Star Trek Beyond

The movie opens with Kirk serving as an ambassador.  He stands in the hall of a gargoyle-like race and presents an ancient weapon as a peace offering.  The gargoyles are unimpressed and, despite Kirk's reasonable demeanor, finally go berserk and attack him.  It then becomes clear that the gargoyles are about the size of a Chihuahua.  Kirk is saved from further humiliation when Scotty beams him back to the Enterprise.  If the movie opens by humiliating the character, it can only improve from there, right?  No.  The ancient weapon is filed away in the Enterprise vault to gather dust, or so they thought!

 

Starbase Yorktown is a giant transparent sphere about the size of the Deathstar.  There are struts radiating from the central hub to the sphere, each of these sporting skyscrapers and cityscapes.  Some character called it a giant snow globe while I have also read some say it was a rip off of Inception.  There are huge tunnels that the Enterprise is able to navigate to the central hub of the station and one can see its progress through vast 'lakes' along the city vistas.  Very impressive but it looked impractical.

 

As the crew disembarks and goes on shore leave, we discover that Sulu has a husband.  Yes, as a nod to the openly gay George Takei who originated the role, the makers have decided to have Sulu be gay.  Of course, through all the years he played the character, Takei thought Sulu was hetero.  One wonders if, 40 years hence, there will be a gay Spock; Zachary Quinto is openly gay and it would be a thoughtful and progressive gesture to have the character he played be gay.

 

The Enterprise has hardly arrived when a strange vessel approaches.  There is a single occupant, an alien named Kalara who claims that her ship and crew are stranded on a planet in the nearby nebula.  There is something sketchy about Kalara and her story but Kirk gladly volunteers with no apparent misgivings.  The Enterprise navigates the barely navigable nebula and spots a planet.  Then, out of the planet's shadow comes a ship.  No, it is a swarm of small ships.  Kirk is told immediately that they are not prepared for this kind of fight.  No matter!  Shields up and open fire!  The phasers take out individual ships but the photon torpedoes pass harmlessly through the swarm.  Suddenly, the ship is getting pelted as the swarm crashes into and through the ship.  Shields are down!  Kirk orders warp speed.  Nope, the warp nacelles have been hacked off by blizzards of alien ships.  The alien swarm ships are amazingly tough and their primary mode of attack appears to be collision.  Meanwhile, many of the enemy ships that stuck into the Enterprise like thorns now introduce boarding parties into the Enterprise.  It quickly becomes a slaughter.  Kirk orders that the saucer section separate with some crazy notion that he can salvage part of his ship.  It goes badly and he eventually has to order all hands to abandon ship.  The saucer section crashes into the planet and Enterprise is destroyed.  It is beyond catastrophe.

 

The above paragraph is a demonstration of a tremendously bad captain.  Kirk is beyond failure.  He does not deserve command.  He has never deserved a command in this iteration of the character.  It would be one thing if the ship was disabled by an ion cannon upon approaching the planet and thus had no chance to act but Kirk was warned and held his ground anyway.  He is up against an unknown enemy with unclear capabilities and has the option of retreat.  Retreat!  Get the measure of the enemy and maybe some knowledge of him before engaging.  Maybe interrogate Kalara who should have know about this.  Based upon his actions here, I am surprised it took him this long into the 5 year mission to lose the ship.

 

Kirk manages to arrive on the planet and regroup with Chekov and Kalara.  He immediately confronts her and demands to know why she didn't warn them.  She offers a new story in which she was sent to bring another ship to save her captive crewmates.  Apparently satisfied, he brings her along as they go to the wreckage of the Enterprise to salvage some equipment and maybe use sensors to locate other crewmen.  And finally Kalara shows that she is in league with Krall and Kirk cleverly got her to show herself.  Really?  Only now, far beyond when it might have mattered, do you realize that she was a plant?  Sigh.  Kirk and Chekov then wander the planet in search of other survivors and finally stumble on a trap that leaves them stuck in the blast of a glue bomb.  And Kirk thought the humiliation ended at the start of the movie.  Luckily, the trap was set by Jaylah the friendly alien who had already teamed up with Scotty.

 

Spock and Bones found a different path to the planet's surface and stumble around being buddies.  This was actually kind of fun.  Karl Urban is particularly good at playing Dr. McCoy.  While lost in the wilderness, they do discover that the ancient weapon originated on this planet.  Hmm.

 

Sulu, Uhura, and all the crew extras are held captive by Krall.  His efforts to get the ancient weapon repeatedly foiled, he determines that Kirk must have hidden it among the crew.  He threatens to kill Sulu and Ensign Expendable admits having it.  Yes, to save Sulu, she offered up a weapon that might devastate millions.  As such, Ensign Expendable richly deserved to be the test subject of the weapon.  Yep, it works.  Beyond stupid.

 

Meanwhile, Scotty has joined with Jaylah, a resourceful alien who needs him to fix her 'house.'  Her house proves to be the USS Franklin, a Federation ship that vanished - like Jimmy Hoffa - more than a hundred years ago.  Jaylah has done a magnificent job of restoring it.  She did such a good job that Scotty has the ship ready to fly in just a couple of days.  Not only that, the transporters still work.  Weapons are still operational too.  Um, why is this thing crashed on the planet?  Wow, they sure made starships durable a hundred years ago.  I wonder how quickly Jaylah and Scotty could get the Titanic floating.  Beyond ridiculous.

 

Once Kirk, Chekov, Spock, and Bones find their way to the Franklin, a rescue mission is planned.  Kirk will provide a distraction by riding a motorcycle through the enemy base.  Really?  To make it really effective, he will use a hologram generator to make half a dozen of himself.  The alien drones prove to be excellent shots when shooting holograms but the real Kirk is never touched.  Beyond suspension of disbelief.

 

With the crew rescued and safely aboard the Franklin, it is time to pursue Krall.  The ship is oddly perched on the very edge of a several thousand foot drop.  This precarious location proves quite convenient when it turns out that the ship needs to be traveling fast enough to 'jumpstart' the thrusters.  Simple, let's drive it off the cliff and allow gravity to do its magic.  Sigh.  The Franklin proves its durability since it hits some cliffs and mountains on the way but is still entirely spaceworthy.

Armed with the doomsday weapon, Krall led the swarm fleet into the nebula.  The ship swarm emerged from the nebula and was in range to attack Yorktown.  So, this huge, massive, super expensive new starbase is built on the edge of a nebula with a hostile planet in it and the Federation didn't know.  What sun is shining on the nebula planet?  Same one as for Yorktown?  Must be.  Those swarm ships don't look like they had warp drive.  Whoever mapped this star system needs to be court martialed for incompetence!  On another point, seeing how effective the swarm ships are in ripping through the station's defenses, why did Krall need the disintegrator weapon again?

 

So it turns out that Krall is none other than Balthazar Edison, captain of the Franklin.  When he was stranded on the alien world, he and his few remaining crew discovered the ruins of an ancient mining operation (which included the swarm fleet and its drone pilots).  There was also a device that allowed him to extend his life at the cost of looking alien.  Strangely, Krall appears to have lost track of where he parked the Franklin and he left it almost completely intact, scavenging virtually nothing through the long years.  Heck, even his logs are intact where he blames Starfleet for his fate, as if he thought there were no dangers in space exploration.  But it should be noted that, once again, the enemy is us.  Yes, in Star Trek (2009), Starfleet botched a rescue attempt that brought on a Romulan attack through time.  In Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), Starfleet mistreated Khan and brought on disaster.  In this one, it is a Starfleet officer who felt abandoned.  Yes, it's always us, never them.  Self-loathing in what had been the most optimistic of sci-fi shows.  Beyond sad.

 

Krall manages to get the doomsday weapon to the most ludicrous central air circulation system you ever saw.  It is this transparent aluminum box on top of a skyscraper.  Apparently, this Deathstar sized starbase has a central air system, not hundreds of separate ones that came online as the various parts were built.  No, that would be silly.  We need a system that can introduce a deadly toxin everywhere at once.  And now that Krall is there on this vast base with tens or hundreds of thousands of people on it, only Kirk stands between him and untold thousands dead.  Could we maybe use a transporter to beam Krall away from disaster?  No!  Maybe we have something like police who could respond on vehicles designed to fly in this disorienting station?  No, they are far too busy elsewhere.  It's Kirk or doom!  If Kirk hadn't arrived on this hundred year old starship, the ultra modern station with all its technology would have been destroyed!  Beyond belief.

 

To give the characters a story arc for the movie, it turns out that Kirk is tried of the 'episodic' nature of his five year mission and wants to leave the ship.  He thinks Spock would be an excellent replacement for him.  As it happens, Spock is planning to leave Star Fleet and join the New Vulcan project; someone has to repopulate so that Vulcans don't go extinct with their planet.  Kirk and Spock are unable to reveal these plans to one another, providing a different dynamic to their relationship.

 

As with Into Darkness, the action pieces are fun and exciting but, in retrospect, demonstrate stupidity or foolishness of the characters.  Despite all their advanced technology, or perhaps because of it, these are not very smart people.  In the TV show, Kirk and Spock would play 3D chess.  I doubt these versions of the characters could master checkers.  Maybe tic tac toe is more their speed.

 

It is mindless popcorn fun but has little in common with Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek.

Trust is Fragile

This is a disappointing story, especially since I followed it when it was happening and know Daily Caller is correct.  In the last four or five years, I have gone to Snopes to get the scoop on various stories that I thought were questionable.  I have always considered them reliable and did not view the site as political.  So much for that.  It does seem that everyone and everything is political these days.

Mandatory Participation on Pain of Law

Seen on Facebook:

Why do I support Universal Healthcare paid for with our taxes?

Because I don't want to live in a country where people have to set up a GoFundMe page just so they don't die.

Clever?  Yes.  Pithy?  Certainly.  A good idea?  Absolutely not!  The big issue I have with this is freedom.  With a GoFundMe page, that person needs to convince people to voluntarily part with their money.  People are free to participate or not.  With Universal Healthcare, freedom is gone.  You don't get to pick and choose GoFundMe pages, you fund them all.  If you don't, armed men from the government will take all your assets.  If you continue in your non-participating ways, you may find yourself in prison.  Of course, the vast majority will just submit; that is how we have come so far from what the Constitution actually says.

What happened with the Affordable Care Act?  I thought that was supposed to solve everything?  I was going to get to keep my doctor.  My family of four was going to save $2500 a year.  No, premiums have skyrocketed and GoFundMe pages are multiplying.  Every time the government steps in to solve the problem, it gets worse!  And it isn't government's fault!  How does that work?  How about we expel the government from the healthcare system and see how it shakes out?

The Fix was In

Just came across this story from Election Justice USA.  It doesn't provide any data, just gives the conclusions of their study.  Valid?  I don't know.  So I checked out the page on their website.  Here I found a summary with a snippet of data.  The graphic was quite telling.  It only offers Kings County, New York but it is interesting how Hillary's final percentage is always higher where the ballots were machine-counted.  Bernie showed better when the ballots were hand counted.  That is a peculiar coincidence.  For what I know of Election Justice USA, they may be socialists who wanted Bernie to win.  Then again, maybe they are non-partisan like their website states.

Glenn Reynolds proposed that we return to paper ballots in part because of the growing threat of hacking from foreign powers.  Clearly, it would also benefit those who were not part of the establishment too.  Though it appears that the Republican establishment are a bunch of incompetent buffoons - couldn't prevent Trump from winning - the Democrat establishment know how to rig an election for the favored candidate.  Consider that the Obama Justice Department declined to prosecute New Black Panthers who stood with billy clubs in front of a polling station during the 2008 election.  Or that the IRS somehow refused tax exempt status to the Tea Party movement that had shellacked the Democrats in 2010.  What interesting stuff is going on behind the scenes to give Hillary a boost come November?

Questions for the #NeverTrump Crowd

1. President Obama has had a fawning press.  Despite an anemic economy, failing foreign affairs, and growing civil unrest, Obama has been given blame for none of it.  By contrast, George W. Bush had a hostile press that hammered him every time he played golf while troops were in danger.  Which candidate, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, is more likely to restore an adversarial relationship between presidency and media?

2. President Obama is the first black president.  His defenders have spent much of his presidency accusing his opponents of racism.  Opposition to a black president has been regularly presented as evidence of racism.  The Republican Party has largely accepted this argument and given him free rein.  If Hillary Clinton is elected as the first female president, how likely is it that opposition to her policies will be evidence of sexism and that the opposition party will accept this and give her free rein?

3. A Clinton presidency will - with absolute certainty - tip the Supreme Court into a solidly liberal stance for decades to come.  Hillary has announced her desire to limit the First Amendment (i.e. overturn Citizens United ruling) and openly expressed approval of Australia's gun confiscation.  Her nominee(s) will likely share those views.  By contrast, a Trump presidency may extend the conservative tilt of the court.  Is preserving the Supreme Court worth the bitter pill of a Trump presidency?

 

My predictions:

 

A Trump presidency will find itself attacked by a hostile media even before the inauguration.  A Benghazi, Fast and Furious, IRS bias, email deleting, or other similar scandal will cripple his presidency rather than be mostly brushed under the rug.  He will not be able to undermine criticism with baseless claims of racism or sexism.  His Supreme Court nominees are likely to be more Originalist if only because his administration will be composed of Republicans.

 

A Clinton presidency will inherit the lapdog media that Obama has enjoyed.  In fact, with the departure of Roger Ailes at Fox, she may even have fewer media critics than Obama has had.  By her election, both Benghazi and her email deleting scandal will have been absolved by the public.  A new, and hopefully more secure, private email server will be setup.  The Supreme Court will go full progressive, becoming a liberal legislature not subject to the voters.

 

The choices are bad but one does look worse from my analysis.

Daredevil (2003)

Having watched the Netflix version recently, I decided to go back and watch the Ben Affleck movie again.  My recollections were that it was okay.  This time around, I saw the directors cut.

The movie opens with a seriously wounded Daredevil falling into a church, crawling toward the altar, and narrating about how life flashes before your eyes as you die.  And so we go back to the days of his youth when he was bullied despite having a boxer for a father.  Once he is blinded, his other heightened senses grant him superhuman physical abilities and fighting prowess.  Huh?  Why would good hearing or keen sense of smell make you a good fighter; are dogs noteworthy martial artists?  I liked the way his radar vision was done, in fact the lack of it in the Netflix series is bothersome (I'm sure that is mostly budgetary).  The reason why Matt Murdock chose to don a costume and start stalking the rooftops of Hell's Kitchen are never explored.

 

First off: narrating.  Don't do it.  Show me, don't tell me.  This is a movie, not an audio book.  There was entirely too much narrating.  A little opening narration is fine to put the viewer in the setting but after that, show me.

 

The movie retains too much of the comic book format, not allowing it to fit well into the real world.  The costumes are handled well but the action scenes are not.  The playground martial arts dance was silly.  Yes, it is the boy meets girl bit that also shows they are both great fighters but it is also zany antics in a movie that has an otherwise serious mood.  Other action scenes are likewise over the top.  I found it really distracting when the camera would flip with Daredevil rather than stay level with the world; maybe that was a thing in 2003.

 

The movie makers seem not to know that bullets move faster than sound.  Therefore, even with his super keen hearing, Daredevil cannot hear a bullet coming until after it has already arrived.  His apparent dodging of oh so many bullets during his criminal assault on the biker bar was groan inducing.  Really, you just wanted to get Quesada, why are you beating up everyone in the bar?  Maybe there was a deleted scene that explained that everyone in the bar needed a beating.

 

Bullseye was just the sort of psychopath that a hero needs to fight.  Colin Farrell was suitably psychotic in the roll, perhaps too psychotic.  Again, some of the colors and emotions of comics need to be muted to work well in movies.  The characterizations of his talents and fighting were unsatisfying.  That he has uncanny accuracy with thrown objects is fine but the idea that he could penetrate someone's skull with a ball point pen by throwing it is silly.  Ditto having Daredevil's club stab into Elektra's father like it was a spear.  His big fight in the church was just one string of extreme and campy action.  Way overdone.

 

After Vincent D'Onofrio in Netflix, this Kingpin role is hollow and empty.  Michael Clark Duncan is big and heartless but the role is so small.  He is nothing but menace.  Worse, he comes off as a lightweight in the end.  Daredevil has been stabbed through the shoulder and battered by Bullseye but still is able to take down a man fresh to the fight.  Weak.  Disappointing.

 

Jennifer Garner was miscast as Elektra.  She belonged in a romantic comedy, not a superhero movie.  There was something about the tone of her voice or the expression on her face that made her feel very unserious.  When they had their first 'date' on the rooftop, it felt like she had never met a man who showed any interest in her.  She was a 13 year old girl who was giddy that a boy said 'hello.'  Elektra, both from Daredevil comics and Greek mythology, is defined by her desire for revenge and Garner is entirely unconvincing.  "Like, I'm out for revenge cuz I'm, like, really upset!"  Hard to pin down what exactly but she just didn't fit.

 

Ben Affleck is Batman... er... Daredevil.  It was funny to see the similarities in the characters.  Daredevil has a secret lair where he has his suits, masks, clubs, and even a sensory deprivation tank.  He spends most of his time brooding and pondering justice.  He lurks about the city at night to beat up thugs and criminals.  Then there is this Greek woman (Elektra or Diana) who attracts his attention and gets him to perk up a bit.

 

That Daredevil spared both Kingpin (who killed his father) and Bullseye (who killed Elektra) but tossed Quesada to his death on the subway tracks is nuts!    What have you done to the moral compass of this character?  The Netflix series makes much of Daredevil's refusal to kill.  Of course, Affleck also turned Batman into a killer in Batman vs. Superman so maybe it's just him.

 

As far as director's cut versus theatrical version, I don't recall the theatrical version well-enough to comment on the differences.  I think the Coolio subplot is fine and contributes to the overall story quite nicely but I can also see why it was cut for runtime and pacing.  Coolio offers some nice comic relief that fits into the movie better than the playground dance off.

It is not terrible but nor is it good.  With the exception of the radar sight effects, the movie doesn't hold a candle to the Netflix series.  That dramatic improvement in treatment that Marvel provides in the Netflix series gives hope that Fantastic Four could also enjoy a successful turnaround if only Marvel can get the rights back.

Bernie Sanders has left the Party

After drawing a shade over 40% of the delegates (almost 46% if you factor out the super delegates), Bernie Sanders threw his support to the Wall Street funded Hillary Clinton and then left the party.  Yes, Bernie is back to being an 'Independent.'  What does this say about the Democratic Party?  A self-described socialist ran in the Democratic primary, gaining increasing momentum with each new primary.  This despite the now exposed efforts by the supposedly neutral DNC to hamper his campaign and boost hers.  Bernie said the system was rigged and, thanks to leaked emails, it turns out he was right.  Nearly half the party wanted a socialist!  And somehow the Republicans are the extremists.

 

How do the Bernie supporters switch to Hillary?  Bernie railed against banks and Hillary has given countless highly-paid speeches to those Wall Street banks.  She wasn't threatening them with regulations; she was assuring them that the good times would continue to roll under her administration.  Hillary is the system that Bernie opposed.  Now that he has left the party, what does that say to his voters?  Strategically, if you are the kind of person who wants Bernie's socialist paradise, you are more likely to move in that general direction with Hillary than with Trump.  However, if you want to poke a finger in the eye of the establishment that sought to undermine your candidate from the start, Jill Stein is your new candidate.  If all the Bernie voters switched to the Green Party, Jill will be in the debates.  It would almost certainly result in a President Trump.

 

Bernie started a revolution and then decided to get off.  That is difficult to do.  Look how many of his followers considered him a traitor for endorsing Hillary.

Establishment doesn't Endorse Anti-Establishment Candidate? Shocking!

Just encountered an anti-Trump post on Facebook that pretends to offer wisdom.  It reads as follows:

There are five living presidents, both Democrats and Republicans.  NONE of them has endorsed Donald Trump for president.

 

Maybe we should listen to those who know what the job requires to succeed.

 

Occupy Democrats

Wow, that's a good point.  Then again, you wouldn't expect the Democrats to endorse a Republican, would you?  That means Obama, Clinton, and Carter are beside the point.  But what about the Republicans?  Let's see, that would be George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.  Wait, didn't a close relative just get shellacked by Trump?  Yeah, I remember!  JEB, GHWB's son and GWB's brother, was called 'low energy' and utterly trounced in the primaries.  It was actually embarrassing considering how much money JEB got from the establishment donors who had also supported the other Bush campaigns.  Trump broke the family dynasty while hardly spending a dime!  And you say they didn't endorse him?  Huh!  Clearly, that decision was not at all biased.

The Russian Conspiracy

The Clinton campaign has let it be known that the Russians are behind the WikiLeaks' DNC email dump, the reason being that they want to torpedo a Clinton presidency.  Really?  That's the story you're going to run?  Under the strong leadership of Secretary Clinton, we were just so confrontational with the Russians.  Look at how we foiled them in Syria.  Or what about the brilliant statecraft in Ukraine?  Selling out the Poles and the Czechs on the missile defense deal was a stroke of genius.  Sadly, Hillary was gone before the excellent Iran Deal was inked but she was involved in the early negotiations.  Truly, she must have counseled President Obama on the Green Revolution and dodged the potential overthrow, or even moderating, of the Mullahs.  Yes, I can see how the Russians would be concerned by such a foreign policy guru having the top reins of power in the United States.  Of course, the Russians probably have all the missing emails from Hillary's server, some of which might be embarrassing.  Wow, that could be handy for arm-twisting.

 

Amazingly enough, Hillary is the more hawkish candidate.  Hillary's desire for a more muscular involvement in Syria was vetoed by President Obama.  Her press for an attack on Libya worked and has been nothing but trouble since.  By comparison, Trump is an isolationist who wants allies to reimburse the US for deploying its military.  The Russians have seen Hillary in action and know that she has been beneficial for their goals.  Trump may be a boon but he might be influenced by competent foreign policy experts.  Hillary is probably the surer bet for the expansion of Russia but Trump could be a jackpot if he implements some of his loonier foreign policy ideas.

Stop the Emails

Yet again, email has proven destructive to the career of woman in the hierarchy of the Democratic Party.  Wikileaks has exposed thousands of emails that show Debbie Wasserman Schultz (DWS), the DNC chairwoman, was indeed steering the nomination to Hillary and seeking to torpedo Bernie.  Bernie's demands that she resign and support for her primary opponent were completely justified.  His argument that the system was rigged is borne out by the evidence.  The Democrats weren't running a primary campaign but a predetermined coronation.  Doubtless, Bernie's supporters are going to be even harder to bring back into the fold.  Many of them would be thrilled if he accepted Jill Stein's repeated offer to let him lead the Green Party ticket on the November ballot, perhaps garnering enough support to appear in the debates.  The party has stabbed him in the back and perhaps bringing ruination upon them will teach them a lesson.  With the barely Republican, and fellow New Yorker, Trump as the alternative to the Wall Street shill and carpetbag New Yorker Hillary, he might actually do it.  Yes, it is still very unlikely.  Strategically, it might not be a bad idea to stay in the race and make sure his voters don't break for Trump.  Risky.

It is late in the day for DWS to resign.  Her tenure as DNC Chair has been mostly a series of losses for her party and yet she has been the longest serving chair in decades.  Her ties to Hillary Clinton have likely allowed her to remain as long as she has (her predecessor in the job is Tim Kaine, the newly announced VP candidate) but even that cannot save her from the latest email disaster on the eve of the Democratic Convention.  The stars are aligning against Hillary with conspiracy-like precision.

Half-Staff Nation

Everyday, I drive by a fire station.  There is an American flag flying in front of that fire station.  I have noticed that it is very frequently at half-staff.  In fact, it has so often been at half-staff that it has begun to irritate me, especially when I have no idea why.  Did a President die recently?  Did a sitting Congressman die?  Is it before noon on Memorial Day?  Why does it feel like the flag is constantly at half-staff?  The growing unease of seeing the flag humbled finally convinced me to do a bit of research.

 

In March of 1954, President Eisenhower issued rules for lowering the flag to half-staff.  There are certain days and occasions that merit the lowering of the flag, most notably Memorial Day, but the president may also issue an executive order to lower the flag.  Since Eisenhower, every president has done so.  At first, this was an infrequent occurrence.  Eisenhower issued 12 such orders for the remainder of his presidency.  Kennedy only issued 3.  Nixon upped the ante when he issued 16 calls for the lowering of the flag, an average of one per 4 months.  Carter and Reagan each rolled out an executive call to lower the flag about every 5 months.  George H. W. Bush only called for the lowering of the flag twice a year, showing more restraint than any since LBJ.

 

Starting with Bill Clinton, executive orders for lowering the flag have exploded.  From the time Eisenhower established the rules to the inauguration of Bill Clinton, the flag had been lowered by executive order on 83 occasions.  In his 8 years as president, Clinton issued 50.  With this new precedent, George W. Bush issued 58 such orders.  So far, Obama has issued 66!  In the near 40 years after Eisenhower set the standard, there were only 83 occasions to merit an executive order.  However, in the last 24 years, there have been 174 occasions.  Really?

 

The value of such a gesture is relative to the frequency of its use.  The last three president have greatly diminished the value of flying the flag at half-staff.  Infrequently flying the flag at half-staff is a show of great respect for, or veneration of, a public figure or figures.  Frequently flying it at half-staff feels like surrender, like the nation can't muster the pride or energy to raise the flag all the way.  It's depressing.  It needs to stop.

 

The flag is the symbol of the nation.  It should spend the vast majority of the time flying proud and high.

Ghostbusters (2016)

The movie opens with a tour of Aldridge Mansion, a 19th century building in NYC.  The tour guide offers an explanation of a locked basement where a murderous daughter was locked away.  As the tour guide locks up for the night, the ghost wreaks havoc!  Next we meet Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig), a Columbia physicist a few days from tenure, as she prepares to give a lecture.  She is approached by Ed Mulgrave (Ed Begley Jr.) who asks her to investigate the ghost.  Perplexed why he asks her, he shows her a book that she co-wrote about ghosts.  She had disavowed the book and was now furious that the co-author had published it.  That would be Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy).  This sets off a chain of events that ends with Erin getting fired from Columbia and helping to found the Ghostbusters.

 

Before I start criticizing this film, let me say that I immensely enjoyed Paul Feig's Spy and I am a huge fan of his webseries, Other Space.  I thought it was great that most of the cast of Other Space had cameos in Ghostbusters.  I have not seen Bridesmaids, which is apparently his magnum opus.  That said, he missed the mark on this one by a wide margin.

 

Erin Gilbert is mostly a hopeless character, which is sad to say about a PhD physicist on tenure track at Columbia.  Her pathetic "I'm moving offices" excuse to her former colleagues after she was fired reminded me of some of her less humorous characters on SNL.  That she is completely tongue-tied and flustered around the abysmally stupid though very handsome Kevin is more groan-inducing than funny.  Then she goes over the top with her embarrassing effort to get the mayor (Andy Garcia) to evacuate the city.  She is literally carried away.  A woman becomes completely hysterical in a 'feminist' remake and this should be funny.  Wow.

 

Abby Yates is the straight character, if any qualifies.  She is probably closest to being the Ray Stanz (Dan Ackroyd) of the group.  She has a few zingers and is often the target of physical humor.  Considering how she is usually the stand out character in films, she is fairly sedate here.  There is a Rodney Dangerfield quality about Abby in that she doesn't get any respect.

 

Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) is insane.  Though presumably the Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) character, she reminded me a lot of Gomez Addams as played by John Astin, only crazier.  When not being nutty, she is creating ludicrous new gadgets and tools for the team, far exceeding anything previously seen.  It changed the dynamic of ghost busting.  It used to be that the proton packs were used to lasso the ghost and drag them into position to trap/contain them.  That happens once in this version.  After that, we have ghost shredders, ghost-blasting grenades, a ghost-punching gauntlet, and more.  These Ghostbusters don't capture ghosts, they kill them!  Really?  Where do they go after they are killed?  I must have missed the explanation.  Holtzmann licks her proton pistol, she sings maniacally, she eats Pringles while Erin gets slimed.  She's a mad, mad, mad scientist.  Much too mad.

 

In the original, Winston (Ernie Hudson) was hired because the Ghostbusters were overwhelmed with calls.  In this version, Patty (Leslie Jones) just 'joins the club' because she saw a ghost and saw the Ghostbusters in action.  Then she repeatedly announces her regret of leaving the MTA to join what she thought was going to be like a book club.  What?  Her vast knowledge of NYC was interesting but made her little more than a walking version of Google.  Of course, she also provided the hearse that becomes the new Ecto-1.

 

Instead of a smart-alecky Janine (Annie Potts), the new Ghostbusters have Kevin (Chris Hemsworth) the abysmally stupid hunk who is barely capable of answering a phone.  It is more annoying than funny to have a character who repeatedly tries to grab something on the other side of a glass partition and is baffled that he is blocked.  Maybe this time.  Huh!  It is amazing he can speak.

 

The villain is suitably weird but, in the end, he just chooses to lose.  When confronted by a small army of soldiers, police officers, and Homeland Security, he possessed the lot of them and had them freeze.  But when the Ghostbusters arrive, he sends waves of ineffective ghosts to fight them.  When they defeat the ghosts and walk through the frozen soldiers, police, and Homeland Security, he offers to fight them.  Why?  Why not just freeze them like everyone else and win?  Whereas the people he froze were no threat to him - bullets don't bother ghosts - the proton pack wielding ghostbusters are the ONLY ones who can stop him and they are the ones he doesn't freeze.  This really grated!

 

The scene with the dean of Higgins offering the middle finger in an increasing variety of ways was painfully juvenile.  So much of the film is this sort of cheap humor.  Hey, it's the Chinese food delivery guy again with a pathetic excuse for wonton soup; that's so funny!  Not.  A tape recorded fart is the very definition of puerile humor.  Obviously, the original Ghostbusters was not some highbrow affair but it didn't do fart jokes, inflating middle fingers, unfathomably stupid characters, and John Woo style gun battles with ghosts.  This movie makes the original look cerebral!

 

The original cast all have cameos but as different characters.  This is a reboot, not a continuation.  Therefore, Bill Murray appears as a ghost skeptic, Dan Ackroyd as a seen-it-all cabbie, Ernie Hudson as Leslie Jones' uncle, Sigourney Weaver as Kate McKinnon's mentor, and Annie Potts as a hotel desk clerk.  Harold Ramis appears as a bust at Columbia.  Even Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man appear.  Though I liked to see them, it only kept reminding me how much better the original was.

 

Disappointing.  Watch the original instead.

A Tale of Two Mothers

On April 4, 2004, Specialist Casey Sheehan of the US Army volunteered for a quick reaction force to rescue American Troops in Iraq.  He was killed during this action.  His mother, Cindy Sheehan, blamed President George W. Bush for his death.  Through the rest of his presidency, the activities of Cindy Sheehan were reported regularly: she spent a month camping outside Bush's Crawford ranch, she visited Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, she appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews, she protested at the State of the Union.  The death of her son conferred 'absolute moral authority' to Cindy Sheehan, so said Maureen Dowd.

On September 11, 2012, US Foreign Service IM Officer Sean Smith was killed in Benghazi, Libya.  The attack was initially described as a riot gone out of control in reaction to an internet video.  Latter information, including emails from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, demonstrated that the video had never been the cause.  Pat Smith, Sean's mother, blames Hillary for her son's death.  However, whereas Cindy Sheehan was celebrated by the media, Pat Smith has been fact checked and even had Nathaniel Friedman of GQ claim he "would like to beat her to death."

 

What should be obvious is that the totally unbiased media promoted a grieving mother who set out to attack a Republican but attacked a grieving mother who set out to attack a Democrat.  No bias at all.

Hamstringing a Future Presidential Run

In his speech tonight, Senator Ted Cruz failed to endorse his party's nominee, Donald Trump.  Instead, he said vote your conscience.  No matter the justifications, that is petty.  Such an open display of disunity and a failure to support the person the voters chose is a political blunder.  Very early in the primary season, the Republican candidates were asked if they would support the eventual nominee.  The whole purpose of that question was to prevent Trump from going rogue.  JEB, Cruz, Rubio, et al. said they would support the nominee, whoever it was.  Where are they now?

Let us suppose that Trump loses and Cruz runs in 2020.  Has he given a speech that will draw the voters to him?  No.  He has disrespected their choice and expects them to choose more wisely next time around.  Even those who voted for him might find this off putting.  He could have learned some political maneuvering from Richard Nixon.  Nixon went all in for Barry Goldwater in 1964.  Though Nixon was no where near as conservative as Goldwater, the Goldwater voters remembered his loyalty to the party.  Nixon won the nomination and the presidency in 1968.

Ideologically speaking, Cruz is probably closest to me.  If he gets some sense, he will stump for Trump during the campaign and make an appearance with Trump to undo this political faux pas.  It is not necessary to like your party's nominee but it is a requirement to support him.  The Bush wing of the party is notably absent but, as JEB's fabulous showing demonstrates, that wing is almost dead.  Don't go down that path, Ted.  Even if the quarterback is a jerk, be a team player.

Gee, Too Bad that Iran Deal is Already Implemented

I cannot count the number of times I was told that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and was therefore not a valid target in the aftermath.  Based on this newly released information, would those same people have been in favor of bombing Iran?  No, of course not.  That was just talking points.  Evidence is irrelevant if it might lead to bombing.  The more interesting thing is that we just inked a deal with Iran and the folks who signed on the dotted line knew that Iran was aware of the impending attack and even offered support for it.  Huh.  Well, its been almost 15 years.  Bygones!  Here's billions of dollars in frozen assets and removal of sanctions.  We'd appreciate it if you didn't do anything to embarrass the administration.  Start breaking the deal next February so the blame can be laid elsewhere.  Thanks.

Rickrolled

In what would appear to be the most brainless political blunder of the ages, Melania Trump lifted a paragraph from Michelle Obama's 2008 convention speech!  If you are going to plagiarize, don't plagiarize your immediate predecessor's speech given on the exact same occasion.  You have to be really stupid to do this.  And what about all the speechwriters and editors who reviewed and tweaked the speech?  How did they not catch this monumental gaffe?  This is what they do.  Then there is the Rickroll.  Rickrolling was all the rage some years back when almost any link that might be sent would go to this Rick Astley video.  It was a common prank that migrated around my office for a month or so.  Amazingly, Melania included lyrics from that infamous practice: never give up, never let you down.  Or did she?

 

I am inclined to agree with this guy that the speech was intentionally modified to embarrass Melania and the Trump campaign.  There are plenty of disgruntled Cruz, Bush, et al supporters at the convention and even, in all likelihood, some NeverTrump folks.  Either sabotage or Melania is abysmally stupid.

Jessica Jones

Jessica Jones (Krysten Ritter) is a private investigator who happens to have super powers.  She is strong enough to lift a car and tough enough to get up and limp away after being hit by a truck.  Her hard-drinking and generally anti-social personality can be traced to a couple events in her life.  First, her parents and brother were killed in a car accident which she survived and she blames herself.  Second, she had an encounter with a man named Kilgrave (David Tennant) who could mind control anyone to do anything, including murder or suicide.  She was his slave for weeks or months but finally escaped him when he was hit by a bus.  However, during her time with him, she killed a woman and cannot shake the guilt she feels.  Though she is rude and abrasive, Jessica does try to do the right thing.

Jessica is given a case to find a missing girl.  It is soon clear that the girl is Kilgrave's latest involuntary companion.  Somehow, he survived the bus crash.  It becomes Jessica's mission to somehow capture and expose Kilgrave, showing that those who did criminal acts at his behest should not be held responsible.  A tall order indeed.

 

Jessica is not alone in her efforts to stop Kilgrave.  There is Luke Cage (Mike Colter), a man who has unbreakable skin and impressive strength.  Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) is her adoptive sister and a successful radio host.  Will Simpson is a police officer who Jessica saved after he had been controlled by Kilgrave.  Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) is a lawyer who often needs her services and is roped in to the plot more than she might like.  Often, her allies proved more of a hindrance than a help.

 

The core of the story is great.  Capturing and exposing a man whose words must be obeyed is quite a challenge.  He can assemble an army of loyal followers who will die for him by just giving the command.  However, that story doesn't require a 13 episode season to tell.  Far too often, the story explores the thoughts and feelings of tangential characters who are entirely unlikable; I'm looking at you, Robyn (Colby Minifie)!  On more than one occasion, Jessica has Kilgrave in her power only to have some brainless character like Robyn release him.  Robyn was at the support group where everyone explained how Kilgrave must be obeyed.  Then she comes across Kilgrave, gagged and harmless.  What does she do?  Remove the gag!  Yes, that was a groan inducing moment.  Robyn was given virtually no positive characteristics, making her just an annoying shrew.  Do NOT bring her back for season 2.

Another facet that could have been excised was the lesbian love triangle with support character Jeri Hogarth.  Jeri is already a lawyer - a big negative to likability - and adding her effort to dump her wife for a younger woman, neither of whom is any more likable than Jeri, is mostly a distraction.  However, I did like how this subplot concluded.

 

In the comic, Jessica gains resistance to Kilgrave's commands thanks to some mental tinkering by Jean Grey - one of the great telepaths of Marvel Universe.  In the show, there is no apparent reason.  It is unexplained.

 

The casting of David Tennant as Kilgrave is brilliant.  His years as the bubbly, ever helpful Doctor Who makes him a great choice as villain.  He does a great job being truly vile and yet he is surprisingly charming and even occasionally a sympathetic character.  The brief effort to reform him was one of the best parts of the series.

 

It is made very clear that Daredevil and Jessica Jones inhabit the same Marvel Universe and there are cross-over characters.  Clair (Rosario Dawson) was a regular on Daredevil and shows up here.  Jeri Hogarth appeared in Daredevil with a job offer for Foggy Nelson.  There will be a Luke Cage series and an Ironfist series before they all get together as The Defenders.  I do like that the heroes aren't saving the world, just this part of Manhattan.

 

Not as good as Daredevil Season 1 but about comparable with Season 2.  Worth watching.

Selective Law Enforcement

Here is the fall of the republic.  The case is obvious.  If it can be painted this clearly in a five minute video, why was there no indictment?  Because we are no longer a nation of laws.  The laws apply only when they are useful to the establishment, not when they limit it.  The law is meaningless.  The collapse of the rule of law is everywhere, from the unenforced borders to sanctuary cities to unsecured email servers.  Only with a Republican in the White House will the Democrats once again demand that government officials obey the law.  With Hillary, all bets are off and the spineless Republicans will do nothing.

#NeverTrump means President Hillary

Trump is not a conservative.  He is barely a Republican.  It makes total sense that George Will, Bill Kristol, et al. would oppose him on principle, especially through the primaries.  Hey, I far preferred Ted Cruz, someone else whom George Will held in low regard.  The primaries are over and, like it or not, the voters gave Trump the nomination.  So now there is a new choice.  Trump or Hillary?  Amazingly, the #NeverTrump crowd are leaning toward the 'extremely careless' Hillary who clearly misled the public on Benghazi and proved disastrous as Secretary of State.  However, she is part of the establishment, just like them.  Hmmm.

 

Trump has very little support among the Republican establishment and will thus have to fight tooth and nail with constant appeals to the voters to get anything done.  Unless he can wield the bully pulpit like a maestro, he is going to begin his presidency as a lame duck.  Not only will the media and the Democrats oppose him but the Republicans are going to be less than helpful.  All this talk of fascism is nonsense and those spewing it know it is nonsense.  Trump's powerbase is the voters and the establishment of both parties has been ignoring the voters for years, thus the reason Trump won the nomination and Bernie proved challenging.

 

By contrast, Hillary will be the first woman president.  Much as any opposition to Obama has been painted as racism, any opposition to Hillary will be sexism.  It isn't even arguable that this will happen.  The constant calls of racism have been fantastically successful in getting the Republicans to rollover and play dead.  The loyal opposition has been weak at best and Vichy France at worst.  If Hillary is inaugurated, we will hear endless claims of sexism, war on women, old boys' club, patriarchy, and on and on.  Heck, we hear a lot of that now but it will be on steroids with Hillary in the White House.  And the Republicans will continue to rollover as the media cheers her in much the same way they have cheered Obama.

 

With that in mind, if you want less powerful government, which candidate do you choose?  If you believe in checks and balances, separation of powers, and the rule of law, which do you choose?  The answer is obvious.  But if you are part of the establishment and want the good times to keep rolling, to have a third Obama term...  Well, that answer is also obvious.

 

It is very rare that I disagree with George Will but a Hillary Clinton Presidency, which will assure a liberal Supreme Court for decades to come, will be far more harmful than anything Trump can do.  Opposing Trump is as American as apple pie but opposing Hillary proves you are a chauvinist pig!  I want to be able to oppose.

Daredevil (Season 2)

Though entertaining, the second season is fractured and unfocused compared to Season 1.  The law firm of Nelson and Murdock starts collapsing in the first episode and is finally put out of its misery after lingering entirely too long.  This binding agent for the main three characters makes their storylines shatter.  Added into the mix is Punisher, who is effectively given a very full origin story.  Oh, and there is Elektra too.

The season opens with a massacre of Irish thugs targeted by the Punisher.  Though he talks a lot about 'one shot, one kill' later in the season, he proves to be extremely sloppy here and up to his eventual arrest.  He doesn't come across as a military man, more like a loose cannon.  Once arrested with a big assist from Daredevil, his storyline branches out to be independent from Daredevil.  We are left to follow Karen Page, the secretary, as she has repeated encounters with the Punisher and determines why he is who he is.  Punisher and Daredevil become entirely independent storylines that are only occasionally forced together in order to avoid total incoherence.

 

Foggy Nelson, who was the light-hearted comic relief of season 1, has become a constant scold for Matt Murdock/Daredevil.  The two seem incapable of having an amicable conversation after the season opener.  Thus, very like Karen, Foggy has a somewhat independent and mostly irrelevant storyline.  He is put in the hospital prior to a ninja attack on that hospital just so he isn't completely absent.  However, sitting in the dark and wondering what's happening on the next floor is hardly worth including.  With how things concluded, it would be logical to eliminate Foggy from the show with only occasional guest appearances.

 

The Elektra-Daredevil romance is full of wild swings.  There is Matt demanding that Elektra leave and never come back, Matt rescuing her and asking her to stay with him, Matt banishing her because she likes killing people too much, Elektra threatening to kill him if he gets in her way, Matt offering to follow her out of the city so they can live happily ever after.  It was too much over too short a number of episodes.  However, the fact that Elektra knows that Matt is Daredevil allows him a degree of openness that he doesn't have in other relationships, notably the nascent one with Karen.

 

Wilson Fisk returns in a brief number of episodes coincident with Punisher's incarceration.  This was one of the more enjoyable bits that showed Fisk earning his 'Kingpin' moniker and demonstrating his ability to takeover whatever organization that happens to be at hand.  That he makes use of Punisher - despite the fact that Punisher is his natural enemy - was great.  This short return of Fisk showed just how empty the current crop of villains were.

 

Though the season is erratic and disjointed, there is a lot of philosophy offered.  Despite resorting to vigilantism, Daredevil has a high opinion of the law.  Unlike cops and prosecutors, his keen senses allow him to know who is guilty and who isn't.  Those who slip through the justice system will not escape without a visit from Daredevil.  Stick, Elektra, and Punisher all look at his methods as half-measures.  They all want the permanent solution of killing criminals.  Even Daredevil's victims tell him that they will be back on the streets in a week.  Sadly, the series repeatedly proves Punisher to be correct.  The series needs to introduce a thug who is reformed to put a win in Daredevil's column.

 

Though not as good as the first season, it places a lot of foundation for some great future storytelling.  Punisher will have his own Netflix series, Elektra is prepared for a return, and Kingpin is still influencing events despite his imprisonment.  Daredevil finally has his special club to go with his Daredevil armor/costume. 

Truck Control

A Tunisian named Mohamed Bouhlel drove a truck for several miles in Nice, France, killing 84 and injuring hundreds.  He was far more deadly than the San Bernardino killers or the Orlando shooter.  Clearly, if we are going to be consistent, we must blame the instrument of death, not the killer himself.  The availability of guns was the cause in those cases so the availability of the truck is clearly the cause in this case.  Yes, we need truck control.  Perhaps trucks need to be made smaller and less dangerous.  Maybe limit the fuel capacity so that they run out of gas sooner.  Perhaps we could limit the top speed to 10 miles per hour.  All of these added safety features on trucks could save lives.  Something must be done about these rolling machines of death.

Hillary in Trouble

Since Trump locked up the nomination, he has been pretty quiet.  He has been spending no money on ads and not having the daily rallies that were a staple of his primary campaign.  By contrast, Hillary has been spending money in swing states to paint a picture of Trump in much the way that Obama painted a picture of Romney prior to the convention.  With one party on the attack and the other relatively silent, one expects the attacking candidate to gain as the attacked is 'exposed' as unfit or whatever the ads say.  That's what happened to Romney.  It isn't going that way this time.  Hillary is taking a beating just from the news of the day.  Being 'cleared' by the FBI and her case being closed by the AG Lynch have tarnished, rather than burnished, her image.  She has been sinking in the polls while Trump has risen.  Rasmussen shows Trump taking the lead!  Imagine how it will look when he starts fighting back.

The super delegates may want to reconsider when the Democratic Convention starts.  Though he has endorsed Hillary (who has been well-paid by Wall Street), Bernie would surely be happy to step up if the need arose.  Hillary has no accomplishments to tout and must therefore tear Trump down.  It is going to be an ugly election.  Trump's chances look better all the time.

Turkish Coup, 2016

Coup d'état is a common feature of the Turkish Republic.  In 1960, the military unseated a prime minister who had notions of allying with Russia rather than the US.  However, after he was swept from the stage, the military returned the country to civilian control.  A decade later in 1971, the country was crumbling and the military issued a 'memorandum' for the civilian government to get its act together or else.  This resulted in a political shake up and extended martial law but no actual coup.  In 1980, there was another coup, a very serious and deadly affair that saw hundreds of thousands arrested, tens of thousands tried on charges of belonging to this or that organization, thousands recommended for death penalties, hundreds sentenced to death, and 50 executed.  In the wake of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the US had supported this coup.  In 1982, tentative civilian control resumed under a military-approved constitution.  In 1997, another 'memorandum' was issued by the military.  The prime minister resigned and a new government was formed under the first female leader for Turkey, Tansu Ciller.

 

Why is it that the military keeps taking over for short periods?  Typically, a military coup results in an extended dictatorship for the coup leader.  Why hasn't that been the case in Turkey?  To understand why that is, one must know something of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.  When I visited Turkey in 2001 - only a few weeks after the 9/11 attack - I heard a great deal about Ataturk.  The most common refrain from our guide was that he 'was like a God to us.'  Indeed, Mustafa Kemal was the Ottoman General at the Battle of Gallipoli during World War I, a rare victory for the Turks in that war.  He went on to win Turkish Independence and set about reforming the country into a Western one.  He pushed the Turks to adopt a Western mode of dress, granted full political rights to women, abolished the veiling of women, did away with the segregation of the sexes, adopted a new Latin-based alphabet (dumping the Arabic that had been in use), supported art that had been suppressed by the Ottomans, closed Islamic courts in favor of secular ones, had the Koran translated into Turkish and read on the radio, and on and on.  It was a Herculean task and he set out to do it.

 

What would Ataturk have thought of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, current President, former Prime Minister, and avowed Islamist who has restored some aspects of the Ottoman era?  Erdogan and his ilk have wanted to backslide, to undo much of Ataturk's work.  By contrast, the military has long been the guarantor of Ataturk's vision, disposing of those leaders who want to return to Ottoman and/or Islamist practice.  Erdogan was imprisoned in 1998 for threatening the secularism of Turkey.  Since his ascent to power, Erdogan has sought to purge the military in order to short-circuit exactly what is now happening.  He doesn't want the military to restore secular government; he wants to establish an Islamic state.

 

Whether the coup succeeds or not, the military is in an unending conflict to prevent an Islamist government.  The country is almost universally Muslim and will continue to vote for Islamist leaders.  The only long term solution is conversion to another faith.  Highly unlikely.  In the meantime, good luck storming the castle!

Daredevil (Season 1)

Finally got around to watching the Netflix series of Daredevil.  The 13 episode first season was outstanding.  The series takes its time telling the origin of Matthew Murdock, offering glimpses of his father the boxer, his blinding in a truck accident, the development of his extremely heightened senses, his combat training, and so forth.  Though set in the same universe as The Avengers, Daredevil (Charlie Cox) is a much more humble hero, maybe not quite reaching the level of superhero.  Yet.  As such, the show does offer offhand comments about Thor, the attack on New York, and so forth but only barely.  Lawyer by day and vigilante by night, Daredevil (who is not identified by that name until the season finale) delivers a lot of well-deserved beatings but suffers quite a few as well.  In fact, his friends think he is a surprisingly clumsy blind man considering how often he arrives at work bruised and battered.

To be a great hero, there must be a great villain.  Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) is magnificent as the villain.  He is not some shallow evil for evil sake monster.  He is a complex character with some laudable goals which he is willing to achieve by less than laudable means.  He is an unseen menace for the first couple of episodes and makes his first appearance in the third.  He has assembled a criminal cabal composed of Russian gangsters, Japanese Yakuza, Chinese drug dealers, and a crooked Wall Street banker.  Fisk has large chunks of local government in his pocket.  Fisk is usually controlled and deliberate but, from time to time, he goes berserk.  Those targeted by his berserk rage rarely survive.  Like Murdock, we also get a glimpse of young Willy Fisk.  A terrific villain who, happily, lived to see a second season.

 

The supporting characters are surprisingly good and I was saddened to see some of them killed off.  Perhaps Game of Thrones has had some impact on the writing.  Elden Henson made for a memorable Foggy Nelson and brought a bit of levity to a surprisingly dark Marvel franchise.  Bob Gunton was one of the most amiable Gordon Gekko types I've ever seen.  A really cool customer, prone to crass comments but not with malice.  Good writing.  Toby Leonard Moore played the best right hand man ever.  Villain or hero, this is the man to trust with seeing that things get done.  Such loyalty cannot be purchased and must always be valued, even by villains like Fisk.

 

The weakest spot of the show was the law firm of Nelson and Murdock.  Every client they have either survives being murdered thanks to the intervention of Daredevil or dies.  Gee, I wonder why no one hires them.  As such, how are they paying rent?  New York, even Hell's Kitchen as portrayed, is not cheap.  In the 13 episode run, they only get paid once.  And that was from Fisk himself!

 

Great series.  Thumbs way up.  I look forward to binge-watching season 2.

Sour Grapes

JEB offered a backhanded congratulation to Donald Trump for winning the nomination:

Kudos to him for, you know, kind of creating the environment and then manipulating the environment to his effect.

 

Trump appealed to voters while JEB appealed to donors.  The donors sure did love JEB prior to votes being cast.  His war chest was so vast that most thought it was a foregone conclusion that he would win the nomination.  No, he pissed all that money away to no effect.  The all-knowing JEB then offered this insight:

The tragedy of this though, is that there isn't going to be a wall built. And Mexico's not going to pay for it. And there's not going to be ban on Muslims.

JEB doesn't think that's a tragedy.  He doesn't want a wall and he doesn't want to limit Muslim immigration.  In any case, there is already a law to build the wall.  JEB may be surprised to learn that it was passed and signed during his brother's administration!  Isn't that interesting.  The law was passed but Congress didn't fund it.  Wow, imagine if the Republican Congress stopped funding stuff the Republican base doesn't like.  Maybe if they had, you wouldn't have Donald Trump as your nominee.  Oh, but he wasn't done:

And that's the heartbreaking part of this.  Is that I think people are really going to be betrayed.

You mean like the Republicans betrayed their voters after the 2010 elections?  And betrayed their voters again after the 2014 elections?  And have betrayed their voters again and again?  Do you remember all those promises to stop Obamacare, JEB?  If the border wall could be stopped by just not writing that check, what excuse do the Republicans have?  Spinelessness.  Trump is many things but he isn't spineless.  Again, Republican voters have had establishment Republicans betray them so frequently in the last 10 years that Trump is viewed as a more reliable option.  Ponder that, loser!

 

It is wonderful to see yet another Republican come out and trash the nominee of his party.  This is the guy that - like it or not - your voters chose.  Trashing him can easily be viewed as an attack on the Republican base.  And you wonder why you didn't win so much as a single state, JEB?

An Anti-Establishment Year

Speaker Paul Ryan finds himself in a competitive race for reelection against Paul Nehlen.  The last time a Speaker of the House lost reelection was when Tom Foley was unseated during the Republican Revolution of 1994.  Before that, you have to go back to the Civil War!  Ryan was a rising star among conservative Republicans, beloved for his plans to balance the budget and his excellent debate with the president about Obamacare before it was passed.  There was a reason he was selected as the VP candidate for the notably squishy Mitt Romney.  When Boehner the Doormat stepped down from the Speakership, there was hope that maybe, just maybe, the Republicans would start to use the power of the purse to curtail Obama's extraconstitutional activities.  Nope!  Here is yet another establishment politician who lives safely behind Secret Service agents and towering walls telling us to stop nagging about immigration.  Paul Nehlen had something to say about that:

Paul Ryan, if you will not build a border wall for America, then I am asking you to tear down your wall. If you will not build a wall to honor the mothers and fathers of the dead, if you will not build a wall to protect our children, then, sir, you should tear down your wall and show everyone that you will live under the same conditions as they do.

The base has repeatedly tried to tell their representatives what they want done, providing landslide victories in 2010 and 2014, switching both houses of Congress from the Democrats to the Republicans and yet nothing has changed.  Repeatedly, the Republicans have said that they cannot do anything without the presidency.  Have they not read the Constitution that the swore to uphold?  Congress has the power of the purse.  No money can be spent without their consent.  The base was furious how Boehner repeatedly rolled over for whatever the president wanted.  Ryan has proved no different.  What was the point of the victories in 2010 and 2014?  Moreover, why should the voters 'trust' that it would have finally gone their way if only they had chosen JEB or Rubio?  The Republican establishment has failed to deliver for too long and the trust is gone.  Is it any wonder that Donald Trump won the nomination?

Fantastic Four

Finally got around to seeing last year's Fantastic Four.  Definitely not impressed.  The fact that Stan Lee declined his customary cameo speaks volumes.  The story opens in 2007 with a 5th grade Reed Richards proposing to build a teleportation device and already having a prototype in his garage.  Classmate Ben Grimm is intrigued and assists.  The pair managed to swap a toy car for some beige stones.  Also, they knock out the power for all of New York City.  Seven years later, the two are still working on the teleporter and showing it at a school science fair.  Most of the judges see it as a goofy magic trick but Franklin Storm recognizes brilliance.  He offers Reed a scholarship to the Baxter Foundation.  Of course, we meet Sue Storm, Johnny Storm, and Victor von Doom there.  It turns out that the teleportation device was actually a gate to another dimension.

 

Though the last couple of Fantastic Four movies were mediocre, this one was disappointing.  Though shown to be truly brilliant, Reed becomes abysmally stupid if the plot requires it.  In his first real conversation with Sue Storm, he mentions his love of Captain Nemo.  Then, while trying to hide from the government, he chose Captain Nemo as his username online.  Really?  Worse, we are told that Sue is brilliant at pattern recognition.  Seeing 'Captain Nemo' and linking that to Reed is pretty weak.  Johnny was all right.  He was a reckless youth who gloried in his newfound powers.  Thing was cool.  I far preferred this version of Thing to the previous one, at least in the look.  Thing as a CGI character looks great.  As far as the story arc, meh.  The youth of the characters - college freshmen - is wrong.  Reed is a fatherly, level-headed fellow, not the wide-eyed reckless boy we meet here.  Ben is a skilled pilot, not a junkyard worker.  Victor should be the same age as Reed, not ten or more years his senior.  Of course, I base this on my reading of the comics in the 80s; things could be vastly different now.

 

As for Doctor Doom, it was a mistake to add him.  Yes, Doom is the most iconic villain in the Fantastic Four's rogues gallery but he is a complicated villain.  He practically requires an origin movie just for him.  At least they could throw a bone to his history.  In all three movies, he is merged with metal to become Doom.  That's not Doom!  Doom is a normal guy who happens to wear armor.  He is not a villain version of Colossus from the X-Men.  Victor von Doom is a gypsy witch physician scientist who took to wearing an armored mask because of horrible facial scaring from a lab accident.  Why can't we go with that?  Yes, the MCU (which this movie is not technically a part) doesn't cotton to magic - yet (wait for Doctor Strange!) and wanted to give him science-related powers.  Okay, I can accept that but gypsy physician scientist in armor is still pretty cool!  Way better than the demented metal man we keep getting.

 

The movie was a tremendous flop and it is highly unlikely that this will get a sequel.  No, in a few years we will see another reboot.  Based on the track record, I am not optimistic.  With luck, Marvel will get the rights back from Sony and we'll finally see a good Fantastic Four movie.

Et Tu, Maureen?

Maureen Dowd, a leftist stalwart, has an op-ed in which she opines about the shady dealings of Hillary Clinton that are contaminating everyone who comes in contact: FBI Director Comey who recommended against indictment while offering a very strong indictment during his testimony to Congress, AG Loretta Lynch who regretted her ill-considered meeting on the Phoenix tarmac with Bill Clinton only moments after he left the plane, and President Obama who was endorsing Hillary precisely when Comey was exposing her 'extreme carelessness.'  The sheer volume and repetition of Clinton scandals through the years has worn down even Dowd's willingness to view it as the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy or only an 'appearance' of impropriety.  Though she doesn't directly say it, Dowd certainly paints a picture of 'Crooked Hillary.'  And despite it all, she offers a resigned sigh that it is probably better to have an ethically bankrupt Hillary than Trump.  Now there's an endorsement for you.

Trump for Saddam?

There is a stink about Donald Trump speaking well of Saddam Hussein, especially in regards to Saddam's ability to kill terrorists.  This is also a reason why Trump holds that the Iraq War should never have been fought and has led to the rise of ISIS.  Ditto the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi.  He has a point.

Saddam Hussein was an evil, miserable human being but one could argue that the political situation was much better under his tyranny than it is now.  That same case can be made for Gaddafi.  We have toppled tyrants and now have terrorist havens and a refugee crisis that is contributing to a crackup of the European Union.  Seeing how it turned out, how many politicians would have preferred to stick with the status quo ante?  Donald Trump has declared that, as bad as Saddam was, he was better than what we've got now.

 

Of course, though Trump has made this point repeatedly, it has only made big news lately because the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party needs to report about something other than 'Crooked Hillary' and the rigged system that let her skate.  Interestingly, Hillary voted to invade Iraq and was the architect of Libya.  "We came, we saw, he died!"  The anti-war crowd, which has been in the Democratic camp since Vietnam, may be wooed by a comparatively dovish Trump.

Marvel Madness

First, Thor became a woman.  Next, Captain America was a member of Hydra all along.  Now, Iron Man is a teenaged black girl.  I haven't read a comic book in years  and, as far as I know, this may be absolutely brilliant story-telling in each case.  However, with the massive success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), why do this to clearly popular characters?  If I am entranced by Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man to the point that I want to start reading the comic, won't I be upset to discover Iron Man is now a teenaged girl?  I am reminded of some sci-fi series I had loved but were canceled when they tried to fix what wasn't broken.  Space: 1999 was absolutely awesome when I was kid.  But the second season 'fixed' the show by writing out characters and changing the format.  It was promptly canceled.  Buck Rogers, a campy sci-fi show, turned into a bad copy of Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek in its second season.  It was canceled.  Since I mention Battlestar Galactica (the 70s version, not the reboot crap), it too suffered a complete format change when it was revived as Galactica 1980.  Why doesn't anyone get the message to not mess with success?  The MCU is having hit after hit in films but the comic universe is undermining or replacing these popular characters.  I don't get it.  Do the comic books not want to attract the movie fans?  I don't know why I bother to rant on this as I don't read the comics and have no intention of doing so.

 

End of rant.

Above the Law

FBI Director Comey's announcement this morning can be broken down to say essentially this: Yeah, Hillary Clinton was extremely careless (synonymous with grossly negligent, which is the language in the applicable law) in handling sensitive intelligence on an unsecured server.  If she were anyone else, I would recommend indictment - because she's pretty clearly guilty - but, as she could be my boss in a few months, I advise against it.  Also, no reasonable prosecutor who cares about career prospects would take this case.

 

As Glenn Reynolds often notes: Laws are for little people.  He has a column on this today. 

 

It is interesting that Bill Clinton 'coincidentally' met with Attorney General Lynch and, less than a week later, Hillary is 'cleared' by the FBI.

 

Here is Austin Bay's take on Comey, which is the harshest assessment I have encountered.

 

All of this does feed into Trump's constant refrain of 'Crooked Hillary' and Bernie's 'Rigged System' talk.  As I mentioned during the primaries, of the 4 remaining contenders, Hillary was the most establishment candidate in an anti-establishment year.  Though she has dodged the indictment, Director Comey has provided a very unfriendly bunch of sound bites that most Republicans (e.g. Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney) would never lower themselves to use in attack ads during the coming campaign.  Donald Trump is not that kind of Republican.

No Progress beyond Equality

 Found on Instapundit today:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

 

Calvin Coolidge on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

 

Silent Cal could pack a heck of a wallop in a single paragraph.  Self-government reached its apogee with the Declaration and can only fall from that point.  It is great how he tosses out that line about totalitarian regimes that clothe themselves in the language of democracy [oops, I didn't copy that part]; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, People's Republic of China, Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea, Republic of Cuba, Islamic Republic of Iran, and so on.  It is a telling point that this practice persists 90 years later.

 

Interestingly, Coolidge was a contemporary with the original Progressive Movement that morphed into Liberalism and has now reclaimed the Progressive label (cf . Hillary Clinton).  Progressives want more power for government and therefore less to the people.  They want to progress back to the good old days when these pesky voters didn't demand Brexit, upend immigration (i.e. voter importation) laws, oppose Amnesty, or grouse about spending.  Government could get so much important stuff done if the rubes in flyover country would just shut up and realize it was for their own good.  Ah, the arrogance of power.

Killing Terrorism

Seen on Facebook:

With guns, you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism.

Malala Yousafzai

 

Wow, that sounds deep.  For those not in the know, Malala is a Nobel Peace Prize winner.  She had been outspoken in favor of education rights in 2008, which she was only 11.  By the time she was 15, she had become famous among Westerners but infamous among Taliban-supporters.  Living in Pakistan made her a target.  She was shot in the face in 2012 but survived to continue to call for education rights.  She is a truly extraordinary person and I wish her well.  However, her claim is demonstrably false.

Khalid Sheik Muhammad - one of the major figures in the 9/11 attack - has a BS in Mechanical Engineering (earned in North Carolina!).  Osama Bin Laden had at least a couple years of college where he studied civil engineering or public administration.  Muhammad Atta - who flew into the twin towers - had a degree in architecture.  Ayman al-Zawahiri - current leader of al-Qaeda - is a surgeon. Omar Abdel Rahman (the blind sheikh who instigated the 1993 bombing of the twin towers) is a Doctor of Theology. Nidal Hasan - the Fort Hood Shooter - has a BS in Biochemistry and an MD.  Syed Farook - the San Bernadino shooter - had a bachelor's degree in environmental health.  His wife, Tashfeen Malik, had a pharmacology degree.  Omar Mateen - the Orlando shooter - had an associates degree in Criminal Justice, of all things.

 

These are not uneducated bumpkins with no better options than to kill themselves and others in the name of Allah.  Each could have had a bright future by Western standards.  Maybe they didn't get the education that Malala thinks would kill terrorism.  The only education that is going to do that is to teach them that Islam is an evil religion.  Indeed, every Islamic terrorist can give a solid argument for their actions by quoting the Koran or the Hadith.  It should be noted that the Koran is the word of Allah while the Hadith is Muhammad's interpretation of the Koran.  Of course, it is utterly unthinkable that one could teach against Islam in Muslim countries.  To do so is to court imprisonment or death.

 

The Religion of Peace website has an instructive graphic: Ramadan Bombathon 2016.  It shows how many people have been killed in the name of religion or by Islamaphobes.  So far, Islam is in the lead with 220 attacks and 1573 deaths.  All other religions combined come in a distant second of 0 attacks and 0 deaths.  Islamophobes also had 0 attacks for 0 deaths.  Huh.

 

All right, so we've tossed education as a way to stop terrorism.  What other alternatives might we have?  Sadly, the only way to stop people willing to detonate themselves is to kill them before they get the chance.  Oh, but that is SO politically incorrect as to be hate speech.  Terrorism must become so counterproductive that the terrorists abandon it.  But it is part of their religion.  That's a really tough nut to crack.  First, much like we did with Communism, we should contain Islam.  Where it spreads, rape, murder, and explosions follow.  Yes, containment.  Conversion.  Oh, that is really, really politically incorrect!  Unlike Fascism, Nazism, Communism, and other evil ideologies, Islam is integrated into a religion.  This makes it a particularly nasty ideology when coming against Western tolerance of religious belief.  Abridge the 1st Amendment freedom of religion or suffer more Fort Hoods, Orlandos, and San Bernardinos?  There are many reasons why the War on Terror has been so hard to win.

 

Of course, my prescriptions are irrelevant.  No Western nation will implement them.  Islam is most likely going to find Russia or China as their main foe.  These countries are not constrained by Western values and will pulverize Muslim countries when given enough cause to do so.  Whether Clinton or Trump wins, the US is going to mostly leave the Middle East to stew, perhaps offering some bombing to satisfy the hawks.

Here is David Wood also blasting the "Education prevents terrorism" myth.  He provides excellent sourcing for why Islam is the cause of terrorism.

Kate Steinle Redux

On July 1st of last year, Kate Steinle was out with her parents on Pier 14 in San Francisco when she was shot and killed by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez.  Sanchez was illegally in the United States, a chronic 'undocumented worker' who had been deported 5 times.  You know, the border has never been more secure, so the administration has said on multiple occasions.  To make matters worse, San Francisco had declined to transfer Sanchez to ICE in March 2015 because San Francisco is a sanctuary city.  Sanchez only had 7 felony convictions.  No big deal, right?  And one wonders why Trump gets support for his border wall.

The Steinle story got a lot of press but the Woodburn triple homicide is getting a lot less press.  Yes, now it is Bonifacio Oseguera-Gonzalez who killed three and wounded one in Woodburn, Oregon.  Where Sanchez had been deported 5 times since 1994, Gonzalez had been deported 6 times since 2003!  You know, the border has never been more secure.

 

Why has the press been relatively quiet on this 'mass shooting?'  Simple.  It isn't easily converted into a call for gun control.  If it can't fit into the gun control narrative, the press is only too happy to ignore it.  That it plays into Trump's calls for more border security and deporting illegals doesn't help either.