Cheaters Never Prosper?

The right has complained for decades that the media is bias against it.  WikiLeaks has undermined the endless denials.  It is crystal clear that the majority of the media is nothing more than a branch of the Democratic Party.  Case in point: Donna Brazile provided the questions that would be asked in debates during the primaries to the Clinton Campaign on multiple occasions.  Not only was the DNC trying to sabotage the Sanders Campaign, there were also efforts to boost Hillary by giving her an unfair advantage.

 

This win at all costs mentality might achieve a victory but it also means the candidate is not as prepared for a real crisis.  If you have gotten to the pinnacle of power because the answers were handed to you, what are you going to do when you must deal with China or Russia?  There won't be someone available to put a thumb on the scale for you.

 

For years, Democrats have been getting softball questions from the media and glowing praise for unremarkable careers.  By contrast, Republicans, Libertarians, and even Greens are subjected to hard ball interviews and great achievements receive tepid reviews.  Again, this may benefit the Democrats in winning but it also leaves them unprepared for real adversity.

Who Does ISIS Prefer?

Scott Adams, famed for his Dilbert comic strip, also has an interesting blog.  In a recent twitter post, he posited that ISIS could influence the election if it sponsored a big terror attack before election day.  Trump has seen his numbers rise after recent attacks as his border wall and Muslim immigration ban look more reasonable.  If no attack, the relentless stories of his racism and bigotry lessen approval of these plans and see Hillary's numbers improve comparatively.  Therefore, staging or not staging an attack will tell which candidate that ISIS prefers as president.

 

The goal of his tweet was to see how Clinton supporters reacted to the suggestion that ISIS may prefer Hillary.  He called it a Lesson in Cognitive Dissonance.  Worth reading.

The Grand Conspiracy

Here is a very funny take on this unreal campaign season.  If this had been written as fiction and offered as a TV miniseries, no one would have taken it.  Well, maybe as a comedy.

It is said that you get the government that you deserve.  America has been truly bad to deserve what we are going to get next year.

Case Reopened!

FBI Director James Comey has reopened the Clinton email case less than 2 weeks before the election.  This is a stunning turn of events.  Despite overwhelming evidence that offered a clear path to indictment, Comey had closed the case while saying no prosecutor would take the case.  Much grief was heaped upon him for that, rightly so.  The question thus becomes, why revisit what has been a disaster for him?

First, it may be that the purported evidence found on the laptop shared by Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner had something that could not be overlooked and will eventually be made public.  There might be something that, if it were to come out after the election and also revealed that the FBI knew about it before the election, there would be hell to pay.  By reopening the case before the election, Comey protects what is left of the FBI's reputation.

 

Second, Weiner is making a deal.  Disgraced, political career ruined, and his marriage over, Weiner has no reason to protect Huma, Hillary, or the Democratic Party.  He knows all the skeletons and, rat that he is, he gathered evidence to give himself leverage.  He may have provided it to the FBI - which is currently investigating him - to get a better deal.  Sure, he will be hated and a pariah but he already is.

 

Third, Comey thought that his press conference and his testimony to Congress would be enough to torpedo Hillary's campaign, thus providing sufficient punishment for the transgressions he outlined while dodging direct responsibility.  With the polls showing her still leading, he decided he needed to 'remind' the electorate.  That the FBI is investigating Hillary's top aide's husband just made that reminder possible.

 

Fourth, WikiLeaks is getting the emails from furious FBI agents, not Russian hackers.  Comey wants to cut the rationale for the release by reopening the case.  This may take the focus off the continued Wiki Dumps until the election.  As such, this might be a tourniquet to stop the bleeding but perhaps saving the campaign.  That sounds rather unlikely but it was suggested.

Comey has mishandled this about as badly as it could be mishandled.  Should Hillary lose, he will go down in history along with the Daisy add, Willy Horton, and the Swiftboaters.  He has carved out a terrible legacy.  Even if Hillary is convicted of multiple felonies (highly unlikely), he will be viewed as incompetent for having closed the case in the first place.  If she wins, he's fired.  Either way, he has infuriated both the Democrats and the Republicans and will get no succor from either.  There is no good result for James Comey.  He abandoned the rule of law in July and he cannot recover.

Corruption on the Ballot

The Most Damaging WikiLeaks has compiled a list of 100 most damaging revelations.  So far!  I do not doubt that it could get worse.  There is a lot of criminality exposed here along with buckets of 'intent' for FBI Director James Comey.  So much intent!

 

Though I have read through the 100, let's just stick to some of the really egregious ones:

 

1. Obama knew about the server all along.  Yes, though he claimed in 2015 that he learned about the server from the news, he had several email chains - using a pseudonym - that were found on Hillary's server.  The President and the Secretary of State were communicating on a server that would avoid the record keeping laws.

6. Unaware and compliant citizens.  I have harped on this from time to time and it turns out that the campaign admits this has been a strategy all along.  Those ignorant of US history and the Constitution are far more likely to vote against the limited government that was established.

68. John Podesta, who had no government position and no security clearance, was sent top secret information.  That would be a felony.

69. John Podesta used the Amtrak wifi to access his email.  That would be a very insecure connection.  This is worse because - as we learn in point 40 - Podesta's password was p@ssw0rd.  Hillary will make him head of CIA, I'm sure.

75. The Iran Deal is admitted to be terrible that will likely lead to a nuclear war in the Persian Gulf.

78. Campaign finance law only applies to Republicans.

There are certain themes that are repeated.  Every other damaging leak appears to be collusion with the media.  The media has donated 19 to 1 in favor of Hillary and, oddly enough, 91% of stories on Trump are negative.  Huh.  Strange.  Many show that Hillary has public positions for the 'unaware and compliant citizenry' and a private position for the donors.  Therefore, she may say she is against TPP at a rally but for it at a private fundraiser.

Almost any one of these 100 leaks should be a major scandal.  Any 5 of them should cripple a campaign.  Any 10 of them should ruin a politician's career.  All 100 should result in jail time for someone.  And there is more to come.

A vote for Hillary is a vote for corrupt and dishonest government.

The Scandal that Wasn't

Thanks to WikiLeaks, it has been demonstrated that members of the media have colluded with the Clinton campaign to improve her electoral chances, a stellar violation of all putative journalistic standards.  The response from the majority of the media?  Ostracism?  Dismissal?  No, just an indifferent shrug.  This should be a career-ruining scandal for all involved and yet it has provoked little more than yawns among the corrupt journalists' colleagues.  They all do it and none are in a position to cast stones.  However, had any of them done the same for Trump, that person would be a pariah.

 

As noted in previous blogs, the media is either a lapdog or an attack dog depending on which party is in power.  Being distrustful of government, I want an attack dog that challenges every encroachment and every move of government.  The only way that happens is when Republicans are in office.  That is the unfortunate truth.

Gender Wage Gap

At the Clinton Foundation, men really do earn a lot more than women.  Now we know where Hillary got her information that women are paid less; she was the one paying them less.

Polls to Bludgeon the Voters

WikiLeaks just keeps revealing the corruption of the system.  Here is an email chain where it is made clear that polling exists to shape public opinion, not measure it.  Intentional over-sampling to 'convince' voters that their candidate is way behind - and thus depress that candidates eventual votes - is common practice.  Not only that, but the Clinton Campaign is offering pointers on how to rig the polls for maximum effect.  Of course, this isn't new.  The media called the state of Florida for Al Gore while polls were still open (different time zone) in the Republican-leaning panhandle of the state.  How many votes were suppressed by doing that?  Was that accidental?  Had the state not been prematurely called, would we have completely avoided the fiasco that followed?

WikiLeaks has also shown that the Mainstream Media is all-in for Hillary.  The Center for Public Integrity found that 96% of the money given to campaigns by journalists has gone to the Clinton campaign.  That their reporting and polling is beneficial to the Democrats therefore comes as no surprise.  It has long been so but only now has it been exposed so clearly.  And yet the media dodges stories that should be HUGELY newsworthy because those very stories reflect so poorly on the news media.

Silly Dr. Stein, Law Only Apply to Little People

Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party has tweeted about the continuing WikiLeaks regarding Hillary's emails.  Certainly no right-winger, she wonders just how much more evidence the government needs to press charges against Hillary.  Of course, no amount of evidence is going to change the DOJ or FBI position on the case because laws are for the little people.  Like this guy.

 

A machinist aboard the USS Alexandria in 2009, he took pictures of the submarine that he shouldn't have.  When interviewed by the FBI, he deleted them.  He will get an other than honorable discharge and serve a year in prison.  His lawyer offered the Hillary Defense.  Hillary had far more sensitive and confidential material on a private server, some of which she deleted, and the FBI declined to take any action other then doling out immunity to all those involved.  You see, the navy seaman is little people and laws apply to him.

 

The Rule of Law is circling the drain.  Nixon had to resign for far less and the country was furious that he was pardoned.  Hillary is above the law.

Russian Reset in Ruins

When Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State, she made a big show of resetting our relationship with Russia.  The implication was that Bush had done a bad job and the Obama Administration would use 'smart diplomacy' to resolve issues.  By the end of her tenure, Republican Presidential Nominee Mitt Romney was declaring Russia to be our primary geopolitical foe.  Obama mocked him, saying the 1980s called and wanted their foreign policy back.  And then Russia invaded Ukraine.  And annexed Crimea.  And sold anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.  And station troops and planes in Syria.  And have repeatedly offered Cold War style provocations.  Now a flotilla of Russian warships is brazenly traipsing through the English Channel.  This looks a lot like the Cold War.

 

This course was set by Hillary and Obama.  John Kerry has done little more than keep the seat warm since Hillary left.  Who hires a person whose structures collapse to takeover as the new architect?  It looks very much like America probably will.

 

The next four years are going to be very difficult.

Trudeau's Calming Touch

Maybe things are different in Canada but I just don't buy this.  If a visibly upset person is approaching the head of state, how is it that the head of state confronts the person rather than the Royal Canadian Mounted Police escorting him?  Again, maybe things are different in Canada but if this sort of thing happened in the US, the Secret Service agents on scene would be reprimanded (at the very least).  Or the meeting was staged, like the little girl who offered Hillary a hug a few hours after her collapse on 9/11.

 

That another encounter went very badly for someone else upset with Trudeau on the same day makes me even more suspicious.  Ute Schmid-Jones of the Green Party was tackled when she threw pumpkin seeds at Trudeau.  She was arrested, identified, and released.  The angry man - who looks like more of a threat than the matronly Schmid-Jones - was not identified.  Peculiar.  Suspicious.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Trump is catching grief for his refusal to say he would accept the election results.  Democrats are horrified.  Pardon me, but wasn't it Al Gore who did exactly that?  He conceded and then withdrew his concession!  Didn't Stuart Smalley demand a recount until enough 'misplaced' ballots appeared to give him the victory over Norm Coleman?  Did Christine Gregoire accept her loss in the gubernatorial election in Washington?  No, she demanded a recount and still lost.  But on the second recount, she won!  And there were no further recounts.  Was it wrong for John Kerry to claim the 2004 election was rigged in Ohio?  It seems Democrats are more than willing to question the outcome on election night but Trump needs to agree not to do the same or he is un-American.  There are those double standards again.

With the WikiLeaks, it has been revealed that the game was rigged against Bernie Sanders.  The party and the media were in the tank for Hillary.  When this was revealed just prior to the Democratic National Convention, Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to resign in disgrace.  Further WikiLeaks dumps have shown again and again that the media is completely in favor of Hillary.  FBI documents have demonstrated that the bureau sought to undermine the possibility of prosecuting Hillary for the email scandal by handing out immunity deals at every step of the investigation.  Then we have the Project Veritas sting videos in which Bob Creamer - who has met with President Obama more than 40 times and been to the White House more than 200 times - was caught discussing how to commit voter fraud.  Creamer's associate brags about causing havoc at Trump rallies, confident that the media will broadcast it as a negative for Trump, which it has.  Even George Will, who is adamantly anti-Trump, says that Trump has a point.

 

Like Al Gore, Christine Gregoire, and Al Franken, Trump should not be asked to accept results in advance of seeing how those results were made.  It was a question that should not have been asked.  Really, remember all those Republicans who offered a pledge to support the eventual nominee?  Only Trump refused.  Look at all the support he is getting from those who took the pledge.  There is no honor among politicians.  Don't trust them!

Even When He Agrees, He is Wrong

This is a funny clip.  Trump is catching hell for claiming the 'game is rigged.'  In the era of YouTube, it was not too hard to find those attacking Trump for the claim have made the same claim.

Who is rigging the system?  That would be politicians who get to write and execute the laws that create the system.  How do you unrig the system?  A. Elect an insider who has been part of the system for more than two decades while it got worse?  B. Elect an outsider who has had no part in rigging the system?

Clinton News Network

Chris Cuomo runs interference for the Clinton Campaign:

So, don't go looking at this stuff on your own.  Trust us to tell you what is important and what isn't.  Also interesting that it isn't illegal for the press.  Laws that apply to the viewers of CNN don't apply to the employees of CNN.  They're special.

WikiLeaks

The WikiLeaks dumps demonstrate, from the horse's mouth, that Hillary Clinton knowingly deleted emails that were under subpoena from Congress, that her campaign colluded with the media, that her advisors knew the Iran Deal was a catastrophe, that voter fraud is real, and more besides.  Unless you know exactly what you are looking for and have time to comb through the mass of emails, it is useful to have a quick summary of the bombshells.  Here is Steven Crowder offering his Top 10 WikiLeaks:

 

As in my last post, if the media really went after Hillary for what is revealed in the WikiLeaks, she would be toast.  Of course, it doesn't reflect well on Obama either, so that isn't going to happen.  Several of these are impeachable offenses.  The combination of these make Watergate look overblown.

Media Bias Demonstrated Yet Again

Here is a brief but enlightening article that shows how much money the 'unbiased' and 'objective' media gave to each of the candidates in the race.  Hillary received "more than 96 percent" of the contributions given by media.

With that in mind, consider the sudden flood of attacks on Trump that - if true - are less serious than the attacks attributed to Bill Clinton.  Was there a surge of such reports against Clinton in October of 1992?  No.  Why not?  The media is populated largely by Democrats or Democrat-leaning 'journalists.'  Judith Miller offers an explanation here:

Is it any wonder that Republicans are under constant assault while Democrats can rarely do wrong?  If the media showed half the enthusiasm for any one of Hillary's scandals, her campaign could be crippled.  Her only hope is that Trump can be made more odious than she is.  Certainly possible but not as easy as one might expect.

Westworld

In the original Westworld (1973), which took place in the distant year of 1983, the robots go bad.  It was great stuff and Yul Brynner's gunslinger is the stuff of legend.  Of course, this was made when computer programming was comparatively primitive, the internet did not exist, advanced video games consisted of Pong.  It is a classic Michael Crichton creation that is ripe for reboot in our modern technological age.  Or is it?

 

The robots - called hosts - are far less mechanical than the ones in the original.  In fact, they appear to be assembled from some milky substance, starting with bones and adding musculature, ligaments, tendons, and so forth.  Precisely how they work is unclear as of the 3rd episode.  There was a flashback that showed a more mechanical version of the hosts as well a youthful Anthony Hopkins.  However, we do know that the hosts have programmed responses, the ability to 'improvise' conversation, and get updates from time to time.  Also, it is revealed that the hosts have been given knowledge of nightmares so that, if a technician forgets to wipe the host's memory, it can view its death or rape or such as a bad dream.  Ah, it is confirmed that we can wipe the memory.  They are just a big complex computer.  However, unlike a modern computer, these ones cannot be accessed remotely.  At one point, a host wanders off - it is referred to as a stray, indicating this is not uncommon - and park employees have to hike through the desert to recover it.  Once close enough, the technician was able to 'shutdown' the stray with a tablet.  Therefore, there is some wireless communication with the hosts but it is very short range.  This is probably a safety precaution; you wouldn't want some hacker in Russia taking over a host and wreaking havoc.  With this in mind, the story is preposterous.

 

If the hosts have programming and some are accessing old memories, just reimage them.  Modern computers are often reimaged to resolve all sort of intentional and unintentional errors.  Overwrite the existing operating system, programs, data, etc. with a clean copy.  Voila!  Good as new.  The very idea that the hosts are getting confused by accessing 'memories' from previous storylines is just crazy.  Since you can just erase all the programming and start from scratch, it makes no sense to retire the physical units.  The programming has clearly gone awry when hosts are waking up when not prompted and committing suicide by bashing in its own skull.  Such problems call for a return to the last restore point when the host was working properly but the park has to 'kill' all the problem hosts in a massive bloodbath - for the benefit of the guests - rather than just do the fix in much the same way they did the update.  Silly.

Then there is the effort to make the hosts as central characters.  Does the show want me to side with the robots who will rise up against their cruel masters or am I siding with the humans?  Well, I'm with the humans.  This is just a fully immersive video game for the superrich and it is hard to give the hosts more value - because they have a physical form - than all the digital characters in traditional video games.  Sure, the code is more complicated but it is still just a product of the code.

All that aside, I have enjoyed the show thus far.  It is possible that the expanding number of failures is intentional tinkering by the top programmers.  Anthony Hopkins character certainly seems to dismiss the problem entirely too readily.  Why is that?  I'm pretty sure we will find out.

Downland Review

In 2004, I started a group on Yahoo.  Though intended as a place for conversations, it very quickly became a forum for me to review fantasy movies like Eragon or historical movies like Mongol.  The last conversation was four years ago though I have continued to provide reviews of movies, TV series, books, short stories, and other related media.  With the group essentially dead, the content - specifically the reviews - is migrating to my new blog, Downland Review.  So far, I've migrated about 60 reviews.  There are still about 100 to go.  Plenty of content.

 

I will continue to provide reviews on this blog but those that fall into the fantasy genre or Medieval and Ancient history will be covered there.  Check it out here: Downland Review.

The Magnificent Seven

The story opens with a group of farmers convening in the town church to discuss what to do about Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard).  Bogue crashes the meeting with half a dozen armed goons and declares the irritating farmers to be standing in the way of capitalism and God, demonstrating that 1) he is an idiot and 2) that the movie wants to make a statement against the 'evils' of capitalism.  Bogue bullies the townsfolk to either sell their land at a loss or suffer the consequences.  He then murders an unarmed man who dared to speak against him and burned down the church.  See, this is what robber barons did in the Old West.

 

Chisolm (Denzel Washington) is basically a bounty hunter who is hired by Emma (Haley Bennett), the wife of the man murdered by Bogue.  Chilsolm immediately recruits Faraday (Chris Pratt), a gambler.  More are recruited on the way.  There is Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke) the sharpshooter, Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee) the Knife Thrower, Jack Horne (Vincent D'Onofrio) the Mountain Man, Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) the Mexican, and Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier) the Comanche.  Of course, it must be remembered that Emma and Teddy (Luke Grimes) are with them from start to finish, taking part in most of the fights; Magnificent 9?  The seven arrive in town and, amazingly, Bogue has left better than a score of men to keep the townsfolk and the miners in line.  The seven make short work of the goons and then send the corrupt sheriff to tell Bogue that his reign has ended.

 

The seven plus two head out to the mines and rescue the miners from more of Bogue's goons.  Really?  It is like Bogue is a slave master, not a paragon of the free market.  Can we make this capitalist any more evil?  Yes, we can.  When the timid and whimpering sheriff arrives in Sacramento to inform Bogue that a band of men had killed his goons, Bogue shoots him.  Bogue goes on to lecture him while the man dies at his feet.  Yes, another cold blooded murder because that is what capitalists do, don't you know.  Bogue commands his chief goons to gather men so they can deal with these rebels.

 

Despite being hired guns, Bogue's men have no idea how to fight as a unit.  There are no tactics at all.  During their main charge, they ride into a pair of massive explosions but the survivors continue to charge.  Then gunmen pop up from hidden trenches and start blazing away at the exposed riders but the survivors continue to charge.  They charge into cul-de-sacs and then ride in circles while they are cut down by riflemen from above.  There is no effort to secure a building and then move on from there.  Killed by the dozen and yet not one decides to retreat and regroup.  That is not how mercenaries operate; you don't get paid if you are dead.  After losing the majority of his force, Bogue demonstrates just how evil a capitalist can be.  He orders his remaining men to blaze away at the town with his Gatling Gun.  Wait!  You had a Gatling Gun and decided to use it after you had lost scores of men in a reckless charge?  In what was meant to be a scene of bravery and sacrifice, one of the seven manages to take out the Gatling Gun and all the men around it.  Reduced to himself and two men, Bogue rides into town.  Seriously!  And then he is baffled when his two men are killed and he is alone.  Wow, how did this imbecile live this long?  Oh, and then he begs for his life.  Ugh.  He takes refuge in the remains of the church he had burned a few weeks before.  The clichés are plentiful, so plentiful as to be frustrating.

 

The movie would be better named Emma Cullen, the Magnificent Seven and the Town Militia.  Lots of townsfolk are involved in the battle, making the seven more like officers of the militia.  Considering the amount of time they had to prepare and the numbers for defending the position, the town should have done better with competent leadership.

 

Antoine Fuqua is a hypocrite.  Here is a man who has gotten rich off of capitalism making a film that is critical of capitalism.  Then again, it may be he is too stupid to understand what capitalism is.

 

Capitalism (noun): an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

 

The movie industry is a privately-owned for profit enterprise.  Does Fuqua propose that the state fund his movies with the notion of no profit?  Would he like to earn prevailing wage for his directing?  I can guarantee his income will plummet under such a system.  He, every actor on screen, the producers, and all the rest are engaged in capitalism.

 

This is the second Antoine Fuqua film with a 'historical' setting that I have seen and he needs to avoid them.  King Arthur (2004) was a travesty and this is equally bad.  He should stick with movies that take place in the present and avoid political messages that he is ill-equipped to explain.  One of the reasons the original movie was set in Mexico is that law and order was far less effective there.  In the United States, the townsfolk could have petitioned the governor to do something about Bogue the murderer and his hired goons.  There were territorial marshals, circuit judges, even the US Cavalry in a conflict of this size.

 

Two notable 'private' wars in the Old West would be the Lincoln County War (which saw Billy the Kid as a combatant) and the Johnson County War in Wyoming (badly depicted in the infamous box office bomb, Heaven's Gate).  Each conflict saw perhaps 2 dozen people killed.  This movie saw that many killed in the teaser gunfight!  The gunfight at the OK Corral only saw 3 killed!  Perhaps this movie takes place in West World, the new HBO series.

 

Best avoided.