefore, 77% of the over-votes occurred in a county where Hillary won 66.8% to Trump's 29.5%, a margin of 288,934 votes.  This one county - out of 83 in the state - accounted for 16.1% of all the votes cast.  If you had to pick one county in the state where shenanigans could swing the state, Wayne County is the place.

 

So far, no articles list how many bonus votes were counted.  Did a precinct that should have had 500 votes report 501 votes or 650 votes?  Is this much ado about nothing or has major voter fraud been uncovered?  Will this be swept under the rug since the recount changed nothing and Trump has now been confirmed by the electoral college?  Whatever the case, Michigan needs to address the over-vote problem before the next election.

Carrie Fisher

When Carrie was two years old, her father, Eddie Fisher, left her mother, Debbie Reynolds, for Elizabeth Taylor.  Carrie smoked, drank, did drugs, and had a wreck of a personal life.  Her only marriage lasted a year.  She had a daughter with a man who left her for another man.  Children of celebrities often have difficult lives because they are in the spotlight.  Carrie's life was more difficult than most.  In this day and age, 60 is entirely too young to die.

 

I was 16 when Return of the Jedi came to theaters and Carrie Fisher rocked it as Slave Leia.  Interestingly, her strangling of Jabba was her best moment in a movie where her character was otherwise mushy and mostly besotted with an increasingly inept Han Solo.  Leia was at her best in the first movie and just diminished from there.  Even in her return in The Force Awakens, she has lost the fire that made Leia so striking.  Consider how Leia reacts when brought before Tarkin on the Death Star:

Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.

Completely at the mercy of her enemies and still full of fire, showing nothing but contempt.  She and Han instantly have a hostile relationship during the rescue:

This is some rescue! You came in here, but didn't you have a plan for getting out?

And the hits kept coming:

Someone has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, fly boy.

I don't know who you are or where you came from, but from now on you'll do as I tell you, okay?

Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?

You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought.

What happened to this Leia?  In The Empire Strikes Back, her hostility toward Han continues but is just an increasingly transparent device to deny that she is in love with a scoundrel.  By Return of the Jedi, she was softened to where she is left sitting on a log with a cute teddy bear.  However, it is revealed that she is Luke's sister and should also be strong in the force.  Though her son, Kylo Ren, is strong in the force, Leia appears to have developed no talents in the intervening decades.  The character had so much promise at the start and, so far as we know, it came to naught.

 

Sadly, Leia is Carrie's acting career.  She had a couple of forgettable movies but, like Mark Hamill, never became a star outside of Star Wars.  Her best non-Leia role was undoubtedly the Mystery Woman in The Blues Brothers.  She had this sweet girl-next-door face combined with the homicidal fury of the scorned woman.  Awesome!

 

Considering her appearance at the end of Rogue One, Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia may live on as a CGI character.  It reminds me of one of her witty comments regarding Star Wars merchandising:

 

I signed my likeness away. Every time I look in the mirror, I have to send Lucas a couple of bucks.

 

RIP

Thomas Sowell Retires

In college, I took quite a few economics classes.  In retrospect, I wish I had taken more, perhaps even changing my major to economics.  I really enjoyed it and, in fact, got better grades in econ than history.  It was when I was taking Macroeconomics at Iowa Western that I first encountered Thomas Sowell.  He was included in the textbook, albeit just a brief biographical snippet (he earned his Bachelors at Harvard, his Masters at Columbia, and his PhD at the University of Chicago) along with a couple of economic questions that he answered for the author.  Not long after that, I discovered that he wrote a column.  He and Walter Williams (another favorite of mine), are lifelong friends.  Of all the columnists I have read over the last 25 years, none have held my attention for all that time as well as Sowell.  In his farewell column, he offers a positive view of how far the country has come but also laments what has been lost.  Unencumbered with a column, he plans to devote more time to photography.  Over the years, his affinity for photography has figured in many columns.  A number of his photos are displayed here.  I will miss reading his analysis of current events.  I have only read two of his books; he has written 40 so there is plenty left to discover.

Keanu

The Allentown Boys massacre a Mexican drug ring in an abandoned church, the sole survivor being Iglesia, an adorable kitten.  The kitten flees through Los Angeles until he arrives at the door of Rell (Jordan Peele), who has just been dumped by his girlfriend.  He instantly bonds with the cat and names him Keanu.  Two weeks later, Rell and his cousin Clarence (Keegan-Michael Key) return from seeing a Liam Neeson film to discover Rell's apartment ransacked and Keanu missing!  Determined to find his cat, Rell and Clarence set out.  The trail leads through a small time drug dealer to the 17th Street Blips (rejects from the Bloods and Crips = Blips) and thence to the Mexican drug ring and the Allentown Boys.

 

The movie certainly has its moments but is a let down from their sketch comedy.  This ranks with some of the less funny bits.  It is just a couple of bumpkins trying to act like hardcore killers in order to recover a kitten.  Funny idea but not enough to carry a movie.  I did enjoy the dream sequence that included Keanu speaking; he is voiced by Keanu Reeves.

 

Of particular note, George Michael figured heavily in the movie, including some clips from Faith.  Clarence proves to be a HUGE fan of George Michael and converts many of the Blips into fans as well.  It is sad that the day after I see this movie, George Michael died.

 

Check out their sketch comedy instead, especially Substitute Teacher.  Comic gold!

Sing

The movie opens with an elegant sheep strutting onto a stage and belting out a powerful rendition of Golden Slumbers by the Beatles.  Among the audience is a transfixed Koala Bear named Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey).  Years later, he now owns the Moon Theater and he is on the brink of bankruptcy.  Nevertheless, he is eternally optimistic that his next show - a talent competition - will be just the ticket to change his fortunes.  Though he intends only a $1,000 prize for the winner, a typo results in flyers that say $100,000!  Among the contestants are Rosita the pig (Reece Witherspoon), a housewife and mother, Mike the Mouse (Seth MacFarlane), a self-absorbed though talented musician, Ash the Porcupine (Scarlett Johansson), Johnny the Gorilla (Taron Egerton), the son of a career criminal, and Meena the Elephant (Tori Kelly), an intensely shy but gifted singer.  Can Buster make a profit from this singing competition before the bank forecloses?

 

Buster reminds me of McConaughey's role in Fool's Gold, an optimistic dreamer trying to convince others to join him on a fool's errand.  He does the role very well.  I was amazed by Taron Egerton, whom I last saw as Eggsy in Kingsmen.  He has a heck of a voice.  Though I knew Reece Witherspoon could sing from her portrayal of June Carter in Walk the Line, I didn't know that Scarlett Johansson could sing.  The car washing bit was great fun.  "You wash, I'll dry."

 

Of course, the music is the movie.  There are lots of modern pop songs from Katie Perry, Taylor Swift, and Lady Gaga, older songs from Elton John and Stevie Wonder, and even some classics like I did it My Way.

 

Thumbs up!

Election Participation

How does the turnout vary among the states?  In an earlier blog, I noted that Florida cast more votes than California, a state that is nearly twice its size.  One can easily argue that Californians deserve less say - proportionally - if they don't bother to vote.  The electoral college helps to mitigate the turnout problem.  But what is that turnout?  I crunched some numbers.

I broke the states into 6 groups, half representing Trump and half Hillary.  From here, I categorized them as either strong, majority, or marginal.  A strong state saw the candidate receive 60% or more of the vote, a majority saw the candidate get more than 50%, and marginal are those states won by a plurality of votes.  To determine participation, I divided the number of votes cast by the population of the state.  That is going to under report the participation rate since it includes people not eligible to vote but gives a ballpark figure to use.  I will list them by lowest participation rate to highest.

 

38.9% Strong Hillary consists of 4 states and DC.  California, at 36.2% is a big drag here.

 

40.2% Majority Trump consists of 14 states.  Texas had a paltry 32.7% turnout, worse than CA!

 

40.3% Strong Trump consists of 9 states.

 

42.2% Majority Hillary consists of 9 states.

 

46.3% Marginal Trump covers 7 states.  Wisconsin had 51.6% turnout.

 

48.7% Marginal Hillary covers 7 states.  Maine saw a 56.2% turnout.

 

The states that were won by pluralities are also the states where the candidates spent most of their time.  Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.  Clearly, the more competitive the state is, the bigger the voter turnout.  You want more people to vote?  Be a competitive state.  If one candidate has no hope, the voters for the other candidate won't turn out either.  Republicans are wasting their time in New York or California while Democrats need not apply in Oklahoma or Utah (yes, though on the marginal win list, that is on account of a strong third party showing; Hillary didn't break 30%).

 

So how do we make states more competitive?  That's a question for another blog.

Romancing the Nile

Recently saw the classic movie and its disappointing sequel.  Here are my thoughts all these years later.

Romancing the Stone (1984): Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) has just finished her latest romance novel and celebrates with her cat.  Despite being a hopeless romantic, Joan appears to be a shut-in who will eventually become a cat lady.  Then she receives word that her sister has been kidnapped and her brother in-law murdered in Columbia.  She must deliver a map that her brother-in-law mailed to her before he was killed and trade it for her sister.  No sooner does she arrive than she is lured onto the wrong bus by a mysterious stranger who has been stalking her.  The stranger is about to kill her when Jack Colton (Michael Douglas) arrives to save the day.

The map leads to a treasure.  Jack, who is something of a scoundrel and opportunist, sees a chance to get rich quick.  The stranger proves to be a ruthless military officer with a death squad tone about him who wants the treasure for undisclosed reasons.  The kidnappers are Ira and Ralph (Danny DeVito), a pair of thieves who smuggle antiquities; this treasure promises to make all their previous efforts pale in comparison.  Joan is in the middle, mostly dependent upon Jack for keeping her safe in this unfamiliar country.

The movie is a good blend of action and romance.  Jack proves to be less of a scoundrel than he first seems and Joan blossoms into a confident and outgoing woman.  There is plenty of comedy, much of it provided by the hapless Ralph.  Being the 8th top grossing movie of the year, it spawned a sequel.

The Jewel of the Nile (1985): Joan's latest novel is not going well.  Now that she has sailed halfway around the world with Jack, romance doesn't have the same appeal.  Offered the chance to author a biography of a Middle Eastern potentate and her relationship with Jack on the rocks, she jumps ship.  No sooner has Joan left than Jack is accosted by a very angry Ralph, who ended the last film in a Columbian jail.  A rebel from the potentate's country (probably meant to be Sudan, though never named) arrives to recruit Jack to his cause, which is to save the Jewel of the Nile.  Ralph makes peace with Jack provided he gets a cut of this jewel.

Whereas the last movie was an adventure romance with comic elements, this one is a comedy with adventure and romance elements.  Joan as biographer doesn't play well and it goes badly from the start.  She plays more like Lois Lane here than Nora Roberts.  Jack is no longer a man of action but rather a comedic bumpkin.  He is more a victim of the situation than the captain of it.  That the jewel turned out to be a person with magical immunity to fire was groan-inducing.  Though this one did just as well at the box office as its predecessor, it did not result in a trilogy.

Definitely see Romancing the Stone but don't ruin your opinion of the characters by watching The Jewel of the Nile.

Democrat Postmortem

Just a week before the election, The New Yorker had an article asking why Trump was wasting his time in Michigan and Wisconsin where Hillary led by a wide margin?  Reading it today, it is humorous that the writer suggests he should be in states where he can make a difference, namely Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Nevada.  With the exception of Nevada, he won those suggested states by more than 100,000 votes each, Ohio by nearly half a million.  However, he won Michigan by 10,704 and Wisconsin by 22,748.  Sounds like campaigning in these two states just prior to the election was vital.

Was Trump a better candidate?  Meh.  Was he a better campaigner?  Absolutely!  Trump lost Wisconsin to Cruz during the primary.  After getting the nomination, he had multiple rallies in the state to attract those voters and bump up Republican turnout.  By contrast, Hillary lost Wisconsin to Bernie.  After she secured the nomination, she never campaigned in the state.  This is a state she lost to Bernie and the best she does is to send her daughter and Tim Kaine to campaign in her stead.  In the 2012 campaign, there was an exit poll asking whether Obama or Romney cared more about voters.  Obama won something like 80% to 20%.  I don't know if that question was asked this time around but Wisconsin voters had to see that Hillary was taking their votes for granted while Trump was in the state trying to make the sale.  Complacency cost the Democrats the state.  What about Michigan?  Trump won the state in the primary with a plurality of the votes.  Even so, he had multiple rallies to boost turnout and make the sale.  He was personally on the ground.  Again, Hillary lost this state to Bernie and then did nothing to secure the Bernie voters after the convention.  She was largely absent from the state though Michigan saw higher ranking surrogates, including Bill Clinton and President Obama.  In the last couple of weeks, Hillary did make some campaign stops in the state.  Complacency cost another state.

 

Hillary's frequent and extended absences from campaigning fed into rumors of her bad health.  Once that took hold, however unfair it may have been, she needed to address it by being visible.  That her actions only seemed to confirm it must surely have hurt her numbers.

 

Those who say Bernie would have been a more formidable candidate may be right.  He was far more energetic on the campaign trail, he provided more enthusiasm, and he wasn't an insider candidate.  As we know from the DNC email leaks, the primaries were rigged against him and Hillary had media insiders feeding her debate questions and providing positive press.  Though he would have lacked many of Hillary's weaknesses, he would have brought self-identified "socialist" with him.

 

In much the same way Republicans started winning the state and local elections after Obama won in 2008, the same is almost certain to happen this time around.  The Republicans are at their high water mark and will start sinking next year with governorships and in 2018 in the House.  Unless the national situation is really bad in 2018, the electoral map may see further losses in the Senate for Democrats.  That the Democrats have retained the leadership that has led them here is probably not a good sign for their future prospects.

Passengers

The Starship Avalon is 30 years into a 120 year voyage to the colony planet of Homestead II when it encounters a field of debris.  One piece is so large that it breaches the shield.  It is on account of this breach that Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), one of the 5000 Passengers on the ship, awakens from stasis.  He spends the next year trying get back into stasis, wake the crew, or call for help.  The $6000 call to Earth that will get a reply in decades was rather humorous.  His only company is an android bartender named Arthur (Michael Sheen).  Some of their banter is quite fun.  "This is not a robot question."  It was particularly funny when Arthur explained that stasis pods don't fail and was then unable to explain Jim's presence in the bar.

 

The movie has three acts.  There is the opening Robinson Crusoe where Jim attempts to make the best of his isolation.  This transforms to romance when Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) arrives on scene.  Though she experiences the same desires to get back into stasis as Jim did, he serves as the voice of experience and fatalism.  In the final act, it transitions to sci-fi thriller when Gus Mancuso (Lawrence Fishburne), a member of the crew, wakes up.  These are three different movies.  The sci-fi thriller was there from the start as background story but the movie needed to decide what it wanted to be.

 

As with most sci-fi movies, I am annoyed by the handling of technology.  With all the system errors, why wasn't there some way to wake the crew?  Heck, if we can have this wonderful conversationalist with access to an array of Homestead Company knowledge at hand serve as a bartender, why isn't there an android pilot on station, like David (Michael Fassbender) in Prometheus?  These systems have never failed so we will have no failsafes.  The design of the ship shows that gravity is maintained via centrifugal force but fails when the power goes out?  Did the ship stop spinning?  Gravity should have weakened but not 'failed' only to be re-established when the power came back.  But it is more exciting this way!  More interesting still, there are these little robots that clean up spills and even repair the blast shield in the reactor room.  So, they can do all this but couldn't perform repairs where the asteroid punctured the ship?  Then there is the ludicrous stuff.  The reactor is SO hot that it is cracking the blast shield designed to resist heat but a character in a recreational space suit is able to survive being in the path of the ejected heat?  Really?

 

Lawrence and Pratt have good chemistry and were fun to watch.  The movie entertains but it isn't something to rush to the theaters to see.  Go see Moana or Rogue One instead.

California Embassy in Moscow?

If the website didn't say Los Angeles Times, I would think this story must be from the Onion.  Those in favor of California Secession have opened an 'embassy' in Moscow?  The same place that is supposedly responsible for the hacking that torpedoed the candidate that California overwhelmingly chose in the recent election?  You couldn't open this embassy in Mexico or Canada?  Maybe France?  No, let's go with Russia, America's old Cold War nemesis and current geopolitical rival.  California wants to escape the tyranny of Trump and figures Putin - Trump's puppet master if some media sources are to be believed - should be the first choice for an ally?  Have I stumbled on to a fake news site?

 

After reading the story, it turns out that a proponent for Calexit is teaching English in Russia; his wife is Russian.  Still, maybe he could have waited until an embassy had opened someplace that didn't have a long history of being America's enemy.

Presidential Election is Like the World Series

Let us suppose the Central City Pioneers face the Metropolis Pilgrims in the World Series.  It is an exciting series that runs for all 7 games before the winner is determined.

 

In game 1, the Pioneers crush the Pilgrims, 7 to 1.

In game 2, the Pioneers again top the Pilgrims, 6 to 2.

In game 3, the Pilgrims take a game, 3 to 2.

In game 4, the Pilgrims win again, 6 to 5.

In game 5, the Pioneers trounce the Pilgrims, 8 to 0.  It is very embarrassing.

In game 6, the Pilgrims narrowly win in a 5 to 4 game, forcing a game 7.

In game 7, the Pilgrims win, 5 to 3.

 

The Pilgrims won 4 games of the 7 game series and take the Commissioner's Trophy.  The Pioneers are peeved and point out that they scored 35 runs to the Pilgrims' 22 runs.  Obviously, they should be named the champions.  Really?

 

Let's expand that to 51 games.  Team Clinton won 21 games in which she scored 11,217,438 more votes than Trump.  Some of the victories were hugely lopsided.  In fact, the 4 most lopsided games (California, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts) were all in Team Clinton's favor.  Team Trump won 30 games in which he outscored Clinton by 8,387,978 votes.  So, though Team Clinton scored 2,829,460 more votes, Team Trump won more contests.

 

Under a most points scored system, the Pilgrims would have entered game 7 with a 13 point deficit.  Winning 12 to 0 would still have resulted in the Pioneers winning.  What is the point of having multiple games in such a system?  Why would a candidate spend time in a place with only a million voters rather than spending all his time in a state with 10 million or more?  Under a popular vote system, Trump would have made a lot of trips to California and New York to bump up his total.  Hillary would have spent more time in Texas.  The strategy would have been different for both camps.

 

That Team Hillary or the Pioneers would have won under a different set of rules is irrelevant.

Electoral College Vote

The electors of the Electoral College have assembled in their state capitols and voted.  For the first time since 1912, there were multiple faithless electors.  Amazingly, Hillary Clinton lost more votes than Trump!

In Minnesota, a Clinton elector refused to submit a ballot but was replaced by an alternate who voted for Hillary.

 

In Colorado, a Clinton elector voted for someone other than Clinton and was replaced.  The replacement voted Clinton.

In Maine, a Clinton elector voted for Bernie!  The vote was invalidated and switched to Clinton.

In Washington, 4 electors went rogue.  3 of them voted for Colin Powell and 1 for Faith Spotted Eagle.  These votes were not changed, placing Colin Powell as the third place contender in a race where he was not on the ballot.

In Texas, two Trump electors jumped ship.  One voted for Ohio Governor John Kasich and the other for former Texas Congressman Ron Paul.  Another elector resigned in order not to vote for Trump but was replaced by an alternate who did vote Trump.  There was even an elector who voted Trump but chose Carly Fiorina for VP instead of Pence.

The final tally is:
Donald Trump: 304
Hillary Clinton: 228
Colin Powell: 3
Faith Spotted Eagle: 1
Ron Paul: 1
John Kasich: 1

Who is Faith Spotted Eagle?  I had not heard of her before today.  It turns out that she is a member of the Sioux Nation and has been part of the effort to block the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline.

 

It is peculiar that Hillary, who by her silence tacitly supported the intense lobbying of electors to change their votes, lost more electoral votes in the end.  It makes no difference to the state of the race but it does make for an interesting footnote in history.  Though I mention 1912, that was a case of a VP candidate dying prior to the electoral college.  For electors to abandon the nominee, we have to go back to 1808 when 6 electors chose someone other than George Clinton over James Madison.  It is a bad precedent to have so many faithless electors and will encourage more such lobbying in the future.

 

With the electoral college finally behind us, let us move on to the next effort to derail the Trump Presidency.  I've already heard calls for impeachment.  Which party was demanding that the other party accept the results of the election?  Yeah, there are those double-standards again.

UPDATE: An elector in Hawaii voted for Bernie Sanders, so that he joins the pool.  The electors who were reversed in Maine, Colorado, and Minnesota had all tried to vote for Bernie.  Had they not been invalidated, Bernie would now have 4 electoral votes.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Rogue One opens on remote planet where Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen) is impressed back into Imperial Service by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn).  Erso's wife is killed and young daughter flees.  Soon thereafter, Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) arrives to takeover as young Jyn Erso's guardian.  Next we see Jyn (Felicity Jones), she is in an Imperial jail.  She is rescued by the Rebellion and used as a means of contacting Gerrera, who has broken with the more formal Rebels, and hopefully access to her missing father.  There is a rumor that he is working on a super weapon that could destroy a planet.

 

Jyn soon finds herself in the company of a ragtag group, most of whom are not rebels when she meets them but are by the movie's climactic battle.  There is Rebel Captain Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), reprogrammed Imperial Droid K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), blind force-user Chirrut, his machinegun-wielding partner Baze Malbus, and a defector Imperial Pilot named Bodhi Rook.  K-2SO was a bit too reminiscent of C3PO with his offering of odds (maybe that is something droids do), but in other respects I thought he was a great character.  Yes, the droid was the comic relief.

 

Though many characters from the original series return, this doesn't feel like a Star Wars movie.  It is much grittier.  Our Rebel heroes are more in the anti-hero vein and not in a charming way like Han Solo.  In a standard Star Wars movie, all these characters would be extras running around to get shot.  They do that here too but they have a lot more development before getting shot.  Speaking of those return characters, we see Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, Grand Moff Tarkin, Princess Leia, Red Leader, Gold Leader, and, of course, Darth Vader.  With Tarkin and Leia, CGI was used to change the face of the stand-in actor to look like Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher from A New Hope.  This was not as effective as one might have hoped.  There was something unsettling about the CGI faces.  They were wrong but it is hard to pin down exactly how they were wrong.

 

I think the heroes needed an alien, their Chewy.  Rather than species diversity, we had racial diversity.  There was a Mexican, a Pakistani, and a couple of Chinese.  With Star Wars names being ethnically neutral, I doubt this was accidental.  With Daisy Ridley as the lead character in the current run of trilogies, it seems a bit overkill to have another woman lead.  In fact, if not a single line was changed - except maybe some pronouns - the role of Jyn is written entirely non-gendered.  Put a male actor in there with the same lines and the same actions and it would make no difference.  Is that also intentional?

 

Overall, I enjoyed it.  Seeing the classic X-wings back in action was awesome.  I far prefer them to the new delicate split-engine model.  It was a better movie than The Force Awakens but it plays mostly as a prologue to A New Hope.  Thumbs up.  Get out to the theater and see it on the big screen.

I Was Wrong

Back in January of 2006, I posted the following on my Yahoo360 blog:

No Trump

I read that Donald Trump is now considering a run for Governor of New York. Of course, that isn't going to happen. Like his nonsensical flirtation with a run at the presidency back in 04, this is just a publicity stunt with only a bit more validity than Gary Coleman's failed run for Governor of California. He's not going to put all his finances in a blind trust, he's not going to place himself in a position where his rocky personal life will get maximum exposure, and his various troubled business ventures will be hammered relentlessly. He likes the limelight and publicity and nothing more. I for one will be astonished if he ever runs for any office though I fully expect him to hint at running for office until everyone realizes he's just crying wolf.

As current events show, I got this one wrong.  Sure, he refused to release his tax returns and pawning his financial interests to his children is a far cry from a blind trust, so he did somewhat cleave to my expectations.  I had expected more to be made of his marital history but both his ex-wives proved to be supportive.  With so much baggage, a Trump candidacy looked doomed from the start and yet he won nonetheless.

 

Depending on how things go from here, this may be a sea change in American politics.  Trump is the first president who didn't have either a military or political background.  If he doesn't crash and burn, he will have opened the presidency to a new class of people: business leaders.  Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are all of a sudden potential nominees.  Also, between Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, both parties have abandoned character - which the Founders saw as vital - as being a requirement at all.

Moana

The tale opens with Maui the Demigod stealing a magical stone that is the source of life from the goddess Te Fiti.  He has hardly fled her island than the lava god Te Ka smote him from the sky.  That was a thousand years ago and none have seen Maui since.

Motunui is an idyllic island but isolated.  Long ago, it was determined that none would sail beyond the reef.  However, Moana has this longing in her soul to sail beyond the reef.  Her father, Chief Tui, is adamantly opposed but when there are no longer fish to catch in the harbor and the coconuts are rotting from within, Moana dares to sail into the sea.  She must find Maui and get him to return the magic stone to Te Fiti to reverse the curse that is draining the life from the islands.

The movie hangs on Moana and Maui.  Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is awesome as Maui.  He knocked it out of the park.  Who knew that he could sing?  Here is his big number:

If you liked that, you'll love the movie.  Lots of fun, very upbeat, and just a joy to watch.  Highly recommended.

Westworld (HBO season finale)

Spoilers follow so be warned.

The 10th and final episode for the season has started a war between humans and hosts, explained the fate of Arnold, and even saw the retirement of Robert Ford.  The show has generally vilified humans while making heroes out of the robots.  Even so, I want the humans to win.

Perhaps I missed something but I am mystified by Arnold's thinking.  He holds that the hosts are conscious - or will soon become so - and that a life as a host in a repetitive loop which frequently ends in rape or death would be a hellish existence.  He tried to convince Robert of this but failed.  Okay, your partner wants to open the park.  In order to prevent him, you 'kill' all the hosts and commit suicide by host.  Why the suicide?  He mentions something along the lines that Robert can't recreate the hosts without him.  Okay, why does that require your death?  His reasoning is terrible.  Worse yet, Robert repeats it!  Shortly after Arnold's death, Robert sees that consciousness is coming but they need time.  Finally, the time has come.  The hosts have been achieving consciousness and 'going insane' and Robert has allowed it.  To signify that a new phase in Westworld, he has the same host kill him as killed Arnold.  What?  What is with these suicidal robot-builders?

So the bottom line is that a couple of men built robots and decided that the robots needed to be free.  Arnold thought genocide of the robots was the best option.  Robert thought that slaughtering the humans was the better choice.  In the end, we are expected to side with the robots in their effort to exterminate or subjugate the humans.  It's the next civil rights struggle.

 

On another point, there is the Man in Black, who proves to be an aged William.  He repeatedly says that Westworld is the most real thing but is annoyed that the hosts can't really fight back.  Humans always win.  Then how is this the most real thing?  Do you want to lose a gunfight?  Apparently.  Though wounded, he was still alive by the end and may have the opportunity to lose next season.

Many questions remain unanswered.  Why kill Theresa?  You've foiled her plot to get data out of the park via rogue hosts.  If you know you are going to launch Operation: Host Rebellion in a few days, why not let her live until then?  Why kill Elsie?  Elsie has shown loyalty to Bernard and is the person who uncovered Theresa's effort to smuggle data out of Westworld.  She is a clear ally and yet she is killed by Bernard.  To what end?  What exactly does Ford expect to happen now that the hosts are 'free' to kill humans?  They have the skillset of Old West characters and have likely just triggered a military response.  In that case, perhaps Ford is trying to cause a host genocide just like Arnold.  Also, we have seen Dolores express grief and guilt over killing Arnold and yet, now that she is sentient, the first thing she does is repeat that act by killing Robert.  Huh?

Like Game of Thrones, one of the charms of Westworld was not knowing the backstory, only getting glimpses and hints.  Unlike in GoT, the backstories here prove unworkable and generally stupid.  The great acting, outstanding sets, engrossing action, and plentiful nudity distract from the plot holes that litter the series.

As J. J. Abrams is involved, I know there are lots of additional 'mystery boxes' that have yet to be opened that may explain some of the issues listed.  However, he has a record of leaving gaping holes in plots in his Star Trek installments, Star Wars, and Super 8.  Why would Westworld be any different?  I doubt Michael Crichton would be impressed by this production.

Nocturnal Animals

The movie opens with a quartet of fat to very fat women dancing naked.  When the opening credits finish, it turns out that this is a art exhibit and some very realistic sculptures of the dancing naked women are sprawled on platforms while the dancing versions play on large screens on the wall.  The architect of this 'art' show is Susan (Amy Adams).  Susan is in a loveless marriage with Hutton (Armie Hammer), her second husband.  The morning after her show, a manuscript from her first husband arrives.  Susan starts reading and is immediately engrossed by the tale of Tony.

 

Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal) is driving with his wife (Isla Fisher) and daughter to Marfa, Texas in the middle of the night when he is forced off the road by a trio of hooligans led by Ray (Aaron Taylor-Johnson).  The confrontation leads to Tony in one car while his wife and daughter are driven off in the other.  Shortly thereafter he is abandoned in the desert.  Hiking back to the highway, he is interviewed by Officer Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon), who becomes his ally in tracking down his family.

 

The book has parallels to Susan and Edward's marriage and breakup.  Their relationship is loosely explored via flashbacks.  Interestingly, Edward is portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal, demonstrating that she identified Tony as Edward.  Susan is deeply affected by the book, often setting it down in the midst of some particularly unpleasant passages.  The linking of the book with her first marriage provides a mystery quality to the film.  Incidents in the book may or may not reflect incidents in their marriage.  The ambiguous ending allows the viewer to decide what it all means.

 

Not for everyone but I enjoyed it.  Well, except for that opening bit.

Secretary of State

Word is that former CIA Director and commander of the Surge in Iraq, General David Petraeus, is a finalist for Secretary of State.  I think that would be unwise.  He has already shown bad judgment in sharing classified data with his mistress/biographer.  Much like Hillary Clinton, he was above the law, just not as far above it as she was.  Lower ranking officers who pulled that crap would have suffered more than an ignominious resignation.  Furthermore, despite years spent fighting 'Islamic terrorism,' he has learned nothing of Islam.  During the controversy over a Florida pastor burning Korans, Petraeus weighed with an opinion.  His opinion was that the pastor should not exercise his 1st Amendment right to free speech because some Afghanis and Iraqis might be offended.  Between the bad judgment with his mistress and the failure to see Islam for what it is, Petraeus disqualifies himself.  The first error should deny him a security clearance for life and the second makes him unsuitable to negotiate a long term peace in the Middle East.

 

The other finalist is Mitt Romney.  Mitt was one of the leading NeverTrumpers and gave a scathing speech about Trump.  That Trump would consider Romney after this speaks highly of Trump.  When looking at Romney's failed 2012 presidential run, it is obvious that he saw the diplomatic landscape far more clearly than did Obama.  He declared that Russia was a primary geopolitical foe and the last four years has demonstrated that beyond any doubt.  Obama's retort that the 80s want their foreign policy back does not play as well today.  Where Romney was squishy on domestic policy - thus his need for Ryan on the ticket - his planned foreign policy would have been more muscular and in the standard Republican mold.  Also, his business background is more suited to cutting deals (e.g. win-win) than Petraeus' military background that is more naturally confrontational (we win, you lose).

 

Given only these two, I would pick Romney.  Trump's base is not keen on him because of Romney's harsh attacks during the campaign.  That same base is better disposed toward Petraeus.

 

Trump is not going to be a normal president.  He has already done things that a no previous president-elect has done.  He is famous for saying "You're fired!" and might very well replace his cabinet on a more frequent basis than any other president.  We have had politicians and military men as presidents but never a businessman.  Will he settle into a more standard presidency or will it continue to be weird like the campaign?

Westworld (1973)

The movie opens with a commercial for the Delos Resort.  A spokesman interviews several guests who have just returned, each of whom offers glowing praise and agree that the $1000 a day price was well spent.  There are three parks: Roman World, Medieval World, and Westworld.  The spokesmen then says "Boy, have we got a vacation for you!"

After the commercial, a score of guests are aboard the hovercraft to Delos.  Peter (Richard Benjamin) and John (James Brolin) head to Westworld.  Peter is new to the park while John has visited before.  As such, some of the introduction and rules to the park are introduced by John explaining it.  Once in the park, Peter finds himself in a gunfight with the gunslinger (Yul Brynner).  His success thrills him.  Later, the pair go to a brothel.  Peter fully embraces the park after that.

 

Meanwhile, another story unfolds in Medieval World where the guest is having an affair the with queen and has been challenged to a duel by the black knight.  He also attempts to seduce a servant girl but is rebuffed.  She is instantly recalled for a full diagnostic.  In the control center, the technicians discuss the increasing failure rate of the robots.  The lead technician likens the spread of these failures to a disease.  Clearly, computer virus was not a thing yet back in 1973.  Of course, the failures turn spectacular and people start dying.

 

Obviously, the technology has not aged well.  The reel to reel computers, silly graphics on non-flat screen monitors, old style circuit boards, and so on subtract from the futuristic feel.  However, the story is strong.  Unlike in the HBO series, the technicians take the problem seriously and intend to close the park as soon as the remaining guests leave.

 

This film inspired later directors.  Arnold Schwarzenegger used Yul Brynner as a model for his portrayal of the Terminator.  Likewise, John Carpenter gave Halloween's Michael Myers the indestructability of the gunslinger.  Michael Crichton, the writer and director, came up with the idea during a visit to Disneyland when he saw the animatronic characters; Westworld is just a futuristic Disneyland?

 

Thumbs up!

Allied

The movie opens in 1942 with Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) parachuting into the Moroccan desert.  In Casablanca, he meets his contact, Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard).  The pair pose as a married couple and attend a Nazi reception where they assassinate the ambassador before making good their escape.  Back in England, they get married and have a daughter.  A year later, Max is informed that his wife is suspected of being a spy.

 

The movie has its moments but doesn't rise above average.  Shortly after Max and Marianne meet, she explains that she keeps the emotions real to maintain her cover.  She admits to really liking the Nazis with whom she works but, when it came to the mission, she kills one of them.  Later, when she gives birth to their daughter, she declares to Max that 'This is the real me' or something to that effect.  If you saw the trailer, this scene gives up the mystery.  Worse, there are no other suspects.  The movie doesn't offer an alternate explanation so that the audience can think perhaps she isn't a Nazi spy.  The movie mostly follows Max and his desperate efforts to prove the mother of his child is not spying for the Nazis.  Considering the lengths to which he went, it is a testament of the love for his wife.

 

There are some really strange features.  When Max is told that his wife is a suspected spy, he is told that if true, he must kill her to prove his innocence.  That is amazingly unfriendly.  Moreover, they include him in the plot to unmask her.  Why?  Bonds of love cannot be turned off like that and surely the intelligence agencies of the day knew that.  If they discovered her in the first place because she was leaking stuff she gleaned from Max, why not just feed Max something without his knowing participation?

 

Fun and engaging while the setting was Casablanca but dreary and unsatisfying back in London.  Worth seeing if you like Pitt or Cotillard but otherwise pass on this one.

Election Challenge!

Jill Stein has been raising money for a recount of several states, notably Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.  If all three could be flipped to Hillary, the election results flip too.  Interestingly, one of the initial reasons given for the recount was the possibility of voting machines being hacked.  Michigan still uses paper ballots and thus is immune to Russian hackers.  Hmm.

What would it take to flip the results?  The margin in Michigan is 10,704 votes, a mere two tenths of a percent of the vote.  It's a close margin.  Not as close as Florida in 2000, but still very close for the number of votes cast.  Let's say the campaign finds errors and fraud that erases that gap and puts Michigan in the Democrat column.  Now Hillary has 248 electoral votes to Trump's 290.  Moving on to Wisconsin, the margin is 27,257, about nine tenths of a percent of the vote.  That's a pretty decent margin.  Yes, close but that is a hard gap to bridge.  In fact, if that gap were to be bridged, all faith in the election would be shattered.  But let's say, through some miracle of missing ballots in Milwaukee, Hillary wins a squeaker in the recount.  She now has 258 electoral votes to Trump's 280.  Still lost.  Very well, let's move on to Pennsylvania where the margin is 68,236 votes, a 1.1% margin in the votes cast.  That is an unassailable margin.  If that flips as well, there will be a civil war.

 

There is no way for Hillary to win without triggering massive unrest.  The Hillary campaign knows this and has nonetheless signed on to Jill Stein's quixotic effort.  With a change of the results being impossible, why bother?  Because it helps to undermine the coming Trump Presidency.  Much as the Florida fiasco of 2000 led to George W Bush implementing Democrat-lite policies and even keeping many Clinton appointees in his administration, this challenge plants the idea that Trump didn't really win.  He lost the popular vote.  There were irregularities in three states that would have handed the presidency to Hillary.  Seeds of doubt planted in the interregnum may blossom into an opposition movement next year.

 

It is true of all leftists that the will of the voters only matters when they vote for the Democrat.  If they vote for the other party, the voters were fooled, voted against their interests, or were misled by fake news.  Such reversals of fortune on account of ill-informed voters is why so many politicians are expressing envy for Castro.  Fidel didn't have to put up with stupid voters picking the wrong candidate.

Victory Margins

Hillary won 20 states and the District of Columbia.  If you add up the people who live in these places, you get approximately 140 million people.  Trump won 30 states.  If you add up the people who live in those states, you get about 181 million people.  So, the territory that went Trump is more populous than the area that went Clinton.  That's one of the handy features of the electoral college.  But let's take a closer look.

Hillary won the 5 states and the District of Columbia by a margin of greater than 60 percent: Hawaii, California, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maryland.  Roughly 55 million people live in these states and DC.

Trump won 10 states by 60% or greater: Wyoming, West Virginia, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Nebraska.  29 million people live in these states.

Hillary won the majority of votes (over 50% of all votes cast) in another 8 states: New York, Illinois, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Washington, Connecticut, Delaware, and Oregon.  58 million people live in these states.

Trump won the majority of votes in 14 additional states: Idaho, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kansas, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, Alaska, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Georgia, and North Carolina.  94 million people live in these states.

So far, based purely on population of regions that were definitively won by each candidate, Hillary took 13 states and DC with a combined population of 113 million people.  Trump won 24 states with a combined population of 123 million.  The remaining states were won by pluralities; no candidate broke 50% of the total votes counted.

Hillary won 7 states with anywhere from 46.9% to 49.9% of the votes cast: Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Maine, New Hampshire, Colorado, Minnesota.  27 million people live in these states.

Trump won 6 states with 45.9% to 49.5% of the votes: Arizona, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Utah.  59 million people live in these states.

 

Hillary's 60% plus margin in states that totaled 55 million people vs. Trump's 60% plus margin in states with only 29 million people explains how it is that Hillary took the popular votes but lost in the electoral college.  However, everyone knew the rules going in and the target was electoral votes, not popular votes.  According to CNN, Hillary's margin in California alone is 3.4 million votes, a margin which exceeds her popular vote margin by 1.5 million votes!  Did she really win the popular vote from a national perspective or just the California vote?

Death of a Tyrant

Fidel Castro is dead!
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

That exclamation point says it all.  Fidel Castro was a murderous dictator who inflicted horror upon the people of Cuba to such a degree that untold thousands have sought to escape on anything that would float.  He was a happy pawn of the Evil Empire throughout the Cold War.  Though his apologists will offer hagiographies to him, he was an old school totalitarian in the mold of Stalin, Mao, and Hitler.  He himself declared that his success was based on "twin themes of socialism and nationalism."  National socialism?  Where have I heard that before?  Oh yeah, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, otherwise know as the Nazi party.  Of course, he also proclaimed himself to be a Marxist-Leninist, aligning him with the workers' paradise of Communist Russia.  Like the USSR, Castro had gulags.  Granted, a gulag on a Caribbean island is nowhere near as inhospitable as one in Siberia but that's small consolation for the inmates.

 

Considering how much of a villain Castro was, why is he so admired by so many Westerners?  Envy.  There are elected politicians who wish that they could impose their will on the rubes outside the capitol like Castro has been able to do for more than half a century but are limited by laws and voters.  Thomas Friedman has praised Chinese autocracy for its ability to move the country in ways that President Obama was unable to move America.  Envy.  Obama himself declared that America could learn from the Castros during his surrender tour earlier this year.  Envy.  Most politicians and their courtiers would like to exercise power like Castro did.  No politician or political theorist likes that there is opposition that will inevitably prevent full implementation of their dream policies.  Envy.  Castro didn't have opposition because he lined them up for a firing squad or put them in prison.  Sure, autocracy has its downside but imagine how smoothly things would run if not for that darned opposition party!  Envy.

Beware those who express condolences and sorrow for the passing of the tyrant.  Embrace those who said 'good riddance!'  With Castro dead, a Cuban Renaissance may finally be on the horizon.

Hate is not a Crime

In the wake of the spree of cop killings, there is a push to make it a hate crime to kill a police officer.  Blue lives matter.  Like all the previous hate crime legislation that preceded it, this is a bad idea.  The effect of hate crime legislation is to mete out different punishments depending on who the victim is.  Thus, sometimes the same crime is punished more harshly because of 'hate.'  Murder is murder and it should have a set punishment.  The law should not say that it is worse to kill Officer Muldoon than it is to kill Peggy Smith the college student but neither of these is as bad as killing Tyrone Johnson the black man.  And let's not get started on how much worse than all of these it would be to kill a homosexual.  Many of those opposed to the Black Lives Matter movement have replied with All Lives Matter.  However, we are writing laws that are weighting the value of lives depending on who is the perpetrator and who is the victim.

 

If Jack killed Sam, he gets 30 years to life.  But if Jack is white and Sam is black, Jack gets 40 to life.  But if Jack is Black and Sam is Asian, he gets 25 to life.  Now, if Sam is homosexual, Jack gets 35 to life, no possibility of parole.  If Sam is a cop, Jack gets a life sentence.  If both Jack and Sam are black, Jack gets 20 to life.  If it turns out that Sam is short for Samantha, then Jack gets 35 years for misogyny unless Jack is short for Jacquelyn, in which case Jack gets 15 years; women aren't as much of a threat to society and can be released earlier.  If Jack is black and Sam is a white heterosexual male, then there cannot be hate.  In that case, Jack gets the standard 30 to life.  If it isn't obvious, I am randomly generating these sentences but the point remains that the same crime is punished differently, thus making certain lives matter more than others.

 

Thought experiment:  Let us suppose that the standard hate-free sentence for murder is 30 years.  A Klan member kills a black man and gets 30 years for the killing and 5 additional years for the hate.  Well, if that is the case, let's round up all the Klan members and sentence them to 5 years for hate.  After all, the hate is there right now.  If hate crime legislation is a good idea, let's punish the hate before the crime is committed.

 

Hate, like gluttony or greed or even rudeness, is bad but it isn't a crime.  Laws should punish specific acts based upon the act itself, not the motivation of the actor.  If Jack hated Sam or not is irrelevant to Sam being dead.  Whether Sam was white, black, Asian, homosexual, transsexual, female, or a police officer doesn't change the fact that Sam is dead and Jack did it.  If All Lives Matter, then equal punishment should be meted out for all lives.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

A couple of months ago, I started reading Scott Adams blog; he's the guy that does Dilbert.  At the end of every blog, he has a line about buying his book because of some random and often unrelated fact.  Amazingly, he convinced me!  I bought the book and finished it this morning.

It is not a long book and is surprisingly autobiographical.  He outlines his system for success and posits that it might work for you too.  One of the first things he hits and repeats through the book is that 'goals are for losers.'  Wow, there's a line I've not heard.  He reasoning is that a goal is a perpetual defeat until you get there.  Many will give up before the goal is achieved.  He suggests having a system, a series of habits that will inevitably lead in the chosen direction.  By using a system, every advance becomes a success.  Really, it is almost the same thing but it changes the psychology.  He really likes to change the psychology to address problems.

Being a computer programmer and very tech savvy, Adams views his brain as a moist computer that can be programmed.  He offers many examples where he would reprogram his brain, which often comes down to forming new habits.

Personal energy enables you to do more with the finite amount of time you have.  This leads to long chapters on remaining fit and eating healthy, requirements for keeping personal energy high.  Every new skill you acquire doubles your chances for success.  Well, he admits the doubling is arbitrary but the point is that more skills will provide more opportunities.  Happiness = health + freedom.  Luck is somewhat manageable.  Conquer shyness by being a phony (that's a good one).  Lastly, simplicity turns the ordinary into the extraordinary.  I list these almost verbatim from the summary in the introduction.

Early in the book, he mentions a score of get-rich projects that he tried, almost all of which failed; Dilbert was the great success.  Among the failures were a couple of restaurants, multiple computer programs, the Dilberito, a grocery delivery service, a video-sharing site before YouTube (timing is everything; internet connections were too slow for such a site when he tried it), and many others.  The moral is that if you try lots of things, you increase your odds of success while also gaining new skills even if these ideas fail.  See, even in failure, he chose to view them as projects that gained him skills and insights to use in future endeavors.

 

Interestingly, I have never much liked the Dilbert comic despite having been in the tech field for many years.  I rarely find them funny and, even when I do, it evokes a wry smile rather than a laugh.  However, I very much enjoyed the book and will likely read another of his non-Dilbert books.  I've already sought to implement some of his suggestions.  Thumbs up!

Electoral College Defense

Seeing as Hillary has more popular votes than Trump, the argument against the Electoral College is in full swing.  That she didn't break 50% should end the discussion.  In most cases of multiple candidates where no one reaches 50% plus 1 vote, there is a run off between the two top voter getters.  In US Presidential Elections, the electoral college serves as the run off.  Case closed.  But that isn't going to satisfy anyone so let's ponder the fictional Republic of Moparcos.

Much like Gaul, Moparcos is divided in three parts.  There is the mountainous northern state of Mo, the central prairie state of Par, and the warm coastal state of Cos.  All three states have roughly the same population.  The Founders of Moparcos adopted an Electoral College and all three states have 10 electoral votes.  Each state has a population of 6 million.  As it happens, this is an election year in Moparcos.

Governor Bronze of Cos is running for president against General Ramrod, hero of the recent war.  Thanks to his position as governor, Bronze uses his political machine to increase turnout in his state.  Of the 4 million votes cast, the popular governor wins 3 million and takes the state's 10 electoral votes.  General Ramrod grew up in Par and is a favorite son but he doesn't have a ground game.  The turnout is only 3 million voters and Ramrod edges out Bronze by 1.6 million votes to 1.4 million, getting the 10 electoral votes.  Neither General Ramrod nor Governor Bronze have much of a ground game in Mo.  As it happens, there is a huge snow storm on election day and the turnout is dismal.  Only 2 million voters go to the polls but Ramrod wins 1.1 million votes to Bronze's 900 thousand.  Thus, Ramrod gets the electoral votes and is the next president of Moparcos.

 

But let's look at that again.  Bronze won 3 million votes in Cos, 1.4 million in Par, and 0.9 million in Mo for a grand total of 5.3 million votes out of 9 million cast.  He got 59% of the popular vote and lost!  However, General Ramrod won two states that contain 12 million people where Bronze won 1 state of 6 million.  The electoral college performs a vote-weighting.  The voters in each state are 'speaking' for the 6 million people in the state.  That Cos had a 67% turnout vs. the 33% turnout from Mo doesn't mean that Cos should have double the influence for national politics.

Let's take a current election example:

Arizona, Massachusetts, and Indiana have just about the same population and account for 11 electoral votes each.  Trump won Arizona (49.5% to 45.5%) and Indiana (57.6% to 38.2%%).  Hillary won Massachusetts (60.8% to 33.5%).  Trump won 22 electoral votes to Hillary's 11.  However, far more voters turned out in Massachusetts (3.2 million) than in Arizona (2.1 million).  Adding up the popular vote of the three states, Hillary wins with 3.9 million votes to Trump's 3.7 million.  Massachusetts provided 40% of the popular votes but only represents 1/3 of the population of these three states.  By contrast, Arizona only provided 26% of the popular votes despite being the most populous of the three states.

Arizona is more than 10 times the size of Massachusetts.  The population density is 57 people per square mile.  Massachusetts has a density of 840 people per square mile.  Where will it be easier to organize voters?  In a popular vote system, population dense areas will have far more say than less dense areas even if the overall populations are equal.  The electoral college accounts for this.  In a popular vote system, the rural areas will be ruled by the urban centers.

Ant-Man

Just saw this movie again and, since I didn't review it on my first viewing, I shall do so now.  The movie opens in 1989 with Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) storming into the under-construction HQ of SHIELD (the one that got destroyed in Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and resigning because Howard Stark (John Slattery) has been attempting to replicate Pym's shrinking technology.

In the present, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is released from San Quentin for burglary and computer hacking.  His former cellmate (Michael Pena) picks him up and let's him crash at his place until he gets on his feet.  Despite having a Masters in Electrical Engineering, his felony record finds him at Baskin Robbins, scooping ice cream.  Though desperate to stay on the right side of the law, he needs to pay child support in order to see his daughter.  He turns to crime, which brings him to the home of Hank Pym and possession of the Ant-Man suit.  Scott becomes the new Ant-Man under the mentorship of Hank Pym and his daughter, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly).  Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), Hank's one-time protégé, has gone bad.  He had staged a hostile take-over of Pym's company and has now perfected the Ant-Man technology himself.  However, he plans to sell it to the highest bidder.

 

This is a comedy heist movie.  It is one of the funniest entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Michael Pena steals every scene he is in.  His narratives are the funniest parts of the movies.  Particularly great was when Stan Lee delivered the line 'crazy stupid fine!'  There is this Mission Impossible feel except with superpowers.

 

The big failing is the physics.  The movie fails to follow the rules that it has outlined.  Pym explained that his technology narrowed the space between atoms, thus allowing an object to shrink while retaining its mass.  Ergo, a two hundred pound man who shrank down to the size of an ant is still two hundred pounds.  If that is the case, there is no way he can uses a carpenter ant as a mount; he'd crush it to pulp.  He repeatedly stands on people and they don't notice, until he hits them.  When he fell on the floor, he broke a tile.  When he fell on a car, he put a dent in it.  His weight varies depending on what works best for the movie.

 

Unsurprisingly, Scott adopts Hank's dislike for the Starks and becomes a natural ally to Captain America in the Civil War.  This was further setup with his humorous fight with Falcon (Anthony Mackie), who is proving to be Cap's right hand man in the MCU.  The movie also setup Hope van Dyne to be the Wasp in the next Ant-Man movie.  Sadly, it's still a couple years away.

 

All in all, a terrific movie.  Again, Marvel took what I thought of as a marginal character and created an awesome movie.  Highly recommended.