Allied

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Election Challenge!

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

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

 

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

 

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

Victory Margins

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Death of a Tyrant

Fidel Castro is dead!
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

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

 

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

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

Hate is not a Crime

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Electoral College Defense

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

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

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

 

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

Let's take a current election example:

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

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

Ant-Man

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Off the Hook

Despite what he claimed in the last presidential debate, Trump will not pursue charges against Hillary.  This is the smart political decision but a bad one for the rule of law.

Politically, Hillary Clinton was the plurality vote winner in the election, winning 47.8% of the electorate.  To prosecute, even if the case is rock solid, can only further disaffect nearly half of the country.  If the goal is to unite the country, prosecution is exactly the wrong move.

Legally, if she broke the law, she should be prosecuted.  Failure to prosecute only confirms that some people are above the law.  Regardless as to where one comes down on her culpability, everyone can agree that the Federal Bureau of Immunity botched the case.  This is a precedent.  Lawyers have already tried to use the 'Hillary Defense' in court, claiming their clients had no 'intent' to exposed classified data.

 

How to thread that needle?  The new Attorney General, demonstrating independence and responding to the continued hearings in Congress, opts to pursue the case against Hillary and her staff.  Many of those who were granted immunity did not give accurate testimony and immunity can be revoked.  Charge them as well.  Trump can then offer a pardon to all involved.  The AG takes the heat while Trump gets the positive reaction from Hillary voters.  Trump will take some heat from his voters but will be able to offer that a prosecution would only distract him from more important goals.  He is likely to take less heat from such a pardon than Ford took for pardoning Nixon.  Also, the pardon functions as a de facto conviction with a commuted sentence.

 

As that is unlikely, the Hillary Defense will be flown from time to time and high-ranking government officials will be heartened by the fact that one can be above the law if the political considerations outweigh legal ones.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

It is 1926 and the news is splashed on the front page of every paper in the wizarding world: The dark wizard Grindlewald is on the loose.  Beware!

 

Meanwhile, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) has arrived in New York City with a suitcase filled with fantastic beasts from all over the world.  On account of an accidental switch, he finds himself holding a suitcase of baked goods while would-be baker Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) unwittingly releases many of the magical beasts.  Worse, one of them bit him and he is not reacting well to the normally harmless venom.  Arrested by Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), a low-level functionary of the Magical Congress of the USA (MACUSA, rhymes with Yakuza), Newt and Jacob find themselves smuggled into a ladies only apartment building.  Tina lives with her sister, Queenie (Alison Sudol), who takes an instant liking to fellow foodie, Jacob.

 

Coincidentally, something is lurking NYC and causing considerable damage.  MACUSA is concerned that this will expose the magic world to the No-Maj, short for "no magic"  and a disappointing American version for "muggle."  Percival Graves (Colin Farrell), the top investigator in MACUSA, is busy tracking down this monster and focuses his efforts at the New Salem Philanthropic Society (NSPS), a group that wants to expose and terminate wizards and witches.

 

It has a Harry Potter feel to it and is generally entertaining.  Redmayne does an excellent job of being an awkward zoologist who manages to be likeable.  Fogler is great as the everyman Jacob Kowalski and Alison Sudol lit up the screen with her smile and looked very like a flapper out of the 20s.  On the other hand, Katherine Waterston was given a bland character and managed to remain bland.  Samantha Morton was wasted as Mary Lou Barebone, the leader of the NSPS.  There is no range in the character, she barely achieves cardboard cutout levels of acting; the script did her no favors.  The 'twist' at the end was ridiculously predictable.  Really, I knew which character was actually Grindlewald in disguise the moment we saw him.  In the Harry Potter movies, I think there was no character I disliked more than Dobby the House Elf; here there is a speakeasy filled with house elves.  Happily, they proved to be no where near as irritating as Dobby.  There is entirely too much sentimentality throughout the movie and entirely too much time is spent on good byes.

 

The magic world is entirely too large and too wild to be contained.  The vastness of the wizarding world makes hiding it - even with powerful magic - beyond the suspension of disbelief.  By default, Muggles and No-Majs must be dull-witted buffoons to be unaware of the extensive magical world and the vast array of fantastic beasts that Newt finds around the world.  Really, he unleashed a griffin-like beast in New York and sent it on its way to find a mate in Arizona.  How does that not get noticed?  Of course, this is the same issue I had with most of the Harry Potter movies.  It is a world that would collapse upon itself if one stops to think about it.  Therefore, don't think, just watch and be amused.

Juggling the Third Party Votes

What if all the Green voters had chosen Hillary instead?  What if the Never Trumpers hadn't supported the spoiler candidacy of Evan McMullin?  What would that look like?

Let's start with the Greens.  If all the Green votes had gone to Hillary, she would have won both Michigan and Wisconsin, getting her an additional 26 electoral votes.  However, that still leaves her short of 270 needed for the win.  In that case, a recount would surely have been called in the closet other state; Bush-Gore redux!

On the other hand, if all the Evan McMullin votes had gone to Trump, he would have picked up Minnesota and increased his electoral victory to 316 to 222.

 

Combining the two scenarios, it is mostly a wash though Hillary comes out better with 248 electoral votes to Trump's 290.  Of course, Jill Stein received 1.36 million votes while Evan McMullin only garnered 545K.

 

The Libertarian Party took votes from each candidate and it is hard to decide where they might have gone.  If they had gone to Hillary, she would have had a smashing victory, giving her Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, and the 2nd District of Nebraska.  In that scenario, she has 319 electoral votes to Trump's 219.  However, if they went to Trump, he would have picked up Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, and Minnesota for a total of 36 more electoral votes, providing an electoral win of 342 to 196.

 

It is a certainty that both parties are looking at these scenarios to see if they can absorb these voters.  As the Republicans will have the benefit of incumbency, the Democrats should vigorously seek to reach these voters.

Unrepresentative Capitol

Hillary Clinton won 48.01% of the popular vote while Trump won 47.03%.  Clearly, the country is pretty evenly divided.  However, the capitol city, Washington DC, voted 92.8% for Hillary and 4.1% for Trump.  This is the place where the representatives of the country come to make policy and yet it is overwhelmingly biased in favor of one party.  That cannot be healthy for a democracy or a republic.  An evenly divided nation is ruled by a city that has clearly chosen one side over the other.  Of course, as the seat of government, it is only to be expected that government employees would be in favor of government.  One party is far more pro-government than the other.  This bias is inherent and cannot be changed.  However, the impact can be diminished by limiting the authority, size, and reach of government.  Limited government?  Where have I heard that?

Popular Vote Nightmare

According to this Politico graphic, Hillary won the popular vote by approximately 800,000 votes but Trump won convincingly with electoral votes.  This has happened several times in US history, most recently in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote (48.4% to 47.9%) but narrowly lost the electoral vote (271 to 266).  As I mentioned in a previous post, Hillary's margin in California (2.6 million votes) is more than triple the amount of her overall popular vote margin.  The margin in one state should determine who is president?  Let's game that out for a worst case scenario.

 

Using the numbers from the Politico graphic, let us assume that Candidate A wins all but two states by a margin of 100,000 votes each and that 3rd Parties drain away the same number of votes as they did this year.  Candidate A thus wins a narrow victory in a state like Texas (48.6% to 47.4%) but a tremendous landslide in a state like South Dakota (60.1% to 33.1%).  Candidate B spent all his time in California and Florida.  He won both states by the exact margin that Hillary won California (61.5% to 33.2%).  Using the Electoral College, Candidate A wins an electoral landslide of 454 to 84.  Using the popular vote, Candidate B wins with 60.3 million votes to 60 million votes.  Because California and Florida are two of the most populous states, Candidate B's margin of victory is more than 5 million votes in those two states.  The 100K margin in every other state and DC only adds up to 4.9 million votes.  In this worst case scenario, who do you think should win?

 

Here is something else of note.  Florida has a population of 20.3 million and cast 9.4 million votes.  California has a population of 39.1 million and cast 9.1 million votes.  Under a popular vote system, Florida had more of a say than a state that is nearly twice its size.  Florida voters provided 7.3% of the total votes while California only provided 7.1%.  Under the electoral college system, California represents 10.2% of the votes while Florida has 5.4%.

 

Clearly, the electoral college forces the presidential election to be national rather than regional and it balances out the states regardless of voter participation rates.

Protesters Didn't Vote

A couple of interesting stories in the wake of the election.

First, more than 100 anti-Trump protesters have been arrested in Oregon.  Most of them did not vote!  Seriously?  You've got hours to protest but you didn't have time to actually vote?  They claimed not to have voted because they didn't have enough "electoral college points."  Well, that would have been true regardless of who was elected, right?  Why is this an anti-Trump protest rather than an anti-Electoral College protest?    Would they be protesting the electoral college if Hillary had won?  Whatever the case, it takes a lot of gall to protest when you didn't bother to vote.

 

And then we learn that Colin Kaepernick, a millionaire who refused to stand for the National Anthem to protest the ill treatment of people of color, did not vote and was not registered to vote.  He said that no matter who won, the corrupt system would remain.  So, you are protesting a system that you are also saying cannot be changed through elections?  Then you need to either organize a revolution to overthrow this oppressive regime (wouldn't that be Barack Obama during the last 8 years?) or quit your whining.  If the NFL had any sense, they would suspend him; it would do wonders for their plummeting ratings.

Crying Wolf

Followed a link from Scott Adams blog to Slate Star Codex.  Here is a very long article that debunks the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic stories about Donald Trump that have been ubiquitous.  What is really interesting is that the writer is clearly anti-Trump.  He holds that the media has spent so long accusing Republicans of being racists that the accusation has lost its bite, especially since it isn't true.  He repeatedly asks what will happen if a real racist shows up?  No one will believe the accusation.  It is a long read but worth your time.

Why the Electoral College?

Much is being made about Trump's 2012 tweets in favor of abolishing the Electoral College.  Now that he has won because of it, he approves.  Hmm.  In fact, he is right now and was wrong in 2012.  One should not be criticized for coming to the correct answer.  Let's consider the Electoral College:

Each state has a number of electoral votes equal to its representation in Congress.  For instance, California has 53 representatives in the House and 2 Senators, giving it 55 electoral votes.  On the other extreme, Wyoming has 1 representative in the House and 2 Senators, getting 3 electoral votes.  Representatives in the House are based on population whereas every state gets two senators.  Clearly, including senators in the electoral college skews away from a pure representation of popular will.  Yes, point taken.  Let's look at the recent election and remove electoral votes based on senate representation.

As Michigan is still counting, it will be removed from the calculations.

Trump won 29 states with 290 electoral votes.  Removing the 58 that come from senate representation drops his electoral total to 232.

 

Hillary won 20 states with 232 electoral votes.  Removing the 40 senators, her final total is 192.

 

As mentioned, representation in the House is based on population.  States that voted Hillary have fewer people in them than states that voted for Trump.  However, those states proved to have a higher turnout or broke more heavily for Hillary.  For example, Hillary won California 62% to 33%, a margin of 2.9 million votes.  What if she had won by only a million votes?  Electoral votes remain unchanged but suddenly Trump is the popular vote winner.

 

A move to popular vote would favor urban areas over rural areas.  It is far easier to organize voters in a city than in scores of towns in Middle America.

 

Consider 1992.  Bill Clinton had an electoral landslide with 370 electoral votes.  However, he only won 43% of the popular vote.  In the states, if no candidate breaks 50%, there is often a runoff between the two top candidates.  The electoral college serves as the automatic national runoff.

A Pardon is Not Amnesty

According to the Washington Times, "law abiding undocumented immigrants" are going to lobby President Obama for pardons to inoculate them from what Trump might do come January.  Let's say he does.  He pardons 750,000 Dreamers on January 20th, a few hours before he leaves office.  Congratulations, your illegal presence in the United States up to that point is hereby forgiven.  However, if you are still in the United States on the 21st, you are again illegally in the United States.  Illegal immigrants commit their crime every day.

 

Obama's Dreamer faux-amnesty was achieved through executive action and can thus be abolished via executive action.  I did get a laugh out of the 'law abiding' descriptor for people who broke immigration law.  These oxymoronic euphemisms are both tragic and hilarious.  Of course, replacing 'undocumented immigrant' with the far more accurate term of trespasser would undermine the phrase; law abiding trespassers just doesn't work as well.

Noam Chomsky

That last post deserves some background.  Here is a post from my old Yahoo360 Blog from 2006:

 

I was first exposed to Noam Chomsky about 12 years ago (1994). George the Red is a huge fan and insisted that I read some of his profound works. Chomsky is an MIT PhD who is credited with revolutionizing modern linguistics. In the 1960s, he joined the anti-war movement and became a reliable critic of US foreign policy. He has written many books on the subject, a few of which I have read.

Though the arguments and discussions are long and ponderous and delivered with a dull rationality that the average reader might find unassailable, all of Noam's books boil down to the same point: It's America's fault (or maybe Israel). Pick any issue in the world today and Noam will shoot back a reasonable argument as to why it is America's fault. Human Rights violations in China? Well, that is obviously America's fault because we granted Most Favored Nation trade status which has only encouraged the regime to mistreat its citizenry. Cuban Poverty? Well, that is clearly America's fault on account of an ill-considered embargo instituted by JFK. Individually, they sound rational and reasonable. Side by side, he is saying that China's problems are because the US trades with them and Cuba's problems are because the US doesn't trade with them. Gee, we either trade or don't trade with every nation so that piles up the guilt pretty quickly.

Noam also has a habit of making outlandish claims without supporting them. This has the effect of saying that the fact is SO obvious, that he shouldn't be bothered to list the proof. Sort of like saying 2+2=4. It is obvious and beyond the need of further evidence. However, when you toss out a statement along the lines of "The US is the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world," some clear evidence would be greatly appreciated. He'll offer another of his esoteric and reasonable arguments how the UN definition of terrorism could be construed to include US firing cruise missiles into the Middle East since some civilians are killed and surely they must be terrified by the explosions.

Another thing to note about Noam is that he loves Cuba and what Castro has done to the place. To read Noam is to become utterly baffled as to why so many Cubans risk drowning in an effort to reach Florida. Why, everyone has healthcare. The infant mortality rate is lower than in much of the US. It's a socialist paradise that has been persecuted by America since the Bay of Pigs. The claim is outlandish. People vote with their feet and the immigration rate to Cuba is negative.

I believe everyone should try to do their own research on a subject and not take someone else's word for it. You ought to read a chapter or two of Noam (that's about all it should take). But, as I said, you can sum all his writing up as 'It's America's fault - Israel too - and Cuba is a Socialist Paradise. 

As I mentioned Israel, here is another post from the following year (2007) where Chomsky - who is Jewish - sides with the enemies of Israel:

 

Noam Chomsky (PhD in Linguistics) has gone to Lebanon to confer with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. After a chat, Noam had the following deep thoughts:

“I think that Nasrallah has a reasoned argument and a persuasive argument that they (the weapons) should be in the hands of Hizbollah as a deterrent to potential aggression and there is plenty of background and reasons for that. So, I think his position, if I am reporting it correctly, and it seems to be a reasonable position, is that until there is a general political settlement in the region and the threat of aggression and violence is reduced or eliminated, there has to be a deterrent.”

As I said in an earlier blog on Noam, he has a way of phrasing things to sound reasonable. He makes outrageous claims that don’t seem outrageous because he surrounds them in equivocating phrases like ‘if I am reporting correctly’ or ‘seems to be.’ To use the old expression, Noam just loves to ‘beat around the bush.’ Let us try to dissect Noam’s statement and find what claims there are to evaluate.

1. Hizbollah should have weapons to deter aggression

2. There are historical reasons for Hizbollah to be armed

3. Weapons should be retained until there is a political settlement

Of course, Noam has failed to mention who Hizbollah must deter but the answer is clearly Israel. Israel occupied southern Lebanon twice so that would be the ‘plenty of background’ to which Noam refers. An armed Hizbollah will ‘deter aggression’ from Israel. Though both these points presume Israel as the aggressor rather than reacting to aggression, one can defend claims 1 and 2. Claim 3 falls apart when one examines Nasrallah’s stated intentions toward Israel:

“There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel. Peace settlements will not change reality, which is that Israel is the enemy and that it will never be a neighbor or a nation.”

Now, I found this with astonishing ease by merely looking up Hezbollah online but Noam apparently believes that Nasrallah only wants weapons until there is a ‘general political settlement.’ The settlement that Nasrallah intends is the destruction of Israel, as is clear from his own statements. Either Noam agrees that Israel should be destroyed or he is a witless dupe who failed to do any research – like I said, it was astonishingly easy to find Nasrallah’s stated views.

It is of note that Hezbollah sided with Syria (another nation that long occupied Lebanon but received no where near as much grief about it as Israel) during the Cedar Revolution, that they are funded by Iran (whose president has echoed Nasrallah’s views on Israel), and that they are in violation of UN resolution 1559 that required them to disarm. It takes someone as brilliant as Noam Chomsky to view Nasrallah/Hizbollah as the reasonable party in the Middle East.

To Chomsky, America and Israel are the bad actors in the world while everyone else is just an innocent victim of the policies of these two countries.

Extreme Crackpot

Noam Chomsky, a famous linguist whose language theories are being overturned, has demonstrated that there are no limits to his crackpottery.  He has now declared that "The Republican Party Has Become the Most Dangerous Organization in World History."  Really?  This is because the Republican Party will not take global cooling... er... global warming... er... climate change as seriously as he thinks it needs to be taken.  Yes, that makes them more dangerous than the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  They are more dangerous than Nazis during WWII.  Can you say 'hyperbole,' Noam?

Here is the interesting thing.  Chomsky's work in his area of expertise is being undermined by evidence but EcoWatch thinks that his views on climate science - not his area of expertise - should be viewed as sacrosanct.  If you are a mathematician whose equations don't add up, it would be foolish to take your views on English Literature as gospel.

 

Having read a couple of Chomsky's books and several articles, it is clear that he hates America.  He has a gift for sounding utterly reasonable while saying unreasonable things.  When asked about any event in modern history, it inevitably turns out to be America's fault.

Zardoz

 

This 1974 movie is gloriously weird, a post-apocalyptic film that is filled to overflowing with speculative technology, oddball characters, and a society of immortals who long for death.  It opens in the year 2293 with a stone head - Zardoz - flying over the countryside.  When it lands, it vomits guns and ammo to a bunch of men in Zardoz masks and instructs them to kill the Brutals.  Among these 'Exterminators' is Zed (Sean Connery).  Through the movie, it is revealed that the Exterminators are the chosen of Zardoz and only they are allowed to breed.  All other humans - the Brutals - are to be killed.  It is a very dark world.

 

Zed stows away on the stone head and confronts and kills Arthur Frayn, an immortal.  The stone head pilots itself to the Vortex, an idyllic seeming oasis in this dark world.  When the world collapsed, a group of scientists created the Vortex and achieved immortality.  Captured, Zed is studied by the immortals - no brutal had ever penetrated the Vortex - and Zed likewise studies them.  In a particularly odd scene, it is explained that all immortal men are impotent and sex is long forgotten; immortals don't need to procreate.  But there are dark sides to immortality.  There are Apathetics who are almost catatonic from eternal boredom.  Then there are the Renegades, those who have committed crimes (which are shown to literally be thought crimes) and - as punishment - were aged.  They don't die but they become senile and/or insane.  Wow, talk about a utopian society that suffered unintended consequences!

 

Among some of the crazy technology present is the Tabernacle, a computer housed within a crystal but containing all the collected knowledge of the immortals.  It has the ability to grow a new body in the case of an immortal who has somehow died and then implants all the memories; thus, Arthur Frayn returns.  The immortals are able to view Zed's memories as if they were just watching a movie.  There is touch learning, a means of imparting knowledge as if by osmosis.  There are crystal rings that allow access to the Tabernacle wherever the immortal is.  Even 40 years later, the technology feels futuristic and more akin to magic.

 

It is a compelling story but there are dissonant elements that are hard to overcome.  Zed spends most of the movie in an orange diaper-like loincloth.  Later, the Renegades put him in a wedding dress to smuggle him through the immortals hunting him.  There is also an extensive discussion of a male erection.  "The penis is evil!"

 

Interestingly, John Boorman had been planning to film Lord of the Rings.   When that fell through, this was his backup plan!  His first choice for Zed had been Burt Reynolds, whom he had had great success with in Deliverance.  Unable to get Burt, he hired Connery at a bargain price (Connery was having trouble getting acting jobs in the wake of leaving his role as James Bond).  Yes, we see just how desperate Connery was!

 

Here is a movie that deserves a remake.  Let Zed wear something other than an orange diaper, nix the wedding dress, and ditch the fascination with erections and it could be a great - though still strange - film.

Hacksaw Ridge

Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) is a Seventh-Day Adventist from Virginia.  During World War II, he feels obligated to join the army though he also refuses to touch a gun; he wants to be an Army medic.  This results in a lot of trouble with his NCOs and his commanding officers.  Even so, he is allowed to go to war, armed only with bandages.  He proves his worth in Okinawa on Hacksaw Ridge.  The trailer pretty much tells the plot, the movie just offers the details.

 

With this being a biopic of Desmond, Mel Gibson gets too distracted by the actual combat.  The bloody and gruesome battles last entirely too long.  Much of that should have been on the cutting room floor, perhaps added to the eventually DVD as an extended deleted scene.  After watching the movie, I was of the impression that Doss must have joined in 1944 or 1945 and Okinawa was his first deployment.  Nope, he joined in 1942 and served in Guam and the Philippines before arriving in Okinawa.

 

Amazingly, the movie undersells Doss.  The movie has him carried on a stretcher with a serious leg wound and evacuated from the ridge.  In fact, he swapped places on the stretcher with a soldier he judged to be in worse shape, was then shot in the arm by a sniper, and eventually had to crawl several hundred yards to an aide station.  Gibson thought that was too unbelievable to include.  It was particularly satisfying that the movie concluded with interviews of Desmond Doss, his brother, and his captain.

 

Though Doss is certainly worthy of great praise and a true hero, the movie is mostly padding for his eventual heroic acts.  I was very much reminded of Sergeant York.  In that movie, Gary Cooper plays Alvin York, who famously killed more than 2 dozen Germans and captured another 132 at the battle of Meuse-Argonne.  His actual claim to fame was maybe 10 to 15 minutes of film.  The added two hours were just filler.  Not bad filler but filler nonetheless.  Hacksaw Ridge shares that problem.

Third Parties

Both the Libertarians and the Greens had a good year thanks to the unlikeable candidates presented by the two major parties.  The Libertarians (I am a registered Libertarian) had their best showing ever.  Established in 1971, it saw its best showing ever by far this year.  It broke a million voters in 2012 but received more than 4 million this year, attracting 3.3% of the voters.  The Greens had their best showing since 2000 when Ralph Nader sank Al Gore.  Jill Stein received 1.25 million votes, less than half of what Nader pulled in 2000 but vastly better than it has done in the intervening years.  One wonders how the party would have done if Bernie had accepted Dr. Stein's offer to lead the ticket.

 

Despite what seemed like an ideal year for third parties, this was only a slightly more active year for them.  Ross Perot's 1992 run was the largest third party run in the last 50 years.  Though 18.9% of the voters supported him, he acquired not a single electoral vote.  George Wallace's American Party, which championed segregation, received 13.5% of all votes cast and 46 electoral votes!  Perot's 1996 run for the newly-formed Reform Party was a shade of his 1992 run but still attracted 8.4% of the voters.  John Anderson's 1980 run was favored by 6.6% of the voters.  Thus, 2016 comes in 5th place for Third Party voting when looking at elections in my lifetime.

 

 

Knowing the Republicans penchant for betraying their voters, it is possible the Libertarian Party will continue this growth spurt come 2020.

 

 

Given how the Democrats have demonstrated that they will rig the primaries for their chosen candidate, the Greens might see improved performance as well.

 

Some say that a third party vote is a wasted vote.  After all, one of the two main parties is going to win.  Yes, I'm sure the Whigs thought the Republican upstarts would never amount to anything.  The important thing to note is that the two main parties will pay more attention to the concerns of third parties as they lose votes to them.  If all the Green voters had gone for Hillary in Wisconsin, she would have taken the state.  The next Democrat will make note of that and the Green agenda may find its way into the Democratic platform.  On the other side, if Trump had taken half of the Libertarians in Minnesota, he could have won the state with a comfortable margin.

 

Third party voters lose every election but influence parties to address their issues and perhaps acquire their votes next time.  It is often said that independent voters decide the race and who is more independent than a third party voter?

Hopeless Petition

There is currently a petition making the rounds asking that electors choose Hillary rather than Trump when they convene.  So far, there is somewhere north of 3 million signatures on the petition.  Of course, that is well shy of the more than 120 million people who chose either Hillary or Trump in the election;  3 million are requesting that the voice of 60 million be overturned?  I don't think so.

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ran campaigns with a strategy of collecting 270 electoral votes.  If the idea had been to get more popular votes, the campaigns would have been run differently.  The requirements of victory cannot be changed after the race has already been run.  Though there have been 6 faithless electors in the last 50 years, no election since 1912 has had more than 1.  Even in 1912, there were only 8 faithless electors.  For Hillary to win via the Electoral College, she would need 38 electors to switch their votes.

 

This is the second time in recent history that the winner garnered fewer popular votes.  It is not surprising that the urban party has an easier time getting voters to the polls than does the rural party.  Also, how many illegal immigrants took President Obama's advice to go vote?

 

In 2008, Barack Obama received 69.5 million votes.  In 2012, he dropped to 65.9 million, making him the first president since FDR in 1944 to garner fewer votes for re-election than for election.  Hillary has 60.8 million.  Democrats have been bleeding votes through Obama's tenure but have not done any course correction to address that.  By contrast, McCain received 59.9 million votes, Romney had 60.9 million, and Trump has 60.3 million.  Republican vote totals are flat.  Hillary lost this campaign more than Trump won it.

 

If signing the petition helps dull the pain of loss, it can be considered therapeutic.  If the signers expect to change the results of the election, they have only set themselves for another disappointment.

Arrival

Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is a brilliant linguist.  She is at the university when the news reports the arrival of 12 alien craft that have landed around the world.  Soon thereafter, Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) requests that she translate something that sounds like angry whale song.  The next day, she is on her way to one of the alien craft in Montana.  While she will be the lead linguist, Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) will be the lead scientist.  The two are quickly prepped and then sent to the alien craft where they attempt to communicate with the aliens.  The rest of the film covers the efforts to do so amid the growing chaos across the globe and a pending clash with other alien ships.

 

The movie opens with Louise's daughter, Hannah.  We see her as a baby, a toddler, a tween, and finally as an early teen.  It is sad.  Throughout her interaction with the aliens, Louise has frequent flashes of her daughter, which hint at solutions to her current problem in decoding the alien language.  It seemed very much off topic though it eventually proves to be important overall.

The movie is very engaging but it touches on subjects that it entirely fails to explore.  It is mentioned that language influences how one thinks.  This is certainly true.  In English, you can actively 'like' ice cream (i.e. I like ice cream), but in Spanish, you passively 'like' it (i.e. Me gusta helado - Ice cream is liked by me).  When the Romans studied philosophy and science, they borrowed Greek words.  In fact, the most learned Romans would simply converse in Greek.  I once met an Austrian woman who was fascinated by "the bartender was a woman."  In German, the word bartender expresses the gender internally.  That English didn't supply the gender amazed and delighted her.  At this point, I have discussed the specific topic more than the movie.  However, the movie does detail many other language issues in a first contact situation, especially if you don't have Star Trek's universal translator handy.

That the super-advanced aliens left all the work of translating their language to the comparative primitives was irritating.  Imagine a modern man traveling back to the Stone Age and then just sitting around and waiting for the cavemen to figure out English.  These aliens can traverse the stars but are no help at all when it comes to communication.  They are completely passive.  One can argue that the whole point of the movie was that humans learn the alien language and refusing to communicate in anything but their language would expedite that goal.  Such is not stated but I can think of no other reason that the aliens would be so passive during the entire process.

Though I enjoyed it for most of its runtime, the ending was unsatisfying.  Of all things, I was reminded of Slaughterhouse-Five when the movie concluded.

That Didn't Take Long

The Clinton Foundation is a pay-for-play institution and requires someone to either be in office (e.g. Hillary as Senator and Secretary of State) or en route to high office (e.g. Hillary's Presidential run).  If neither of these are happening, the funding will dry up.  Why pay if there is no play?  Someone in the Clinton family needs to be in government!  Chelsea, it's your turn.  Can we not be rid of the Clinton and Bush families?

Dissolve the Political Bands

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another... they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.

Declaration of Independence

 

In the wake of Trump's victory, some in California are calling for the Calexit.  Here in Texas, there had been calls for a Texit during the Brexit campaign.  These secession movements are a sign of rising tyranny from a central government.  The states believe that the central government is going to impose laws and/or taxes upon them that they do not want.  Secession is a perfectly valid solution and I applauded the Brexit.

 

However, another solution would be to diminish the power of the central government in matters that can be managed by the state.  That is called federalism.  If California wants to have boys in the girls' room, there is no need for the federal government to impose that rule on Montana too.  Let Montana decide.  If Massachusetts wants a mandatory universal healthcare system called Romneycare, fine by me.  But don't impose it on all the other states and call it the Affordable Care Act.  If Texas wants everyone to wear a gun in public, don't force that on New York too.  The federal government is suppose to limit itself to interaction among the states (e.g. prevent a trade war between North and South Dakota) and foreign policy.  Most of the money that the federal government currently spends is not authorized by the Constitution.

 

The United States was formed from a secession movement that we now call the American Revolution.  The British Empire felt that the colonies were not paying their 'fair share' for the recently concluded French & Indian War while the colonials were incensed that they would be taxed by a far off parliament in which they had no representation.  The secession movement was successful and we celebrate it annually.

 

A little over four score years later, some of those colonies - now states in the resulting union - decided to secede.  Some in the North were perfectly happy to let the South and its dreadful institution of slavery be cast off from the nation.  Many were not.  In this case, secession was an effort to redraw city limits so the police didn't have jurisdiction over the crimes being committed.  This secession movement was unsuccessful.  Antonin Scalia held that the Civil War determined the Constitutionality of secession but I disagree.

 

Either events allow people to dissolve political bands or they do not.  In the case of the Revolution, they did.  In the case of the Civil War, they did not.  Secession movements are healthy and send important signals to the central government to hold a loose rein.  As Princess Leia noted, "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

 

The government which governs least, governs best.  By Thomas Jefferson's standard, we have very bad government, the kind of government from which states would rationally want to secede.  Will the government loosen its grip or will secession movements gain steam?  I far prefer the former but, should that grip tighten, would wholeheartedly support the latter.

Silver Linings

America managed to dodge catastrophe only to crash into disaster.  Still, there are some silver linings from this dark cloud of an election year.

1. The Clinton Dynasty is done.  Though it is possible that Chelsea will make a run at some future date, both Bill and Hillary are going to retire to private life.  That neither of them holds public office means that the Clinton Foundation will see its funding evaporate.  Without the play, there will be a lot less pay.

2. The Bush Dynasty was foiled.  If there is one thing Trump did for which I am truly grateful is that he crushed JEB!  These dynastic families are a threat to the country.  The growth of an elite establishment in Washington, DC is strengthened by these dynastic families.  Sadly, JEB's son, George P Bush, is currently Texas Land Commissioner and doubtless on a path toward higher political office.  They're like roaches.

3. The adversarial press is back.  Where Obama and Hillary have had a largely fawning media, Trump will have to endure a hostile media.  I like that.  Yes, the media remains biased but I am much happier when the media is biased against government rather than for it.  If Trump's Secretary of State tries a private email server, there will be hell to pay immediately.  If the IRS starts targeting MoveOn.Org or the Huffington Post, the media will rightly demand investigations and firings; they will not be satisfied with early retirements and 5th Amendment invocations.  The president should not have a comfortable relationship with the media.

4. The Rule of Law is valid again.  This is related to the adversarial press but also applies to the Democrats.  When the rule of law was an impediment, the Democrats flouted it.  Now that it can be a cudgel to be used on the ruling Republicans, the Democrats are going to call for respecting the laws.

 

5. No more excuses for the Republicans.  Though not a Republican myself, I generally side with them on most issues.  The Republicans have had a string of victories since Obama's election and have somehow failed to capitalize on any of them.  The 2010 retaking of the House led to... nothing.  They couldn't do anything without the Senate.  Right.  Have you guys read the Constitution?  Apparently not.  In 2014, the Republicans captured the Senate which led to... nothing.  They couldn't do anything without the Presidency.  Seriously?  You really need to read the Constitution.  Now they have the Presidency, the Senate, and the House.  Implement some of that stuff you promised back in 2010.

 

6. Speaking of past promises, Obamacare repeal!  Obama promised that my premiums would drop $2500 a year and I could keep my plan.  Neither of those came to pass.  In fact, my costs went up.  Repeal Obamacare and don't replace it.  Let the market work.  Government regulations always drive prices up and make it harder to innovate.

 

Yes, it's bad but it's not all bad.

Let the FBI Sort Them

The State Department reports that it will take 5 YEARS to go through 31,000 Hillary Clinton emails.  Wow!  How about giving them to the FBI and Director Comey.  He just ripped through 650,000 emails in 8 days!  He'll be done with 31,000 before lunch!  Better yet, though he  may find gross negligence, there will be nothing worth prosecuting.

 

It is interesting that the State Dept. wouldn't be able to finish until AFTER Hillary was re-elected for a second term.  That's probably just a coincidence.

Case Closed Again!

Once again, FBI Director Comey has cleared Hillary Clinton of any wrongdoing.  There were those who said that Comey reopened the investigation just to take all the attention away from the waves of WikiLeaks emails.  That he closes the investigation 2 days before the elections sure seems to confirm that idea.  There is no way that 650,000 emails were reviewed in a week.

The fact that classified data found its way to a private server is a crime.

The fact that Huma Abedin claimed to have returned all devices that might have the emails while we can obviously see she didn't is a crime.  Scooter Libby was charged with perjury when what he told the FBI didn't match the facts.  Comey himself sent Martha Stewart away for this.

The fact that emails were recovered that had not been provided to either the State Department or the FBI is a crime.

That the DOJ has charged NO ONE with any crime in this demonstrates corruption.  There wasn't even a scapegoat like Web Hubbell, Jim & Susan McDougal, or Johnny Chung.  This time there were crimes without criminals.  Kind of like when 900 FBI files showed up in the White House during Bill Clinton's tenure but no one was charged with anything.  Ah, feels like old times.

President Obama Approves Voter Fraud

 

Clearly, the president is asking 'Dreamers' and 'undocumented citizens' to go vote and assuring them that their will be no repercussions for doing so.  As I have said in previous posts, the goal of all this immigration is to import new Democrat voters.  The governor of Virginia recently pardoned 60,000 felons who will now be able to vote Democrat.  The Democratic party - and its overseas cousins - have taken a line of farcical poetry serious:

Would it not be easier in that case for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?

Berholt Brecht

The mass immigration in the US that started in the wake of the 1965 immigration act and now continues with barely restrained illegal immigration is proving to be a successful means of electing a new people.  However, it appears not to be working fast enough for President Obama, thus his suggestion that illegal immigrants vote anyway.  Heck, the plan was already exposed by Project Veritas and his term is almost up, why bother hiding it?

 

You know what would be a real problem for illegals voting?  Voter Photo ID laws.  Which party is opposed to them?  President Obama's party.

Doctor Strange

A group of sorcerers led by Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) invades a sacred library and steals pages from a book before fleeing into the streets of New York!  The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) pursues, killing about half the invaders.  Kaecilius escapes with the pages that contain a ritual that could destroy the world.

 

Next we meet Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), a brilliant neurosurgeon who seemingly brings an organ donor back to life!  He is an arrogant, self-centered jerk but nevertheless a magnificent surgeon with miraculously steady hands.  Then tragedy strikes.  In a car accident, his hands are mangled and, even after extensive reconstructive surgery, he has difficulty just writing his name.  Desperation takes him to Nepal and the Ancient One.  Though initially a skeptic, once convinced that there is magic, he studies voraciously and quickly becomes proficient in advanced sorcery.  He is soon embroiled in the conflict between the Ancient One and Kaecilius, proving to be the central figure in the final outcome.

 

In the mid credits scene, a bearded Thor discusses Loki and Odin with Doctor Strange.  Strange offers his help in finding Loki for the purpose of getting the Asgardians back to Asgard.  Unsurprisingly, Strange will appear in the forthcoming Thor: Ragnarok.  At the end of the credits, the villain of the next Doctor Strange movie reveals himself.

 

The movie has a very strong Inception feel to it with the mirrored cityscapes that fold upon themselves.  Though often humorous, this plays much more seriously than Ant-Man or Guardians of the Galaxy.  The magic system is solid and well made.  That the movie limited its forms was a good call.  Unlike Harry Potter, we aren't bombarded with all sorts of magic.  Basically, it comes down to magic gateways, invoking a mirror world, conjuring weapons or shields, and astral projection.  Each of these are shown enough times to make them all old hat by the end of the movie.  More spells can be added in later movies but I like that we stuck with some basic tricks for the first outing.

 

Yet again, Marvel has taken one of their lesser characters and created a great film.  When I was reading Marvel in the 80s, I read almost exclusively Fantastic Four and X-Men, both of which Marvel sold the movie rights.  Marvel has more than made do with the second and third string characters.  Thumbs way up for Doctor Strange!

Democracy Ain't What It Used to Be

A court has ruled that Brexit must first go through the Parliament, a ruling which many Remainers hope will derail the Brexit and thus the will of the people.  You see, the electorate is too stupid to know what is good for it.  Undermining the vote of the people is pretty common these days.

In California in 2000, the voters approved Prop 22 (61% in favor, 38% opposed), a law that banned same sex marriage.  The Mayor of San Francisco openly ignored the ban and various state courts eventually ruled that the law was unconstitutional.  So in 2008 the voters approved Prop 8 (52% in favor, 48% opposed) a constitutional amendment that banned same sex marriage.  As an amendment, this was automatically constitutional on the grounds of state law, so opponents went to a US District Court which found it unconstitutional as regards federal law.  The State of California refused to appeal the decision and citizens didn't have 'standing' to appeal the case.  Therefore, Prop 8 was overturned.

 

In 2010, there was a special election to fill the Senate seat of Edward 'Ted' Kennedy.  A big part of the campaign was the Republican claiming that Scott Brown would be the 41st vote against Obamacare.  The hyper-blue state of Massachusetts elected its first Republican Senator in more than 30 years to stop the Affordable Care Act.  Getting the message, the Congress used parliamentary legerdemain to pass it anyway.  How has that worked out?

 

Throughout the Western Democracies, the governments are ignoring the voters.  Angela Merkel in Germany has seen her party walloped in elections and yet is still in favor of mass immigration.  Nativist parties are rising because the supposedly moderate parties are marching their nations to bankruptcy and cultural suicide.

 

Kemalist Turkey has died and Sultan Erdogan is sowing the seeds of a new Ottoman Empire.  Erdogan saw democracy as a tram that you take to your exit and then get off.  The voters gave him enough power that he no longer needs their consent.

 

Rulers resent that they require voter consent.  They have had years to devise means of bypassing that requirement and yet they are astonished by the rise of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, UKIP, et al.  If you ignore the voters for long enough, you will likely spark a revolution.  Currently, the revolutions are still being fought at the ballot box but continued bypassing will lead to less civilized means of revolution.

 

Ignore the voter at your peril.

Ouija: Origin of Evil

Here is a prequel to Ouija (2014) though I did not see that film.  Interestingly, that one is very poorly rated (4.4) and yet somehow spawned another film that is better rated (6.6).  Usually sequels/prequels are worse than the original.

 

The movie opens in 1967 at a séance where Alice Zander (Elizabeth Reaser) is helping a man and his daughter contact a recently departed wife.  Though the daughter is extremely skeptical and thinks they are being conned, her father is convinced.  Afterward, the tricks that were used are exposed.  Alice's daughters, Lina (Annalise Basso) and Doris (Lulu Wilson), provided the special effects for the séance.  Alice's husband died about a year before and she has taken up her mother's profession to make ends meet.
 

Lina, a high school sophomore, attends a party where a Ouija board is deployed.  She suggests that her mother add it to 'the act.'  Alice does exactly that and unintentionally provides an egress for dark spirits that haunt the house.



Lulu Wilson is awesome as the possessed daughter, Doris.  Her deadpan delivery of asphyxiation to the unfortunate Mikey was amazingly creepy.  When she would whisper in someone's ear, it was freaky.  When Father Tom (Henry Thomas) confronted her in the basement, she proved that a 10 year-old girl can be terrifying.

 

The ghosts in the house arrived after World War II but Lina was born in 1951.  We are led to believe that her parents lived in the house while Alice was pregnant.  Shouldn't Alice have been aware of dark doings in the house from the five years before she moved in?  Didn't her neighbors mention the creepy German doctor?

 

This is the second Mike Flanagan film I have seen, the last being Oculus (2013) which was also quite good.  Definitely worth seeing, especially for horror fans.

Democratic Primary as Scripted as Professional Wrestling?

The latest email to be revealed shows Robby Mook of the Clinton campaign suggesting that a signal be sent to Bernie Sanders to knock it off with his attacks.  After all, the Clinton campaign had 'leverage' on him.  This is from May of 2015!  If Hillary had 'leverage' against Bernie that would blunt his attacks on her and the DNC was clearly favoring Hillary throughout the primaries, blackmailed Bernie never stood a chance.  And he knew he didn't stand a chance.  He was the Washington Generals to Hillary's Harlem Globetrotters.  The outcome had already been determined in 2015, if not earlier.  The Democrats don't trust the voters, even their own.

 

Of course, this yet again demonstrates that the Democrats are better at political intrigue than the Republicans.  The Republicans wanted to do they same thing only their chosen candidate was JEB!  However, Trump came along and stomped on their plans.  Even their secondary candidate (Marco Rubio) and their final desperation candidate (Ted Cruz) failed to stand before Trump.  A surprising amount of Republican stalwarts are among the Never Trumpers.

 

Looking at that, which party had an honest primary and which was fixed from the start?  What does that tell us about that two candidates?  What does this tell us about Democrats?  What does it tell us about Republicans?  If so many were willing to use underhanded means (blackmail rival), get insider information (Donna Brazile and the debate questions), and engage in vote fraud (Project Veritas videos), why doubt those same tactics would be used in the general election?

The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower, movie based on Stephen King's Dark Tower series, is coming out next year and I see a lot of excitement from fans.  I have no such excitement.  When I was in Europe a little over 10 years ago, the choice of English books was limited so I took what there was.  The first book was weird but interesting.  However, there were aspects that drove me nuts.  Roland, the titular gunslinger, fired scores of bullets in a place where he had no way of replacing them.  Nor did he collect his brass, which is a pretty common practice.  No surprise, at the beginning of the next book he is desperate for ammo.  By the third book, the setting is still unclear and, worse, what there is makes no sense.  Knights armed with six shooters but living in castles?  King apparently doesn't realize that gunpowder made castles obsolete.  A monorail that is evil and can only be destroyed by offering it a riddle it cannot solve?  Shortly after Roland and his party escaped the evil monorail than the series lost me.

 

Sitting around a fire somewhere in an alternate Kansas, Roland finally offered some insights to his past.  He begins telling the tale about the girl he loved and yet those events are told in third person omniscient.  Who is telling this again?  Certainly not Roland, especially since he isn't even present for the events the all-knowing narrator offers.  This failure to switch to a first person voice combined with the crazy nonsensical setting finally drove me away.  It also didn't help that the adventure that we had been following for three and a half books was suddenly put on hold to explore the silly world of the feudal gunfighters of the Middle Ages.

 

A few years after I abandoned the series, I was convinced the read The Talisman.  Reminded me a lot of the Dark Tower series.  Though Stephen King is a hugely successful author and much of his work translates brilliantly to film, I am not a fan of his writing.  His settings have no rulebook so what works in one chapter doesn't work in the next.  What was true here is not true there.  The bullet-fest of the first book is a perfect example.  Roland blazes away with abandon but, in the next book, he is suddenly stingy with bullets because they are precious.  Also, he is extremely lazy about his world building.  The Territories of The Talisman are an alternate America with primitive, yet pristine, versions of the same places found in the US.  Ditto for Gunslinger.  The evil monorail took them across an irradiated alternate America, very similar to the one seen in The Talisman.  Heck, maybe the two tie together.  However, the series was pitched as Lord of the Rings meets The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  King's got nothing on Tolkien as far as building a believable world.  Heck, Harry Potter is more coherent than King's setting.

 

Granted, I read less than half of the series.  Perhaps it got really good just after I put it down.  I suspect the forthcoming movie will just be the first of a trilogy or series or such.  I will certainly see it but I do not recommend the books.