The Rule of Law on the Brink

The evidence is overwhelming that Hillary Clinton funneled classified and top secret documents through an unsecure, non-governmental private server.  Why?  Why would she do something so reckless?  First, by having a private server, she has considerably more control over her emails.  Sure, anything she sent to a government address would be backed up by government servers and saved for posterity.  However, those she sent to non-government addresses would be less easily traced.  Was that a bug or a feature of the private server?  Hillary admitted deleting 30,000 emails, which she claimed were not related to her Secretary of State duties.  How do we know?  We have only her word for it.

Many computer security experts have claimed that it is virtually certain that Hillary's server was accessed by Russia, China, and probably even Iran.  Might Russian adventurism have been a result of their reading her emails and knowing how far the administration was willing to go to stop Russia?  It should be noted that in the late 40s, a map was generated in the US that showed where we would fight communist pushes and Korea was not included; the Korean War followed.  Iran has skunked us in the Iran Nuclear Deal; did they have access to Hillary's emails and know our strategy?  The deal could hardly have been more in their favor.  Of course, this is just conjecture but Hillary's use of a private server made such hacking more likely.

 

Even Hillary's supporters must know she is unethical.  Recall that she somehow turned $1,000 into $100,000 in cattle futures trading in only 10 months during her husband's first stint as governor.  Anyone else with that kind of investing acumen would switch professions.  Hillary never did it again.  For years, she was in the vanguard protecting Bill from sexual harassment accusations but is now saying women have a right to be believed.  The Clinton Foundation was an obvious and ongoing conflict of interest while she was at State; her husband is getting millions of dollars from countries with business before the State Dept.  Anyone other than the Clintons and the press would have howled about payoffs, kickbacks, and bribery.

 

Laws only apply to Republicans.  Democrats are above the law.  Hillary is unlikely to be indicted despite a mountain of evidence.  As such, the rule of law is almost dead.  We have moved on to the rule of power.

Immigration Reform to Benefit Americans First

What would immigration reform look like if it was more concerned with the welfare of American citizens than it was with immigrants?  We want enough immigrants to help grow the economy but not so many that they will displace Americans by working for substantially lower wages.  We would want immigrants who could readily assimilate, adopting the Western customs of the United States and speaking English in short order.  We would want people who add to the economy, not detract.  With these notions in mind, what policies might we implement?

1. Only citizens can receive government welfare benefits.  This would include food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, housing assistance, Earned Income Tax Credit, and so on.  If you can't support yourself, go back to your nation of origin.  It is folly to allow someone to enter the country and then become a drain on those who are productive.  If it is going to cost me money for you to be here, I don't want you.
2. Immigrants must speak rudimentary English.  Why bring in someone who is functionally illiterate and cannot communicate?  You want to come to the US?  Take some English classes in your home country.  There is an application process that is quite long.  Spend some time learning the language of the country where you want to live.
3. Educated applicants go to the front of the line.  If given a choice between a high school dropout and PhD, take the PhD.  We have more than enough native high school dropouts.  Let's not import more.  Let's sweep up the best and the brightest and leave the underachievers where they are.
4. There are no anchor babies.  The very idea is just an invitation for pregnant women to wade across the Rio Grande.  One of your parents has to be a legal resident of the United States in order to confer citizenship.  And even if the Supreme Court decides that birth on American soil confers citizenship, the parents still go home.  You can leave your citizen kid behind to be adopted but you aren't staying.  Stop rewarding the behavior and we'll get a lot less of it.

Immigration needs to benefit American citizens first.  It did not benefit the computer technicians at Disney who trained their H1-B Visa replacements.  It did not benefit the unskilled American teenagers to have vast waves of low-skilled labor flood the market.  It did not benefit Americans to have the Tsarnaev brothers here and on welfare while they planned the Boston Marathon Bombing.  Either you can support yourself when you get here or your application is rejected.  Implement these rules and immigration will become a boon.

Welcome to the Apocalypse

When former Vice President Al Gore attended the Sundance Film Festival in January 2006 to premiere his propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth, he declared that, unless drastic measures were taken regarding greenhouse gasses, the earth would reach a point of no return in ten years.  It has now been ten years.  The doom is now unavoidable.  The ice caps will melt shortly, the polar bears will drown, and NYC will sink into the Atlantic Ocean any second now.  Okay, just a few more seconds.  Hmm.  Well, the standard deviation of the ten year prediction must allow for leeway.

 

Obviously, the claim was just fear-mongering, an effort to convince the electorate to approve 'drastic measures' that would include more money and power to government.  The people didn't bite and now, ten years later, the scam is clearly revealed.  Of course, there will be an excuse.  Perhaps it has already been offered and I have missed it.  Gore's Frying Pan Earth notion has been replaced by Obama's more vague Climate Change.

 

This has been the modus operandi of the environmental movement since the first Earth Day in 1970.  Here is a list of some of those initial predictions.  Note that none of them came to pass.  The catastrophes scheduled for 1975 haves still not occurred even 40 years later.  Global cooling changed to global warming and now it is climate change.

 

If only the government could take more of our money and infringe further on our property rights and freedom, I'm sure the issue could be solved.

Trump and the Immigration Issue

What if Trump had not entered the Presidential Race?  Would the remaining candidates have even thought to raise the immigration issue?  I think it is highly unlikely.  If not for Trump, we might have seen Jeb and Rubio discussing comprehensive immigration reform.  Rand Paul would have been generally all right with that.  Really, most of them wouldn't have wanted to take the Trump position because it would make them a target for accusations of racism.  Trump was willing to take the heat and hasn't wavered on this core issue.  It is the foundation of his popularity.  Who else would have suggested a halt to Muslim immigrants/refugees?  Oh, they asked for better vetting but no one dared turn off the spigot.  Except for Trump.  And once Trump blazed that trail, Speaker Ryan echoed it.

 

Immigration has been a raw nerve among the average voter for a long time, getting more sensitive with each passing year.  It does not help matters that the Washington elites from both parties keep talking about comprehensive immigration reform and paths to citizenship.  No establishment politician has advocated against the current transformational immigration.  Democrats want the voters and Republicans want the cheap labor.  How about what the American voter wants?  Too bad, so sad.

With that in mind, what will happen if Trump crashes and burns in Iowa like Howard Dean did in 2004?  Will the new frontrunner seek to acquire Trump's supporters by adopting his stands on immigration or will the issue fade into the background?  I think most of the field would be only too happy to see the immigration debate go away.  Even Cruz, the person most likely to move into the lead, would probably put immigration on a backburner.  Jeb "Illegal immigration is an act of love" Bush and Marco "I wouldn't reverse Obama's executive order on immigration" Rubio would take it off the stove altogether.

 

With no other candidate who can credibly pick up the immigration baton, Trump is going to have staying power even if Iowa doesn't go well.  Other candidates will drop out as donor cash dries up but money is not an obstacle for Trump.  As long as he pushes the immigration issue, he can collect delegates all the way to the convention.  If he doesn't win outright, he will still have the option to be a big factor.  However, that depends on if he would stick around once he is mathematically eliminated.  Should that come to pass, will he shrug and say, "I gave it a shot" or will he stick around to influence the party platform on immigration?

Trump Stumbles?

Donald Trump isn't participating in the last debate prior to the Iowa Caucus because Megyn Kelly is unfair to him.  Really?  With a normal candidate, this would be a serious gaffe, possibly fatal.  If you can't deal with a hostile reporter, what the heck are you going to do when North Korea, Iran, Russia, or some other hostile power challenges you?  If she was calling him names or libeling him, maybe I could see it.  Nope.

I'm not very familiar with Megyn Kelly.  I've watched her show a couple of times and seen clips on YouTube and such here or there.  She asks pointed questions of people from both sides of the aisle.  She appears to be a tenacious interrogator who has done her homework before an interview.  In fact, she has done such a good job with homework that she is usually stomping all over her 'guest' if the interview proves confrontational.  That she can do this with considerable charm and a winning smile makes her a real threat to even very experienced politicians.

 

With the Iowa Caucus just a week away, Trump is betting that people have already decided and the debate is more likely to hurt him than help him.  He's going to sit on his lead rather than risk a turnover.  An Iowa win will give Trump great momentum going to New Hampshire, where he leads.  A loss could be disastrous.  Recall that Howard Dean looked to be the eventual nominee for the Democrats in 2004 until he lost Iowa.  It broke the spell that had entranced the Democrat electorate and he vanished almost overnight.

Walter Mondale Redux

During the 1984 Presidential Campaign, Democrat Walter Mondale promised to raise taxes.  What followed was the biggest presidential landslide in almost 50 years.  Bernie Sanders has decided that he wants to give the Mondale strategy another try.

“Yes, we will raise, we will raise the, we will raise taxes, yes we will.”

 

When Walter Mondale declared that he was going to raise taxes, he said this in response to Reagan's historic deficits.  The implication was that he would get our fiscal house in order.  He wouldn't necessarily cut spending but he would raise taxes to equal it.  Interestingly, Bernie has come along in the wake of Obama's historic deficits and calls for tax increases.  Unlike Mondale, there is no hint that this is to be fiscally responsible.  Bernie has outlined $6.5 trillion in new taxes over the next ten years.  However, he has proposed $18 trillion in new spending!  And I thought Obama's deficit was bad.  Though government long ago stopped basing spending on income, which ordinary people are required to do, Bernie wants to take it to a whole new level.  If the budget was balanced and Bernie implemented this plan, the country would add $11.5 trillion in debt.   Bernie has promised fiscal irresponsibility on an unimaginable scale.  We are already spending money we don't have; why not spend all the money we don't have?

 

We are already in serious financial trouble.  The drop of our credit rating should have served as a warning.  George W Bush made matters worse with his new drug entitlement and Obama raised him a healthcare overhaul.  Bernie is going to put virtually everything from healthcare to education on the government credit card.  It takes this sort of sustained recklessness to make Donald Trump a palatable option to so many Americans.

Louie De Palma is still a Jerk

At the Sundance Film Festival, Danny DeVito declared the country to be racist.  Here's the video.  Because there are no black nominees for the Academy Awards, the country is racist.  To make such a damning accusation against one's own country on such a flimsy foundation says more about DeVito than about the country.  Did the country have a vote as to who the nominees were?  No, actually, only members of the academy had a vote.  How many members of the academy are there?  There are approximately 6,000 voting members of the Academy.  On account of the votes of this tiny cadre of entertainment professionals, Danny DeVito is accusing the entire country of being racist.  Really? 

 

Let's delve further into this.  Which party benefits from Hollywood donations?  During the 2012 Presidential Campaign, Obama raked in 80% of the donations vs. Romney's 20%.  In the current primaries, Hillary Clinton has received 90% of the money, stomping her nearest competitor, JEB.  So it is safe to say that Hollywood is a Democrat town.  That makes sense.  Democrats were the party of slavery and the party of Jim Crow.  When DeVito accuses the 'country' of being racist, he is trying to shift blame from the overwhelmingly Democratic Academy members who voted only for whites.  Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has a running line where he asks why are liberal enclaves such hotbeds of racism?  It wasn't a bunch of Republicans who selected the Oscar nominees.

 

I always thought his abrasive and often mean-spirited characters (Louie De Palma of Taxi being the most memorable) showed that he could act.  No, it turns out he wasn't acting at all.

Defending the Right to Self-Defense

Here is a proposed law that I could support if the language was sufficiently clear.  If a business is going to ban guns on the premises, that business should be liable if a gun owner is injured or killed while obeying that ban.  The liability would be limited to things where a gun would have provided the opportunity of self-defense.  For instance, a crazed gunman on the premises would be covered, an earthquake would not.  If patrons are required to be disarmed, the business must take the responsibility to defend them should the need arise.

 

Of course, no matter how well-crafted the law, it will fall upon courts to decide.  Does a person who knowingly enters a gun-free zone forfeit a right to self-defense?  That could lead to every business being gun-free and the 2nd Amendment rendered largely moot outside the confines of private homes.  Do you always have a right to defend yourself?  As the law stands now, the answer is no.  Can a business, or even government, abridge the right to self-defense?  Currently, they can.

 

Whenever there is talk of gun rights, I think of this scene from Code of Silence.  Criminals hate it when their would-be victims can fight back.  Ever notice how there are no mass shootings where one of the victims shot back?  That's because those are the shootings that are stopped before the death toll can rise to the level of a mass shooting.

The Boy

Greta (Lauren Cohan) is an American who has been hired as a nanny in the UK.  She arrives to an empty house and then wanders the halls.  It is a very stately mansion and there is a painting of the family.  When we meet Mr. and Mrs. Heelshire, they are at least 20 years older than they were in said painting.  Mr. Heelshire is friendly but his wife is very particular.  Then she meets Brahms, a doll.  Greta laughs, thinking this is some joke but quickly realizes they are absolutely serious.  Mrs. Heelshire offers a list of rules that must be followed or Brahms can become difficult.  With that, the Heelshires leave on holiday.  However, Mrs. Heelshire whispers in her ear that she is sorry.

 

No sooner have the Heelshires left than Greta leaves the doll in a chair and tosses a blanket over it because it 'creeps her out.'  Later, she discovers the blanket on the floor while Brahms is still sitting where she left him.  More spooky incidents follow.  She finally asks Malcolm (Rupert Evans) about Brahms.  It turns out that Brahms had died in a fire on this 8th birthday in 1991 and he had been viewed as an 'odd' child.  Is the doll just a host for young Brahms' ghost?  If so, is he just a lonely child wanting attention or is he a wicked spirit bent on tormenting the living?

 

The movie is much better than I expected it to be.  There are several odd rules for the care of the doll that eventually make sense.  Good fun and recommended.

A Record of Failure

A thumbnail sketch of the Republican Party - as it is cartoonishly portrayed - would be that of a stingy banker who wants low taxes.  The Republican doesn't want to fund a welfare state because he is mean.  The Republican is greedy, which is why he wants low taxes.  The Republican is a warmonger because he wants to invade other countries and steal their stuff.  This is a caricature that fails to plumb the depths of these policies but that is a discussion for another time.  Let us assume that this is indeed what the Republican voter wants.  Is he getting it?

Are taxes going down as a result of massive victories for Republicans in both the House and the Senate?  No.  They are going up as Obamacare is implemented.  Is the welfare state shrinking to satisfy the sadistic nature of these heartless voters?  No.  The welfare state has seen massive and continuing growth, from food stamps to healthcare to housing.  We are importing people so as to put them on welfare.  Is the military getting bigger and invading poor third world countries?  No, it is shrinking and being mostly withdrawn.  In short, Republican voters have not seen any of the heartless and mean-spirited policies that they support enacted.

All those experienced, establishment Republicans who promised the moon before the elections have delivered squat.  Why are they surprised that an outsider like Trump is getting traction?  They have no one but themselves to blame.  Even if Trump does eventually fumble - which is looking less and less likely - the next most popular candidate is Ted Cruz.  The party hates Cruz.  George Will has accused Cruz of not being a team player.  He meant that as a criticism but it translates as a compliment outside DC.  The senator who wants to throw away the playbook that has resulted in loss after loss after loss is the problem?

 

The Republican Party has done such a wonderful job on the national level that a Republican governor has suggested an Article V convention of the states to propose amendments to the Constitution.  The last time the states got together in such a fashion, they dumped the Articles of Confederation and wrote the Constitution.  This is fraught with peril.  Such extreme measures are suggested because the government is running amok.  The debt has exceeded GDP for the first time since World War II, courts have imposed cultural changes that the people had voted down, the president is enforcing laws that Congress declined to pass and not enforcing laws that the Congress did pass, immigrants are flooding into the country and then using the welfare services at a higher rate than the native population (we are bringing in indigents who will only cost, not benefit), and the Republican shrug.

 

The party needs to be refocused by new leadership or replaced in much the same way that it replaced the Whigs.

Bernie Sanders: American Communist

Here is an article that is both surprising and scary.  I knew Bernie was on the far left of an increasingly leftist party but this is pretty extreme.  That, in the wake of the most leftist president that the country has ever had, the party is on the brink of selecting someone even further to the left is disheartening.  Have the values of individualism and freedom been beaten down so far that the country could move further into collectivism and a command economy?  Have the seeds that the Soviet Union planted in the American political soil many decades ago not only taken root but bloomed beyond the wildest expectations?  More than two decades after the fall of the Soviets, America is flirting with electing a Soviet apologist to the Presidency.

 

But for the Obama Presidency, I would not be quite so concerned.  Why?  The opposition party has been entirely too agreeable to the president's destructive policies.  Sure, they loudly proclaim their opposition in public but when the votes are counted, the president has carried the day far too often.  After the 2010 election, his domestic policies should have been hamstrung but they marched on with hardly any hindrance.  After the 2014 election, even his foreign policies should have found increased opposition but the Iran Nuke Deal was approved and US standing has further eroded.  Would a President Sanders encounter somewhat stiffer resistance or will the Republican Congress prove to be just as much of a doormat?

 

The continued rise of Bernie Sanders shows the weakness of Hillary as a candidate.  The Democratic Party's efforts to shield her by scheduling few debates and putting them at inconvenient times demonstrates that even the party knows she is a weak campaigner and debater.  It is still unlikely that Bernie gets the nomination.  If he does, a half-way competent Republican opponent should be able to demolish him by just revealing the stuff in the linked article.  Of course, Republicans are notorious for their incompetence.

Man in the Wilderness

Forty four years before The Revenant, Richard Harris starred in Man in the Wilderness, a movie also based on the harrowing survival tale of Hugh Glass.  For some reason, the character is named Zach Bass and all the other fur trappers are likewise renamed.  The story opens in 1820 with the view of a keel boat being hauled through a wooded area by a long line of mules.  Captain Henry (John Huston) stands on the ship with his well-worn top hat and gazes about as if he was at sea.  Meanwhile, Bass and Lowrie are hunting.  Lowrie merely wounded a deer while Bass killed one.  While Lowrie took the one back to the camp, Bass went in search of the wounded deer but found a bear instead.  The bear mauls Bass nearly to death before half a dozen trappers arrive and kill it.  After he is stitched up, Captain Henry asks two men to stay behind and bury him when he dies.  If he isn't dead by morning, "Kill him."  Yikes, that's rather unfriendly.  It is unclear why Bass couldn't just be loaded into the boat rather than left behind.  While waiting, Fogerty and Lowrie spot some Arikara warriors and decide to flee, leaving Bass to his fate.

 

There are a lot of flashbacks to 'explain' Zach Bass, from his mother's death, his difficulty at an orphanage, his wife, his wife's grave, and his son.  It is repeatedly shown that Bass has no use for God, notably because of these prior hardships.  Perhaps the oddest scene was when, while hiding in the brush, Bass watched a squaw give birth.  Clearly, the scene is meant to kindle his paternal instincts and give him cause to return home.  It is also strange that many of the trappers believe Bass is alive and tracking them; from their perspective, this is a horror film.  That was a weak part of the film.  In theory, the trappers are constantly moving, trying to get back to civilization with their keel boat and pelts.  Meanwhile, Bass fishes, hunts, skins and tans hides to create some new clothes, builds a spear from bits salvaged from some slaughtered hunters, and hikes through the wilderness on a crutch.  How did he catch them?  Well, back to that horror film notion, no matter how slow he walks or how fast they run, he must catch them.  When Bass began his recovery and trek after those who abandoned him, he was set on revenge.  When he arrived, all the flashbacks and encounters along the way had mellowed him to where he just walked away after collecting his rifle.  He had found God and forgiveness.

 

The inclusion of a son in both versions of the tale was interesting.  Zach Bass had a toddler son waiting for him back home, a reason to survive and raise him.  Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) had a son who was murdered, providing a reason to survive and avenge him.  Also interesting is that both Harris and DiCaprio were 41 when they played the character, which is about how old the real Hugh Glass was when he met the bear.

 

Man in the Wilderness has a gauzy feel to it.  When Harris is on screen, there is a melancholy score that is nonetheless optimistic.  Sad but upbeat?  Then, switching back to the keel boat, there is a thundering ride to adventure score.  It was awkward and distracting.  Like The Revenant, the movie is only partly accurate to history.  However, since all the names have been changed, that's fine by me; it is a fictional tale based on a true story whereas The Revenant is a true story with fictional rewrites.  However, I like that Harris didn't seek revenge in the end.  Of course, he didn't have a murdered son to avenge but that was an ahistorical rewrite by the filmmakers.  In this aspect, Man in the Wilderness was truer to the real Hugh Glass.  Even so, The Revenant is the better movie.

The Coming Ice Age... er... Global Warming... er... Climate Change!

In April of 1975, Newsweek published this story about The Cooling World.  Ominous signs portended likely famine because average temperatures were falling.  Dr. Murray Mitchell noted a half degree drop in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968.  Columbia University's George Kunda saw a large increase in snow cover.

 

In May of 1978, In Search of, the television show hosted by Leonard Nimoy, investigated The Coming Ice Age in this episode.  Several scientists (Dr. James Hayes, Dr. Chester Langway, Dr. Gifford Miller, Dr. Stephen Schneider) were consulted.  The glaciologist argued that Baffin Island in Canada was signaling the next ice age; ice didn't melt in the summer of 1972.  A severe winter across North America in 1976-77 showed just how close we were.  Buffalo, NY had 40 days straight of snow!  Dr. Miller suggested that the current warm period likely ended 3000 years ago.  The show concludes that, in as little as one lifetime, we could see ice sheets stretching into Kansas.  It was all very dire.

 

Then, in 1987, Dr. James Hansen of NASA testified before the Senate that Global Warming was going to ruin us.  Senator Al Gore seized upon this doomsayer's testimony and soon published a book, Earth in the Balance (1992).  Later, he wrote and starred in the Oscar winning movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which predicted doom from fossil fuels and the earth becoming an oven.  The polar bears are doomed!

 

In a space of less than 10 years, scientists had switched from an Ice Age to a heat wave.  With ice cores dating back scores of millennia and geologic weather data that stretches back hundreds of millions of years, somehow the predictions all turned on a dime.  How could all of those scientists in the 70s have been SO wrong?  Were they fired for incompetence?  Moreover, the predictions were now based on human activity, not natural cycles.  We can stop it, but only if we give government the power and money to rescue us from our folly.

 

Climate change is a government fundraiser, kind of like a school bake sale but scarier.  Scientists who are funded by government grants offer research that says government needs more power and money.  You scratch my back...  Climate change is a convenient lie; by the time the warming would have occurred, most of us will be dead.  However, in the present, government will have increased its authority and funding.

This Iran Deal just keeps getting better

Last week, Iran fired some rockets near our ships in the Straits of Hormuz.  Now they have 'taken' two small craft and ten sailors.  There are still regular rallies calling for 'Death to America!'  With all President Obama's smart diplomacy and willingness to talk, our relations look to be getting worse.  Can we reconsider lifting those sanctions?

The Revenant

It is 1823 when a band of trappers are attacked by Arikara warriors.  The survivors board a keelboat and escape.  Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is out scouting when he is attacked by a bear.  The party drag him along until they come to an impassible barrier to carry his stretcher.  While the rest of the party move on, three men stay behind: Hawk, Glass's half-breed son, Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), and Jim Bridger.  While left alone with Glass, Fitzgerald attempts to finish him off but Hawk arrives.  The trailer makes clear that Glass's son is killed by Fitzgerald so it is hardly a spoiler to mention that here.  Of course, Glass survives and sets out for revenge.

The true part is that Arikara warriors attacked a band of trappers led by William Henry Ashley, killing about 15 of them.  The survivors fled, during which time Glass was mauled by the bear.  With Glass unable to travel, Ashley called for volunteers to stay with him until he recovered or, more likely, died.  Fitzpatrick and Bridger volunteered but then left the still-living Glass behind, taking his rifle.  Glass survived and spent 6 weeks crawling back to Fort Kiowa.  In the wake of the Arikara attack, Lt. Colonel Henry Leavenworth led an expedition against them; this is the Arikara War (1823) and the first military engagement between the US and western Indians.  After Glass recovered, he set out to find Bridger and Fitzpatrick.  He killed neither of them but did recover his stolen rifle.

The movie has some historical inaccuracies that bothered me.  At one point, Fitzgerald mentions how his father had been with some Texas Rangers on some trek.  Of course, the Texas Rangers were only just established in 1823 while the trapping expedition set out in 1822.  The attack by the Arikara was in May of 1823.  Glass was mauled in August.  His trip back to Fort Kiowa took 6 weeks. In contrast, the movie seems to take place in the dead of winter.  A couple of times, Glass has a vision of piles of buffalo bones; the genocidal slaughter of the buffalo didn't occur until after the Civil War.  Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) was almost 50 during this expedition (Gleeson is 32) and didn't die until 1832.

 

The movie has a good amount of suspense but is often very slow paced.  There are a lot of nature shots, staring up through trees, showing snowy mountains, epic waterfalls, and so forth.  I was reminded of the closing clips that Charles Osgood would show on CBS News Sunday Morning; perhaps he still does.  In any case, that really slowed the pace of the film, entirely unnecessary for a 2 and a half hour long movie.  There was a repeated flashback to a Pawnee village slaughtered by US soldiers.  Having created a fictional son for Glass, the film makers decided to have a fictional Pawnee massacre to explain what happened to his Pawnee wife.  There are enough real massacres that a fictional one need not be used.  Though the French had traveled far and wide in the region during the 18th Century, the loss of Canada to the British and the Louisiana Purchase cut down on their fur trapping along the Missouri River.  This group of Frenchmen are shown as murders, arms dealers, and rapists; is there a political message meant by that?

 

The acting is quite good.  Tom Hardy was particularly good as the baddie; in fact, there are times where it is easy to sympathize with him.  Though I liked DiCaprio, the script had too much mystical mumbo-jumbo, too many visions, too many voices in his head to accept.  Inarritu hammered the attachment to son and wife with such frequency that I grew tired of it.  Cut all of that and the desire for revenge is still clear as day; as with the nature shots, it was excessive.

 

Overall, a good and entertaining film.  Cinematography makes it worth seeing in the theater.

An Inconvenient Shooting

President Obama had a town hall meeting on gun control.  Shortly thereafter, a man shot a police officer in Philadelphia.  Wow, perhaps this adds an exclamation point to his argument.  No, as a matter of fact, it undermined a slate of talking points from the administration.

Problem 1: It turns out that the gun was stolen from the home of a police officer.  Nothing the president suggested could have any impact on that.  In fact, short of disarming the police or perhaps requiring them to leave their guns at the police station when off duty would have had any impact on the shooter getting the gun.

Problem 2: Edward Archer is black and shot a white officer.  The incident is a reversal of the claimed epidemic of cops shooting black men.  What story might we have been told if the shooting hadn't been caught on camera and the officer's return fire had killed rather than wounded the shooter?  Keep in mind that the Ferguson shooting was not on camera and the initial story bore almost no resemblance to the truth.

Problem 3: Archer proclaimed that he shot the officer "in the name of Islam" and also pledged his allegiance to ISIS, again demonstrating that ISIS is not contained nor is the homeland safe.  Of course, the mayor of Philadelphia declared that - despite the shooter's claims - the shooting had nothing to do with Islam or its teachings.  Why is it that every time someone claims to be acting in the name of Islam, a non-Muslim politician becomes an Islamic theologians who can assure us that such incidents have nothing to do with Islam?

 

Everything about this shooting weakens the Democratic Party's favorite narratives.  Luckily, it is already old news now and we'll not hear about it again.

Amending the Constitution

Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas, has proposed a bunch of new amendments to the Constitution.  I found a list of them here.  There are some good ideas.  However, most of his proposed amendments seek to return power to the states.  The states lost their say at the national level when the 17th Amendment was ratified, making Senator an elective office by the people of the state rather than an appointed position by the state assembly and/or governor.  As I have pointed out in a previous post, 26 states opposed Obamacare.  If those states could have simply ordered their senators to vote against - which is what would have happened before the 17th Amendment - the law would not have been passed.  Senators went from protecting the authority of the states they represented to accumulating power in the governmental body where they served.  This is one of the reasons money and power have migrated from the states and to Washington DC.

 

It would be far more efficient to just repeal the 17th Amendment.  Sadly, this is an abstruse argument that can easily be flipped as taking voting rights away from the people.  "What do you mean I no longer get to elect my senators?!"  For that reason, this simple solution would be a much harder sell.  It was comparatively easy to repeal Prohibition (18th Amendment) because everyone needed a drink.  With that sadly being the case, let's look at the proposals.

Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within one State.
 

But for an expansive definition of the commerce clause, this would already be the case.  The Supreme Court ruled that a farmer who had grown a crop entirely for his personal use was taking part in interstate commerce and thus subject to federal law.  Ergo, everything becomes a facet of interstate commerce and under the purview of Congress. 

Require Congress to balance its budget.

That would be nice but I suspect that Congress would use this as an excuse to raise taxes rather than cut spending.  "Hey, you people ratified the amendment that requires us to balance the budget.  It's your fault that we must raise your taxes."  I like what Colorado did.  They limited the growth of state spending to inflation and population growth.  Do that at the federal level and we would be running surpluses in no time.

Prohibit administrative agencies — and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them — from creating federal law.

That this should even have to be proposed tells just how far we have drifted.  The Constitution grants legislative power solely to Congress.  Every single law, regulation, expenditure, et al. must be passed on the floor of the House and Senate.  They can no more transfer this power to non-elective agencies than the president can give his veto to Mickey Mouse.  Yet they have.  So be it, we will have to try an amendment.

Prohibit administrative agencies — and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them — from preempting state law.
 

This looks like it should just be a clause under that last one.  If Congress can't export its legislative features to unelected bureaucrats, it should be able to imbue them with judicial powers either.  Let's not blur the lines between judges and bureaucrats.

Allow a two-thirds majority of the States to override a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

I'm ambivalent on this one.  I'm not keen on the Supreme Court lacking a check or balance.  In theory, a misbehaving judge can be impeached by Congress but that is virtually impossible.  Congress likes transferring risky decisions to non-elective parts of government - thus those last two proposals - and the court is the ultimate non-elective part.  Each party seeks to control the court and have its agenda imposed on the country by means of unredressable rulings.  This provides a more realistic means of checking the Supreme Court.  However, I suspect there are some unforeseen problems hidden in this.

Require a seven-justice super-majority vote for U.S. Supreme Court decisions that invalidate a democratically enacted law.

 

I don't see how this would fly.  First, it would have to apply to all federal courts or this would mostly transfer final decisions to the various Federal Appeals Courts.  How far down would this super-majority requirement go?  Besides, if the two-thirds override discussed in the last proposal came to pass, there is redress rather than hobbling the court system.

 

Restore the balance of power between the federal and state governments by limiting the former to the powers expressly delegated to it in the Constitution.
 

How do we do that?  The Constitution already limits the federal government to certain delegated powers.  Check out the 10th Amendment.  It is already unconstitutional and yet it is done.  Do we make it double-dog dare unconstitutional?  Wouldn't it be best to just enforce the laws (amendments) already on the books than enact new ones that duplicate the old ones?

 

Give state officials the power to sue in federal court when federal officials overstep their bounds.

 

This one is full of mischief.  In a litigious society such as ours, this is an invitation to civil war fought in federal courts.  The very federal courts that have been hamstrung by some of the above proposals.

Allow a two-thirds majority of the States to override a federal law or regulation.

 

The likelihood of this actually being exercised is so low that it is probably a good idea.  The populace would have to be hugely indignant for the states to achieve this.  It is short of an amendment (3/4ths required) and echoes the presidential veto.  If this were to be successfully used, it would be an indication that the federal government had become tyrannical and this might be a means of preventing civil war or secession.

 

That a governor of one of the largest states thinks this is necessary is a bad sign for the republic.  Too much of this tries to force the federal government back within the constraints that are already in place in the Constitution.  Those constraints have failed.  Reiterating them is unlikely to succeed.

Germany's Imported Rape Culture

"If the Cologne attackers had belonged to a fraternity, their coordinated sexual assaults would be the biggest story on earth right now."
@davidfrum

Wow!  Scary that this is true.

Socialism is Immoral

Stumbled upon this interesting video by Stefan Molyneux, a Canadian blogger with a libertarian bent and fondness for philosophy.  He explains why he abandoned his socialist beliefs because socialism seeks to define the world in a way that is in contradiction to the truth.  He repeatedly goes back to the sun being the center of our solar system, which is just the way it is.  One cannot decide that the Earth as the center would be better for society.  Likewise, there are similar foundational truths that undermine socialism.

 

Individuals own themselves and their actions.  To argue against this, is to be in favor of slavery.  If Bob grows a flower on his property, it is his flower.  If he grows 10 flowers, they are all his flowers.  The same goes for a million flowers.  There is no numerical limit where Bob's actions are no longer under his ownership.  Socialism supposes that the government can appropriate assets for the good of society, to provide a more equal distribution of wealth; that is theft.  To argue that, at a certain level of wealth, one's actions become the property of society is to argue against the foundational principal of self-ownership.  Just because Bill Gates remains in the top 1% after half his wealth is taken by government does not make the theft less immoral.  One of my favorite economists, Walter E. Williams, has said the same, but is more pithy:

“No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong”

 

“But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?”

 

So far, this is the only video of his that I have watched.  I am interested to see what he has to say about other governmental systems and the morality of taxation in general.  Is there an ethical level of taxation?  Though I also lean heavily libertarian, it approaches anarchy in its purest form.

Youth

An unusual drama that takes place almost entirely in and around a posh hotel in the Swiss Alps.  The central character is Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine), a retired orchestra conductor.  His lifelong friend, film director Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) is also staying at the hotel to work on the script for his latest film.  A number of lesser characters associated with one or the other of these two are developed as well.  There is the disillusioned actor (Paul Dano) who is most beloved for a part he hated, Fred's daughter, Lena (Rachel Weisz), who has just been dumped by her husband, and several other lesser characters that are merely glimpsed.

 

The movie has depth and, at times, offers some interesting insights.  Mick tells a young woman that to the young, the future is like that mountain which seems so far away.  To the old, it is the past that looks so far away.  He and Fred also talk about how their memories have faded, childhood memories are virtually gone.  It paints a rather bleak picture at times.

 

Paul Dano was a poor casting choice.  He is both too young for the role and not convincing as a 'star' that might be recognized by Miss Universe.  One fan liked a film where he had a 14 year old son; Dano is 31 now.  How long before had this fictional film been made?  Of course, I have never liked Dano in virtually any role - Prisoners excepted, where I thought he was perfectly cast - so I have a bias.  Nonetheless, his turn as an infamous historical figure was one of the funniest bits in the movie and he did it quite well.

 

Despite a two hour runtime, the movie is extremely slow.  Had I not known the relative durations, I would have thought this was longer than The Hateful Eight.  Many of the incidental characters are developed in non-dialogue shots.  Amazingly, there was quite a bit of nudity but it was almost entirely unrelated to the story, which made it more often a distraction.  The only occasion where it fit was when Miss Universe sauntered into the pool where Fred and Mick were soaking; the dropped jaw look on both their faces was quite funny and the discussion that ensued flowed with the themes of the movie.

 

It does provoke questions.  How much will you remember when you get old?  How will your kids view you?  Fred and his daughter have very different views on what kind of a father he was.  Characters - young, old and somewhere in between - are all explored to one degree or another.  Will you be remembered for the accomplishments for which you are most proud or for the ones you regret?  The answers are for the audience to decide.

The Hateful Eight

The opening of the film is shown in the trailer: Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) stops a stagecoach on a snowy Wyoming road and asks, "Room for one more?"  It turns out that the stagecoach was hired by John Ruth (Kurt Russell), a bounty hunter who is escorting a murderess, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), to be hanged.  Thanks to a blizzard, the stagecoach gets stuck at a way station populated by an assortment of men who may or may not be who they claim to be.

 

This is not an action movie.  When the shooting does happen, it is quick and bloody.  Mostly, this is a suspense movie.  One of the big influences was The Thing (1982) with Kurt Russell.  There is a lot to like though Samuel L. Jackson steals the show.  Most of the acting is very good but Michael Madsen was miscast.  His soft jowls and long flouncy hair just didn't fit with the hard-living of the American West.  Also, Channing Tatum is a bit young for the role he played or perhaps his sibling was a bit old - 18 year age gap.  Rather than sibling, maybe it should have been parent?

 

When the entire story unfolds and every character is exposed for who they are, one wonders why the plan was what it was.  Why the subterfuge?  Right out the gate, John Ruth is busy hammering a plank in the door with one wrist handcuffed to Daisy.  He was an easy target.

Though a bit too generous with the blood, an inordinate amount of which seems to shower the same character, it is good popcorn fun.  Despite its three hour runtime, it goes surprisingly quickly.

Who's Running the Show?

It is regularly said that Republican are racists and that's why blacks aren't doing as well as white in America.  The Democrats offer dog whistles, code language, and opposition to race-based admissions at colleges as clear evidence of Republican racism.  Sounds like the bar has been set fairly low to level the racism charge.  But here is a question: where are these hotbeds of Republican racism?  Where are blacks being treated unfairly, where cops are shooting them, where the murder rates among blacks are particularly high?

In an October story, St. Louis was listed as having the highest per capita murder rate in the US, having 50 murders for every 100 thousand residents.  The last Republican mayor of St. Louis was elected in 1943.  Okay, that's probably just a fluke, an outlier.  What city is number 2?

In that same story, Detroit was listed with 44 per 100K.  The last Republican mayor was elected in 1957.  All right, another oddball.  Let's continue.

New Orleans ranks 3rd, with 38 murders per 100K.  The last Republican mayor was Benjamin Flanders, who served from April 1872 to November of that same year.  Wow, that a long time of one party rule.

According to the FBI, the 4th city on the list is Jackson, Mississippi, with 35 murders per 100K.  Searching the records, I could not find the last Republican though everyone since the late 40s has been a Democrat.  Fine, next city.

The 5th city is Baltimore and it last elected an evil racist Republican in 1963.  Hmm.  This is starting to look less like a fluke and more like a pattern.  Too soon to tell.  Let's move on.

Newark, New Jersey had 33 murders per 100K.  The last Republican mayor was elected in 1949.  Just because the top 6 have been run by Democrats for decades doesn't absolve Republicans!

Birmingham is 7th and George Siebels was the last, and also first, Republican elected in 1967.  Buffalo, NY had the last Republican mayor elected in 1950.

Baton Rouge had a Republican mayor elected in 2000!  There it is!  The city with the 9th highest murder rate in the nation had a Republican mayor as recently as 2004!    Clearly, his racist four years led to the high murder rate of today.

Pittsburgh (22 murders per 100k) elected a Republican mayor in 1933 and thus rounds out the top 10 highest murder rate cities in the country.  Of course, the current mayor in all 10 is a Democrat.

The national average per capita murder rate is 4.5.  Only one of the nation's largest cities comes in under that number: New York City.  Yes, NYC had only 3.9 murders per 100k.  Interestingly, NYC had 8 years of Republican Rudy Giuliani followed by 7 years of Republican Michael Bloomberg and 5 more years of Independent Michael Bloomberg.  Bloomberg generally left Giuliani's crime prevention policies in place but added nanny-statism to the mix.  In 1990, under Mayor David Dinkins, there were 2,262 murders in NYC.  By 2001, Giuliani's last year in office, there were 639.  In 2015, there were 333 murders.  This is a massive success but, for some reason, these other cities - run by Democrats - are not implementing the policies that made it happen.

 

Who is running the cities where police shoot young black men?  Who is running the cities where gangbangers are slaughtering each other and random - usually black - bystanders?  Democrats are running these cities and have done so for decades.  If it has stayed this way for so long, whoever is in charge must like the status quo.