Baby Driver

The movie opens with a band of bank robbers in the getaway car.  Baby (Ansel Elgort), the driver, wants to know how long they will take at which point he chooses a song on his iPod that will take that long (reminded me of Hudson Hawk, which had burglars who also kept track of time by song lengths).  Griff (Jon Bernthal), Buddy (Jon Hamm), and Darling (Elza Gonzalez) rob the bank and jump back in the car.  And then the chase begins.  Baby is a magician at the wheel of a car, able to drift through the narrowest of gaps and perform hairpin turns that leave pursuers in the dust.  After successfully dodging the police, the crew meet Doc (Kevin Spacey) and the money is split.  When the others have left with their cuts, Doc confiscates the majority of Baby's cut and says they will be even after one more heist.  Orphaned before he was 10, Baby lives with a deaf cripple named Joe.  At this point, he mostly takes care of Joe though Joe serves as a constant conscience for Baby to go straight.

 

The movie is non-stop fun.  All the driving stunts were done by actual drivers rather than through CGI animation.  As Baby is constantly listening to music, the soundtrack is front and center through most of the movie.  The humor is great but not forced.  The bit with the Michael Myers mask was awesome.  Jamie Foxx is outstanding as a crazy, violent criminal.  Even so, his over-the-top performance did not diminish the calm certainty of Jon Hamm, who proved to have less bark than Foxx but a lot more bite.  Kevin Spacey was good but he just had a supporting role.  He managed to be friendly, funny, and menacing at the same time, a neat trick.  Lily James positively glowed as the love interest.  She had that same effect on Downtown Abbey, where she became the center of any scene thanks to her vibrant smile and joy of being.  Paul Williams as a weapons dealer who lists the various guns like they were tender cuts of pork was quite funny; there's a character that would be fun to see in another film or a TV series.  For as much action as it had, the movie does an excellent job of storytelling and character development.  Nothing feels rushed.

 

In most movies about criminals, I have little sympathy for any of them and thus don't much care if they are killed or not.  Not so with Baby.  Here's a troubled youth who might have turned out fine but for taking the wrong car for a joy ride.

 

This is Edgar Wright's best movie since Shaun of the Dead.  Fun movie.  Go see it.

 

The Hero

"Lone Star Barbeque Sauce.  The perfect partner for your chicken."

Lee Hayden (Sam Elliot) is an actor long past his prime and now reduced to voice work for Lone Star BBQ Sauce.  That his prime is a distant memory becomes all the more painful when he is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  He explains that he is proud of only one role in his career, a movie he made 40 years ago, The Hero.  With little time left to him, he seeks to mend fences with his daughter, gets involved in a relationship with a younger woman, attends a Western gala, and even gets high on mushrooms.  His drug dealer (Nick Offerman) is a younger actor who stared with him in a TV show many years ago.  Through him, Lee meets Charlotte (Laura Prepon), a comedienne who likes to pop pills and even convinces Lee to give it a try.

 

There was one point in the film that was SO predictable that I was extremely irritated when it was set up.  Sure, he could meet his daughter on Tuesday.  Oh, he missed the date?  Oh, honey, I screwed up and I'm so sorry.  That scene is so hackneyed that its use automatically knocks a film down a full point on the 1 to 10 scale.  I frowned when his daughter was shown sitting alone at the restaurant, rolled my eyes when he was too high from mushrooms to answer his cell phone, and sighed heavily when he left an apology on her voicemail.  "I'm so sorry."  Ugh!

 

For never explained reasons, at least none I could discern, Lee frequently dreams of his time in The Hero, replaying scenes though he is his current age in these remembrances.  Is this his life flashing before his eyes?  Remembering the glory days?

 

Except for the fact that he is being played by Sam Elliot, Lee Hayden is not a likeable man.  He smokes pot daily, drinks excessively, has a miserable relationship with his daughter, and a tense one with his ex-wife.  He essentially blackmails his ex-wife and daughter into forgiving him by telling them he's dying.  By the end of the movie, he has ruined his chances for a renaissance in his career and is once again pitching BBQ sauce but at least he's got a sweet young thing to keep the bed warm.

 

Not a bad film but not particularly good either.  Skip this one.

Valerian: The Empire of a Thousand Planets

Syrte is the capital of the Empire of a Thousand Planets but it is in decline.  Poverty is rising, once great cities are falling into ruins, and knowledge is fading.  Piloting the XB982 (great name!), Valerian and Laureline have been dispatched to make contact and determine if trade relations should be established.  No sooner have they arrived on the multicultural capital planet than they run afoul of the Enlightened, an inscrutable priestly order of seers and healers who wield immense power and wealth.  Barely escaping from a fortified Enlightened Temple, Valerian and Laureline make an alliance with an unusually well-informed merchant named Elmir.  The wealth of the merchants has suffered over the decades as the Enlightened have risen in wealth and power.  Elmir has discovered the secret base of the Enlightened on a distant asteroid and wants Valerian to lead the attack.  The ragtag merchant guild fleet sets out from scores of planets to rendezvous but, en route, they are attacked by a superior Enlightened fleet.  Even so, the Enlightened are no match for the XB982, that can jump through time.  Utterly defeated, the Enlightened reveal that they are the crew of a long-lost colony ship from Earth, granted virtual immortality at the cost of physical mutation.  Bitter at their fate, they hoped to take over Syrte and then use the resources to take revenge on Earth.  However, seeing their defeat by a single ship demonstrated the folly of the plan and they instead commit suicide.

 

This proved to be a departure from previous adventures.  There is no time travel except for the tiny time jumps during the space battle.  This is the first time that aliens are seen and they are plentiful!  There are some interesting visual similarities to Star Wars.  The Enlightened are disfigured and thus wear bulky helmets like Darth Vader.  Valerian is briefly encased in a strange block of material that is surprisingly similar to Han Solo encased in carbonite.

 

Having watched the previews of the upcoming movie, I don't see a lot of parallels beyond the title.  Also, the title characters don't seem quite right.  Obviously, I have only read a tiny portion of the vast material on Valerian but he seems more like a Bruce Campbell than a Dane DeHaan.  Campbell can do cocky with light-hearted banter in his sleep, which is how I see Valerian.  DeHaan looks like he's about to start weeping and probably will if confronted by light-hearted banter.  He looks too boyish.  I've only seen Cara Delevingne in Suicide Squad which doesn't provide much of a basis to judge.  However, Laureline is a redhead and Cara clearly is not.  That may be fine.  After all, Wolverine is only 5 foot 3 in the comic but the 6 foot 2 Hugh Jackman knocked it out of the park in the role.

 

Death Panel Appeal Rejected

Charlie Gard, a 10 month old in London, has been sentenced to 'die with dignity' by the doctors who have been attending him.  His parents have appealed the decision and even raised 1.4 million pounds to take him to the United States for treatment.  Appeal rejected.  The plug shall be pulled.  There shall be no escape from the single-payer nationalized health system.  The Death Panel has ruled.

Travel Ban Approved, Mostly

Surprising no one who read the law and the 'travel ban,' the Supreme Court largely brushed aside the decisions of the 4th and 9th Circuit courts, allowing some exceptions to stand until the court is able to hear arguments in its next term.  Of course, the 120 day ban will have expired by then so it is somewhat moot.  The interesting thing to me is that I, a humble blogger with no legal training, was able to render a Supreme Court-level decision whereas numerous federal and appeals judges, with many decades of legal education and experience among them, were not.  Why is that?  The law itself, as discussed here, is not difficult to understand.  The judges who ruled against it had abandoned the judiciary and joined the #Resistance.  They ruled not upon the letter of the law but upon what they inferred from Trump's campaign statements.  Lady Justice removed her blindfold and blanched when she saw Trump.  This is how a trusted institution ruins itself.  If the law can so readily be interpreted in two diametrically opposed ways, we cease to have a rule of law.

Valerian: The City of Shifting Waters

 

The City of Shifting Waters: Valerian and Laureline are playing a game of 3D Chess (nod to Star Trek) when word arrives that Xombul has escaped and traveled to New York City, circa 1986.  The chief technocrat explains that 1986 is the year the old world collapsed and a 400 year dark age followed.  Oddly enough, the entire era is off-limits to time travelers but, as Xombul has gone there, Valerian is dispatched.  Laureline will be held in reserve.  Valerian arrives to find New York City partially submerged, all the streets having become water ways for a gang of looters.  No sooner has he found a sign that may lead him to Xombul than he is captured by looters and forced into slave labor.  Several days pass before Laureline arrives and helps him escape.  However, they will need reinforcements to face Xombul and his robots.  Valerian returns to the looter leader, Sun Rae, and convinces him to join forces.  Even with the aid of the looters, they are overcome and captured.  Put on a hovercraft, they escape the city as a tsunami topples the skyscrapers.

 

This proved to be just part one of a two part story.  It was unexpected to see a return of Xombul since he had been turned into a bird and put in a bird cage at the conclusion of the last story.  The idea of a 400 year window where time travel is banned is nonsensical.  The whole point is to protect the timeline but they have no clue what happened in this period?  Silly.  The only thing that was known was that an atomic bomb detonated at the North Pole and caused global warming, the ice caps melting, cities flooding, and constant earthquakes.  For a story written in 1970, it sounds like it might have been a source for Al Gore's Earth in the Balance (1992).

Earth in Flames: The hovercraft takes them all the way to the Rocky Mountains (years before Kevin Costner's Waterworld) before they transfer to a helicopter and arrive at a mountain fortress near Yellowstone.  Sun Rae the looter is amenable to joining Xombul's plot to rebuild the world with Xombul as dictator but Valerian is not.  Xombul knows how to fix that.  He uses a shrinking ray to make Laureline only a few inches tall with plans to keep her in his pocket and always have Valerian on a short leash.  Though Laureline is shrunken, the plan is foiled when an enslaved scientist turns on Xombul.  The story continues with a constant back and forth as Xombul or Valerian has the upperhand before the story concludes at a space station orbiting Earth.

 

The funniest thing about this story was Mr. Schroeder the scientist.  He is obviously Jerry Lewis as the Nutty Professor.  Because Valerian is a French comic series and the French regard Lewis so highly, this was hilarious.  As written, he is far beyond genius and would likely hold his own with a scientist of the 28th century.  High praise indeed to Jerry Lewis.

 

This two-part epic was better than Bad Dreams though it also has the time travel nonsense.  Flooded NYC made for a great setting (3 decades before A.I. Artificial Intelligence).  The action is plentiful.  I am surprised this hasn't been adapted to the big screen before now.

Valerian: Bad Dreams

With the movie Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets coming to theaters soon, I bought the "groundbreaking graphic novel" upon which it is based.  The graphic novel includes three Valerian stories: Bad Dreams (1967), The City of Shifting Waters (1970), and The Empire of a Thousand Planets (1971).

 

The story opens in the 28th Century where humanity rules a galactic empire but only a handful of people have jobs.  Among the employed are the Technocrats who rule the empire and protect space-time from tampering.  The top space-time agent is Valerian.  Xombal, a rebellious technocrat of the First Circle, has traveled back to 11th Century France for reasons unknown and Valerian is sent to capture him.  While there, he encounters Laureline, a peasant girl who lives in a 'haunted' forest.  She helps him track down Xombul and discover that he is practicing sorcery which he plans to bring back to the 28th century so he can rule the galactic empire.  With his sorcery, he has changed peasants into ogres, a local sorcerer into a dragon, and Laureline into a unicorn!  Of course, Valerian stops Xombul just in the nick of time but Laureline knows too much about the future to be left in 11th Century France.  She is recruited as Valerian's partner.

 

Overall, the story is ludicrous and kind of campy.  The inclusion of sorcery and a supposedly historical French sorcerer from whom Xombul is able to learn magic is really out of place for a sci-fi series.  It was also weird that Valerian always arrived after Xombal.  Why not arrive a week early and be ready for him?  Of course, time travel always presents a basket of nonsense and paradoxes.  The future looks rather bleak since most of humanity spends their time 'dreaming,' basically wasting their lives in the equivalent of a Star Trek holodeck.  This is the civilization that our hero is sworn to protect?

 

Silly as it was, it was fun.  This is just the sort of thing that would have thrilled me when I was in prime comic-reading age.

You Want It, YOU Pay for It

Seen on Facebook:

Wanting everyone to have healthcare, education and food does not make you a communist, socialist or unpatriotic.  It just makes you a good person.

Interestingly, I agree.  I want everyone to have all those things.  Heck, I want everyone to have a nice house, a loving family, and a meaningful life.  These are great things to want for other people.  Left unsaid is how to achieve these desires.  That communism and socialism are even mentioned implies that the government should be involved.  And that would require a different formulation:

Wanting the government to use its coercive power to take the earnings of one person and give it to another person makes you a thief, and a socialist.  Being generous with other people's money does not make you a good person.

 

If you want these things for others, take steps on your own to achieve them.  Start a charity, convince friends to help pay for a student to go to college, or pay the medical bills of the injured.  Using the force of government to compel others to provide your wants is immoral.

Beware the Right-Wing Terrorists!

Yahoo has the most ludicrous headline: Most Terrorists in the U.S. are Right Wing, Not Muslim.  There is a picture of KKK members around a burning cross.  Well, this ought to be good.  The story quickly reveals that police have only foiled 35% of the 115 right-wing attacks vs. 76% of the 63 Islamic attacks.  Clearly, the focus is in the wrong place.  But wait, there's more!  Right-wing attacks were often more deadly.  Define "often."  This is a meaningless sentence that manages to send a very specific implication.  That is not accidental.  So I read on.  A third of right-wing attacks involved fatalities while only 13% of Islamic ones do.  However!  Oh, yes, there is a 'however.'  The Islamic death toll was 90 vs. 79 for the right-wingers.  Let's run some math!

 

Right Wing Terrorists: 115 attacks of which 35% (40 attacks) were foiled.  Of the 75 that succeeded, a third (25 attacks) had fatalities.  79 killed divide by 25 attacks with fatalities comes to 3.2 people killed per fatal attack or approximately 1 killed per attack that wasn't foiled.

 

Islamic Terrorists: 63 attacks of which 76% (48 attacks) were foiled.  Of the 15 that succeeded, only 13% (2 attacks) had fatalities.  90 killed divide by 2 attacks with fatalities comes to 45 people killed per fatal attack or approximately 6 people killed per attack that wasn't foiled.

 

Wow, I would far prefer to have the authorities foil the vastly more lethal Islamic attacks.  Of course, this is just math and it is right there in the story but the entire tone is that the country is Islamaphobic and ignoring the far bigger problem of these far right-wing terrorists.  Speaking of the right-wing terrorists, who are they?  The story offers zero examples but there was a link to Newsweek at the bottom.  Let's check that out.

 

Homegrown Terrorism and why the Threat of Right-Wing Extremism is Rising in America.  Well, that's a big headline.  The article opens with the murder of Richard Collins III, an African-American who was murdered by a racist who was a member of Alt-Reich: Nation on Facebook.  Why does being racist place him in the far right-wing?  Does the author realize that the Third Reich, to which Alt-Reich surely alludes, was a socialist state?  Socialism is not right-wing.  Still, this is one murder and doesn't explain the Yahoo story that links to it.  So I read on...

 

Arie Perliger states that domestic terrorism deserves more attention than it gets.  He then offers some numbers for 2002 to 2016: far-right perpetrators conducted 18 attacks that killed 48 while Islamic terrorists conducted 9 attacks that killed 45 people.  See!  Domestic terrorists are more deadly.  Well, except for this:

...excluding the Orlando nightclub massacre.

So if you eliminate more than half the deaths attributed to Islamic terrorism, right-wing terrorism has been deadlier.  See!!!!  After all, the Orlando shooting has a "mix of apparent motives" and is therefore "hard to categorize."  Seriously!  Omar Mateen swore fealty to ISIS on Facebook then talks to the police during the standoff and says it is for ISIS but he's hard to categorize.  He could be a far right-winger or Islamic so let's just remove him from our calculation.  This story has just lost all credibility.

Let's see some of these 'far right-wing' terrorists.  Oh, look, the Bernie Bro who voted for Jill Stein and stabbed two men to death on a train in Oregon is classified as far right-wing.  Huh.  He's openly racist and anti-Muslim and thus a clear right-winger.  The KKK, an organization founded by Democrats after the Republicans had freed the slaves, is also rated as right-wing.  Dylan Roof, who longed for the good old days of segregation (who were the segregationists?  Oh yeah, the Democrats), is a pot-smoking racist and thus classified as far right-wing.  Was Robert Byrd, the former KKK Exalted Cyclops and high-ranking Democrat Senator, a right-winger?

 

But let's ponder Professor Perlinger's definition of terrorism: "...the use of violence in a political and social context that aims to send a message to a broader target audience."  Would the Berkeley rioters who prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking meet that definition?  Yes, they would.  How about the rioters in Chicago last year who managed to upend a planned Trump Rally?  Yes, they would too.  What about James Hodgkinson, the man who shot several Republicans at a baseball practice?  Yes, he also meets the definition.  Would they be left-wing terrorists?

 

I briefly skimmed Perlinger's paper and it looks like even people with left-wing politics (e.g. socialist, communist, Democrat) would be counted as right-wing if their terrorism had a racist or ethnic foundation.  Therefore, when the KKK was at its peak in the 1920s, it was a right-wing terrorist organization that was supporting the left-wing political party, Democrats; that makes no sense but is really useful for left-wing propaganda.  After all, how many people would have dug this deep into the story?

Illegal Voters

Here is a story to shake one's faith in the integrity of US elections.  On the one hand, it comes across as the ravings of a lunatic conspiracy theorist.  On the other hand, the government had demonstrated an almost limitless capacity for incompetence and for creating programs that exacerbate the very problems they were established to cure.  There have been several stories that have exposed fraudulent voting on the small scale and demonstrate that there is a problem that should be addressed.  However, this story proposes that as much as 4.3% of the votes in the 2008 presidential race were illegally cast.  Of course, Obama won by 10 million votes so even factoring out those 5.7 million votes leaves him the victor.  The offered 3.6 million illegal votes for 2012 put Obama on somewhat shakier ground but still the likely winner.  The proposed size of the illegal voting is gargantuan, far beyond what seems reasonable.  How could it possibly be this bad and yet widely unknown?  If it is this bad, one could understand that government would not want this level of incompetence to be publicized.  Still, the sniff test says this has to be crackpottery, especially since it plays into Trump's claim that he would have won the popular vote except for all the illegal votes.   But this comes from Harvard, a source not likely to intentionally feed a narrative mostly floated by Republicans.

 

The data for the Cooperative Congressional Election Study is available for download here.

Look into My Crystal Ball

Just over two months ago, I predicted that the Republican would win the 6th District of Georgia.  Tonight, Karen Handel defeated Jon Ossoff in the runoff.  In truth, it wasn't much of a prediction.  A heavily Republican district elected a Republican.  What a surprise.  Thanks to vast sums of money or the approval ratings of the president, it was closer than it might otherwise have been.  However, I was incorrect in saying that Reuters would only provide a colorless two sentence summation of the results.  Though Republicans have won four special elections since the Orange Overlord was inaugurated, the AP managed to paint the margins of victory as portending future doom for the Republicans:

Republicans are claiming momentum ahead of the 2018 midterms, but each race was much closer than expected for the four districts.

Next time, the Republicans are toast.  Be of good cheer, Democrats, this winning can't continue much longer.  Yes, the AP is a totally unbiased news organization.

 

With the pathetic legislative accomplishments, it is clear that the Republicans could be in serious trouble if they don't achieve something.  The only positive that the GOP currently has is that the alternative is the Democrats.

 

Why isn't everyone celebrating that the woman won?  I think she may be the first woman to win the 6th District in Georgia.  That's historic!  Of course, such 'firsts' are only important if accomplished by Democrats.  No one cares that Mia Love was the first Haitian American and first black female Republican elected to Congress, nor that she was the first Black American elected to Congress in Utah.  Only the achievements of Democratic women are worthy of note.

To Heckle or Not to Heckle?

A standard tactic has been to infiltrate a speech or rally with partisans who would, once the speaker began, jump up and heckle.  Security would soon seize the person and escort them out of the event.  The speaker would resume and the next partisan would jump up and heckle.  In some cases, someone would rush the stage and try to take away the microphone.  If violence against the heckler could be provoked, all the better.  Eventually, all the infiltrators would be weeded out but the constant delays and interruptions might lead to a shortened or cancelled speech or frustration among the audience that they might not be willing to attend future events.  This has been almost universally a tactic of the left.

 

The other night, the right decided to try give it a try.  Laura Loomer rushed the stage at Shakespeare in the Park where Julius Caesar - who bears an uncanny resemblance to Donald Trump - has been assassinated nightly.  She screamed, "You are all Nazis."  She was arrested and taken away.

 

Andrew Klavan is upset by this and he makes a good point.  The right cannot defend free speech by trying to squelch speech with which they do not agree.  Like it or not, the play is free speech.  On the other hand, the aggressor sets the rules.  If a fighter arrives to a fist fight and discovers that his opponent is armed with a club, is he wrong to get his own club?  If one party is unwilling to follow the rules, why is it incumbent on the other party to do so?  From Klavan's view, if both sides seek to squelch the other's free speech, free speech suffers and may be stamped out.  Then again, if both sides are using the tactic, a truce might result in a status quo ante for free speech (i.e. no more heckling or disrupting each other's events).  The right has generally followed Klavan's preferred tactic and the heckling and disruptions of right-leaning events have escalated to Berkeley and Middlebury.  Among the commenters, many railed that Loomer was exercising her free speech and get back to them when a Berkeley-like riot is staged by the right.

 

Is it better to lose with your principles intact or win with them broken and in need of repair?  Lincoln breeched the Constitutional limits on several occasions in order to win the Civil War.  The damage he inflicted to the Constitution is still felt to this day but he saved the Union.  Was it worth it?  At this point, I would have to side with Klavan.  The Republicans secured both houses of Congress and the Presidency without disrupting Democratic rallies, speeches, and mock assassinations.  Why start now?

The Second English Civil War has Begun?

There are reports that a clean-shaven white man drove a van into a crowd of Muslims who had just left evening prayers in London.  There are two probable explanations.  First, the man is not Muslim and had decided to get 'payback' for the multiple attacks in recent weeks.  Second, the man is Muslim and viewed the Muslims from this particular mosque as hypocrites.  The first of those two options is more likely.  If so, what does that portend?

The British government has been hapless in addressing the long-standing and growing issue of domestic Islamic terrorism.  Worse, in the wake of every attack, the politicians defend Islam with claims that it is a religion of peace.  Those claims have worn thin.  The attacks are increasing in frequency and each new attacker proves to be a known wolf whom the government had investigated and set free.  One of the June 3rd attackers - Khuram Shazad Butt - had appeared on a documentary last year called The Jihadis Next Door but he was somehow still on the loose to inflict death and mayhem.  The government has demonstrated not only an inability to protect the citizens but an unwillingness to do so because recognizing the cause would be politically incorrect.

 

Islamic-based attacks in England this year:

March 22: 5 killed, 29 injured

May 22: 22 killed, 119 injured

June 3: 8 killed, 48 injured

 

Islamic-based attacks in European countries this year:

England: 3 attacks, 35 killed, 196 injured

France: 7 attacks, 4 killed, 6 injured

Germany: 3 attacks, 2 killed, 1 injured

Italy: 2 attacks, 4 injured

Russia: 4 attacks, 20 killed, 50 injured

Sweden:1 attack, 5 killed, 14 injured

 

With all that in mind, some idiot decided to take matters into his own hands and start killing Muslims in retaliation.  More such idiots will appear with each new terrorist attack.  The utter failure of a feckless government to address the problem, even deny the source of the problem, has left a desperate population with no recourse.

 

Islam and Western values are not compatible but to admit that would be to also admit the goal of multiculturalism is a failure.  The dream of multiculturalism is a belief that many cannot let go even as it destroys their culture and kills them.

Legislating Pronouns?

Justin Trudeau has announced the "Great news" via twitter that a bill has passed the Canadian Senate that criminalizes discrimination on gender identity or expression.  Professor Jordan Peterson, a fierce critic of the bill, claims that it will infringe on free speech.  Last year, he very openly declared that he would not be coerced into using preferred gender pronouns.  Peterson stated:  I will never use words I hate, like the trendy and artificially constructed words "zhe" and "zher."  The University of Toronto responded with warning letters but, so far, no formal disciplinary action.

 

If Bill C-16 is signed into law, will it be considered discriminatory to refer to a biologically female student who identifies as a male as 'she' or 'her?'  If Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner were to vacation in Canada, would it be a crime to say, "He visited Montreal?"  Those are just the tip of the iceberg.  There are a vast array of non-traditional pronouns that date back to the 70s: E, Ey, Hu, Peh, Per, Thon, Ve, Xe, Yo, Ze (which comes with a trio of possessive variants: hir, mer, or zir) and Zhe.  Could failure to keep track of everyone's preferred pronoun result in prosecution?  In the case of Peterson, who has preemptively declared that he will not use them, he may now be in legal jeopardy if he persists.

 

You will use the words that the government has decreed or suffer the consequences.  Of course, what I'd like to see in the wake of this foolishness would be for wave after wave of non-traditional pronoun people confronting Muslims to see which side the government takes.  In the US, no Muslim baker has been driven out of business by an outraged media and malicious lawsuits.

It Comes at Night

The movie opens with Bud having difficulty breathing.  He has some mystery illness.  While wearing gas masks and rubber gloves, Paul (Joel Edgerton) - Bud's son-in-law - and Travis - his grandson - roll him into the woods in a wheelbarrow, shoot him in the head, and burn his body.  The family lives in a large house in the woods with all the windows and doors - except one - boarded.  There is a sickness in the world and that is about all the family in the remote cabin knows.  Soon after Bud has been buried, someone breaks into the house.  They catch Will, who claims he is looking for water for his family.  After thoroughly interrogating Will, Paul is sufficiently satisfied that Will is telling the truth.  He helps Will retrieve his wife and son.

 

The title is misleading.  Many reviewers on IMDb were very disappointed in this film because nothing comes at night, except maybe an increasing sense of paranoia.  The movie does not seek to explain the strange sickness, its origins, or means of transmission.  This is a movie about survival and trust.  A stressful situation pushes all to be suspicious and do what would be unthinkable in other circumstances.  This is a character study.  It is a suspense thriller that plays like a horror film, but isn't really a horror film.

 

The movie has buckets of tension.  The most tension comes with Travis's nightmares, in which he sees his cabin mates with the sickness or sees himself walking in the woods at night.  Will is very imaginative but it is generally very dark - his drawings are nightmarish.  Perhaps it is his nightmares that come at night?

 

Not really a horror fan and generally not a fan of Edgerton, I entered the film with low expectations which were exceeded.  It's a dark film that doesn't go for an easy resolution.  Wonder Woman was a lot more fun.

 

Green Profiteer

As any regular reader knows, I'm a fan of Elon Musk.  He thinks big and somehow manages to achieve great things.  I am mostly interested in SpaceX but he is also noted for his Tesla cars, the proposed Hyperloop, and underground tunnels to relieve traffic gridlock.  He is now in the solar panel business thanks to a merger with Solar Roof.  He has big, transformative ideas.  However, he also spouts the gospel for global warming, referring to it as a 'crisis.'  It is interesting how a move away from fossil fuels would be immensely beneficial to a man who sells electric cars (Tesla), solar paneling, and alternative transportation systems (Hyperloop).  Everyone who can be scared away from fossil fuels becomes a lifelong customer for his products.  Does he really believe in man-made climate change or is he jumping on a useful hoax that will improve his profit margin?  Decades of predictions on the subject have failed to pan out but he remains a true believer?  Politicians always sell a tax increase or a government power grab by appending 'for the children' to the pitch.  Businesses now use 'sustainable' and 'green' in much the same way.

Bosch, Season 3

LAPD Detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) has returned and his troubles have multiplied.  His last case, the murder of an Armenian priest, has ended in a mistrial and the DA is not inclined to try again.  A drug-addicted veteran has been murdered in his RV and some graffiti hints that there was a witness.  A movie director has been accused of murdering an actress and Bosch was the arresting detective; he must work with Assistant DA Anita Benitez to assemble the case and the relationship isn't always professional.  A bicyclist is terrorizing Korea town, stealing cell phones, cars, and even gunning down citizens.  The case of his mother's murder may not be as solved as he thought it was.  His ex-wife having relocated to Hong Kong, Bosch's daughter is living with him and, worse yet, has a driver learner's permit.  The story rolls out in 10 episodes and ends with some glaring loose ends.  The pieces are already on the table for next season and I have to wait a year for it.  Dang! 

 

The support characters get little side stories that are developed to varying degrees.  Lt. Grace Billets is testing for captain, Bosch's partner has to quell concerns regarding his safety to his ex-wife and two kids.  Acting-Chief Irving is still mourning the death of his son which has resulted his wife leaving him.  He is pondering a move to another city though the newly elected mayor wants to confirm him as Chief of Police.  Chief Irving is again the most interesting of the support characters.  Lance Reddick can do the best stern rectitude in his sleep; he's great in everything: check out his intense toy store manager.

 

One annoying thing was that he ran into another ex-cop gone bad.  Just last season, he tangled with Carl Nash and his crew of crooked cops.  This time it's Rudy Tafero, who is a pansy compared to Nash.  Obviously, cops make for great adversaries since they know the way cops think but using the same card in two consecutive seasons made it seem like they were running low on material.

 

Detective Santiago "Jimmy" Robertson (Paul Calderon) was the best addition to the cast.  Like Bosch, he is a cop with lots of experience but operates differently.  He is investigating the murder of a man that Bosch had tried to put away years before.  There are indications that Bosch may have been involved.

 

The series is carried by Welliver.  He is an unflappable, intense, unrelenting jerk who holds a lot of anger in check.  A bit of that fury seeps out from time to time but he has it under control.  He is a man who is easy to admire but hard to like.  That's quite a balancing act for Welliver and he does it very well.

 

Great show and I look forward to the next set of 10 episodes. 

President Held to Higher Journalistic Standards?

Before the news of the London terror attack was confirmed, President Trump retweeted a headline from the Drudge Report about a van mowing down 20 people.  NBC was quick to point out that the news was unconfirmed.  Russia collusions anyone?  That still hasn't been confirmed but has nonetheless been front page news for months.  How many unconfirmed stories - often provided by anonymous sources via leaks - have been reported and then proved false?  Trump has a rocky relationship with facts and truth but the news media are no better.  It would be nice if the media practiced the standard that they are demanding of Trump.

"This is for Allah!"

Another London attack in which some people were run down and others were "stabbed indiscriminately" by men claiming that it was "for Allah."  Doubtless, we will soon hear pronouncements that this has nothing to do with Islam and warnings that there must be no backlash against Muslims.  These crazies are perverting the peaceful message of Islam during the holy month of Ramadan.  As it is Ramadan, let's ponder some of the peaceful passages in the Koran:

 

48:29 Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and those who are with him are severe against disbelievers, and merciful among themselves.

 

Do you suppose the people who were run over and/or stabbed were disbelievers who required severity or "with him" and deserving mercy?

9:29 Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

 

Do the non-Muslim people of the UK feel themselves subdued or is more fighting required for them to pay the Jizyah (tax to practice non-Islamic religion) with willing submission?

9:73 O Prophet (Muhammad SAW)! Strive hard against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be harsh against them, their abode is Hell, - and worst indeed that destination.

 

Would running over those who do not believe in Islam be considered harsh?  Is it is a sin to stab those destined for Hell?

 

9:111 Verily, Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their properties; for the price that theirs shall be Paradise. They fight in Allah’s Cause, so they kill (others) and are killed. It is a promise in truth which is binding on Him in the Taurat (Torah) and the Injeel (Gospel) and the Quran. And who is truer to his covenant than Allah? Then rejoice in the bargain which you have concluded. That is the supreme success.

 

Did they fight in the name of Allah by killing others and being killed?

 

Islam is not a religion of peace.  Anyone who makes that claim is either ignorant of the above passages or lying.  How many more attacks accompanied by cries of Allahu Akbar will it take for political leaders and the news media to wake up to the links between Islam and terrorism?

Now That's Chutzpah!

Kathy Griffin had a press conference today in which she declared herself the victim, that she was being mistreated because - wait for it - she is a woman.  Yes, had Jim Carrey or Will Farrell held up a bloody head, they wouldn't be getting this kind of grief.  She held up a Trump's decapitated head and calls him the bully. 

 

"Gee, officer, I burned the cross in his yard because he was bullying me."  Yeah, that's gonna fly.

 

In her rambling, she declared that 'He broke me,' and thus blamed Trump for her current troubles.  Moreover, she says 'old white men' are trying to destroy her life.  Would that be like people on her side of the aisle who have sought to put bakers, photographers, and florists out of business because they acted in disapproved ways?  Turnabout is fair play.  A lot of people are upset at her cultural appropriation of ISIS beheading practices and think her life should be driven out of business.  She started this ball rolling and should take responsibility for it.  It's her turn to get put out of business.

 

Kathy's big problem is that it wasn't funny and, even though her fellow traveler's sympathize, the decapitated head is indefensible.  It's hard to defend Kathy without condoning the mock beheading.  The very people who accused Sarah Palin of inciting violence for a crosshair on Gabrielle Giffords' Arizona district cannot then excuse a bloody disembodied head.  Let's look at one of the people who accused Palin of inciting violence:

 

Watching the news? Congresswoman in AZ, who is ON Sarah Palin's crosshairs map was SHOT in the head 2day. Happy now Sarah?

Kathy Griffin @kathygriffin, 8 Jan 2011

 

Clearly, Kathy has shown Sarah how to up her game in the next election.  Pretend to kill the politician you oppose and then blame that person for the fallout that follows.  Now that's chutzpah.

Concrete Costs for Uncertain Returns

President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change today, citing that there were trillions in costs to the United States.  He pointed out that China, the top polluter, would be allowed to increase its share of pollution for another 13 years (gee, I wonder if that was a bribe to get them to sign?) but America has to start cutting immediately.  Let's see, we can increase pollution in China but not America and would like to build a new factory; where does that factory get built?  Like most global schemes, the goal is to pick America's pocket.  The US pays the largest share for maintaining the United Nations and the place votes against us on a regular basis.

The most outlandish attack was by billionaire Tom Steyer who accused Trump of a "traitorous act of war against the American people."  Oh, the hyperbole!  Forcing American taxpayers to subsidize the world's economies because of Al Gore's misleading movie and scores of climate models that have failed to predict the current state of the climate does not sound like treason against Americans.  In fact, it sounds more like putting American interests first.

 

The government that governs least, governs best.

Thomas Jefferson

 

International organizations are just another brick on the structure of global government, which will inevitably be oppressive as monopolies always are.  The powerful elites of the world truly hate that their citizens can vote with their feet and leave; global government will solve that.  However, selling the monopoly is always hard but years of trial balloons have come up with certain strategies to convince taxpayers to vote away their freedoms.  Global warming/climate change has been particularly effective.  If the uncooperative climate hadn't flat lined in the late 90s, it would be selling much better today.