Catalonian Independence

As a fan of federalism and local control, the idea of Catalonian independence sounds great.  The region has a its own language, Catalan, which I tried unsuccessfully to learn while in Barcelona.  All the signs are in both Spanish and Catalan.  With Spain having surrendered a large chunk of its sovereignty to the European Union, why can't Catalonia ditch the middleman in this arrangement and have its own representatives at the EU?

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

This is foundational to the United States and who are we to oppose others making the same decision?  If a people declare the intention to dissolve the bonds, then those wishing the bonds to continue need to make the case.  A majority vote to leave - whether held legally or not - does not happen in the response to good government.  Of course, if Spain allows Catalonia to go, the Basque country is next.  Freedom and centralized authority do not mix.

 

If Catalonia secures independence, I recommend an immediate withdrawal from the EU.  Don't trade Madrid for Brussels.

Russian Collusion Story Flips on its Head

It is now revealed that the Clinton Campaign and the DNC paid Fusion GPS for the Trump Dossier, the largely discredited 'intelligence' that sparked the story that the Trump Campaign colluded with Russia.  Of particular note, the British spy, Chris Steele, was paying Russians to assemble his dossier.  This brings up an obvious question: If the Russians were trying to get Trump elected, why produce a dossier that would hurt his chances?

 

During the campaign, the dossier made the rounds but none of the stories could be verified so no one jumped on the story.  After all, the polls showed that Hillary was a shoe-in and an unverifiable dossier was likely to hurt the media outlet that published it while not changing the election.  However, when Trump actually won, the Democrats knew they were in dire straits.  If Hillary had won, the surveillance and unmasking of Trump Campaign operatives would never have been revealed.  Now it was inevitable that these shenanigans would be made public and a cover story was needed posthaste!  Well, there was this Trump Dossier.  Bingo!

 

James Comey briefed Trump on the dossier and, amazingly, that briefing was immediately leaked to the media.   The dossier was now newsworthy, regardless of its validity.  Huh, that's convenient.  Comey's later actions in leaking memos of his meetings with President Trump for the specific purpose of getting an Independent Counsel named make this briefing and associated leak much more suspicious.

 

It sure looks like the deep state has gone to great efforts to derail Trump's presidency before his administration could expose this trail of questionable and probably criminal behavior.  Now the 2010 Uranium One deal that saw $145 million dollars 'donated' to the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton getting $500,000 to give a speech in Moscow look a lot more like collusion with Russia than the fiction to be found in the Trump Dossier.  That the US sold 20% of its uranium to Russia during the Obama Administration does not reflect well on President Obama either.  Many of the people in charge of investigating the Trump-Russia collusion are the very people who turned a blind eye when the Clintons were enriched by Russians.  There is a reason that it is called the swamp.

Pride in Victimhood

Heather Lind has accused George H W Bush of sexual assault in 2014.  There is a picture of the event included in the story.  So, a then 30 year-old Lind was 'assaulted' by the then 90 year-old wheel-chair bound Bush whose wife, Barbara, was in attendance?   And not just once!  No, he 'touched' her, told a dirty joke, and 'touched' her again.  All of this while being photographed!  Looking at the photo, I could see that he might have his hand on her backside.  Did Bush Sr. cop a feel or is he a frail old man who couldn't tell if he was touching her back or her butt?  Even accepting her story as true, she paints herself as a victim who was helpless against a wheelchair-bound nonagenarian.  Anna Strong would have handled it better.

The Florida Project

Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) is a 6 year-old living in Orlando, FL.  She lives with her mother (Bria Vinaite) at a lavender-painted hotel managed by Bobby (Willem Dafoe).  It is summer so Moonee and her little band of friends must find ways to entertain themselves.  To say that they are a gang of delinquents would be an understatement.  The movie opens with them spitting on a parked car at a neighboring motel.  The spitting continued until the car owner emerged from her motel room and confronted them, at which point they madly dash away.  Sadly, Moonee is just duplicating her mother who is a scammer, a prostitute, a thief, and foul-mouthed as well.  The movie is one long tragedy of child rearing occasionally interrupted by a humorous bit with Willem Dafoe.

 

Willem Dafoe is the only bright spot of this movie.  Had the trials and tribulations of a manager of a low-end motel in Orlando been the focus with Moonee and her mother as just one of them, this might have been a less odious movie.  Not only is the movie one long tragic case of a mother ruining her child, it fails to tell many of the stories it started.  What is the deal with Bobby and his son?  We see the son a couple of times and there is clearly a hinted at story that vanishes as soon as it is mentioned.  At another point, Bobby vanishes into Room 101 and the camera noticeably doesn't follow.  Is this his room at the motel?

 

Mostly hard to watch.  Best avoided.

Slipstream (1989)

The earth has suffered dramatic change which has wiped out the most of humanity and much of civilization.  Small pockets survive on the windswept surface.  Travel between these settlements is mainly done by light aircraft that surf the slipstream from place to place.
 

Matt Owens (Bill Paxton) is a drifter who travels the slipstream in his tiny plane, selling whatever he can to make a living.  He meets Will Tasker (Mark Hamill) at a small airport and offers to sell him some military hardware.  Tasker is a police officer and seizes a hand grenade from Matt's stash.  Matt storms off but soon learns that Tasker's prisoner is worth a fortune in bounty.  Fool that he is, Matt snatches the prisoner from Tasker and Bellitski (Kitty Aldridge) and takes to the air.  The chase begins.

 

The prisoner, Byron (Bob Peck), is an android that murdered his 'master' for reasons that are never explained.  As he travels with Matt, he proves to be a talented healer and a font of skills and knowledge.  Matt soon views Byron as a friend rather than a paycheck.

 

There is a travelogue quality to the movie as the characters stop in different enclaves of the remnants of humanity.  There is the airport at the beginning that has a truck stop feel to it.  Next, there is the smugglers' hideout where Matt keeps his meager stash of worldly possessions.  Montclaire (Robbie Coltrane) is the leader of the place.  Further along, they come to the cave-dwelling wind worshippers who are led by Avatar (Ben Kingsley).  Finally, there is an enclave of the old civilization, people living in a museum of the way the world was and hiding from what it has become.  Cornelius (F. Murray Abraham) is the leader here.

 

Though there is much to like, the movie never finds itself and leaves too many questions unanswered.  With Byron quickly becoming the protagonist, it likewise becomes important to explain why he killed his master.  Tasker becomes the villain of the movie but is never a villain.  With the possible exception of striking Cornelius, all his actions are justified in the pursuit of a murderer.  It is peculiar that he was chasing an android and was not armed with a weapon that could kill an android.  Really, Byron was only a prisoner if he consented to being a prisoner.

 

The acting is mediocre.  Mark Hamill is the best of the primary characters, playing a hard-bitten lawman.  The slicked back and bleached hair gave him an Aryan look, which made Luke Skywalker much more menacing.  Kitty Aldridge spent the film acting tough and failing.  She was not suited for the role and most of her tough talk comes off as hollow.  Bill Paxton is a bumpkin.  He constantly toots his horn despite an unending stream of failures and embarrassments.  The cluelessness goes on much too long.  Bob Peck transforms from apathy to joy to angel of vengeance in the story.  In the individual instances, he's fine but, as mentioned, his overall story arc is never satisfactorily detailed.  Why should I be happy that the murderer goes free?

 

An interesting premise that fell far below its potential.  Mediocre.

Blade Runner 2049

Officer K (Ryan Gosling) flies to some remote farm where he finds Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista), a replicant.  Though K is willing to arrest Sapper and take him in, Sapper decides to resist.  The brawl is vicious and K is unusually tough.  After he has dealt with Sapper, K notices a flower next to a dead tree.  His scanners show a crate buried.  He calls for a dig team and then reports back to HQ.  It turns out that K is a replicant and must pass a personality test to demonstrate he is still working inside parameters.

 

The Tyrell Corporation collapsed shortly after the events of the original movie and was purchased by Niander Wallace.  Wallace has discovered that Tyrell made a replicant that could sexually reproduce!  Her name was Rachel.  The movie is a competition between Wallace's top lieutenant, Luv, and Officer K to find the offspring of Rick Deckard and Rachel.

 

Harrison Ford doesn't appear for an hour and a half, so Gosling has to carry this film.  Not being a Gosling fan, I'd say he fell short.  It was interesting that the main character is a replicant and his primary love interest is a hologram.  This was kind of interesting and one finds Joi (Ana de Armas) to be enjoyable.  However, this turns on its head when K runs into a 3D add for the Joi home companion; she was just a well-designed program, nothing more, and yet he had invested himself in her.  Sad revelation.  However, he's a replicant and has no soul.  Really sucks the meaning out of the relationship.

 

Though I had been very excited for the release of the original Blade Runner (1982), I was indifferent when I finally saw it.  Deckard was actually bad at his job and the pacing was glacial.  Officer K is better at the job than Deckard but the pacing has not improved.

 

Wait for this to come to Netflix or cable.

Russian Collusion? I'll Show You Some Russian Collusion

The Russian collusion story has dragged on for months with nothing really to it.  The latest story is that Russia bought adds on Facebook and maybe swung the election.  Um, Russian ad purchases amounted to $100,000 or so.  Hillary's campaign and associated groups spent $1.4 billion.  Either the Russian got the greatest return on investment ever or this is a nonstory.  Besides, how much did the Obama administration spend in an effort to unseat Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel?  Turnabout is fair play.  As interesting as this is, another Russian collusion story is brewing.

 

Back in 2009, Russia was using bribes and kickbacks to influence a nuclear trucking company in the US.  The FBI, under the direction of Robert Mueller (yes, the same Mueller who is investigating Russian involvement in the 2016 election), had evidence of Russian meddling.  Moreover, parties interested in selling Canada's Uranium One to Russia's Rosatom had given generous donations to the Clinton Foundation.  Moreover, Bill Clinton was given double his normal speaking fee - a tidy $500,000 - to give a speech in Russia.  Huh.  What an amazing coincidence.  Uranium One owned 20% of US uranium mines, a clear national security asset.  As such, the sale had to get the approval of the State Department that was headed by... Hillary Clinton.  In her defense, Hillary says that she was not involved in the approval process.  Gee, a suspicious person would think that maybe all the money flowing into the Clinton Foundation from parties interested in the Uranium One sale was obviously a payoff.

 

Mueller is hopelessly conflicted.  The man who let the last administration sell nuclear assets to Russia is now investigating how Russia torpedoed presidential run of the very person who may have greased the skids for that sale?  Not to mention the target of the investigation happened to fire his friend, James Comey.  And James Comey admitted that he leaked memos to a friend with the expectation that the exposure of those memos would force the naming of a special counsel, none other than his buddy Robert Mueller.

 

The deep state will ignore the crimes and misdeeds of establishment elites but seek to destroy outsiders on the flimsiest grounds.  If Trump were guilty of every Russian collusion story leveled at him, it would be small potatoes in comparison to the sale of 20% of US uranium holdings to none other than Russia.

Happy Death Day

Tree (Jessica Rothe) wakes up in a dorm room to be greeted by Carter (Israel Broussard).  Ashamed that she got drunk enough to find herself with this guy, she quickly dresses and heads back to her sorority house.  Along the way, she meets a lot of people who dislike her.  That night, on her way to a party, she is murdered!

 

Tree wakes up in a dorm room to be greeted by Carter.  Ashamed and somewhat confused, she heads back to the sorority house and suffers deja vu the entire time.  That night, on her way to a party, she takes a different route.  While making out with a handsome frat boy, she is murdered!

 

Tree wakes up screaming!

 

The movie is Groundhog Day meets Scream.  Like Groundhog Day, the initial Tree is very easy to dislike.  As she tries to solve her murder - the murderer wears a mask - she realizes that people have reason to dislike her and she becomes a better person thanks to this discovery.  Where Bill Murray was never unlikeable in Groundhog Day - at least to the audience - Jessica Rothe was surprisingly easy to dislike.  As such, her transformation was more pronounced.

 

Though it is a horror film, the repeated resurrection takes all the horror out of it.  There are a couple of jump scares but it is more often funny than scary.  Fun movie.  Thumbs up.

 

Red Dwarf X

Red Dwarf is a British sci-fi comedy that premiered in 1988.  The Red Dwarf is a mining ship that suffered a catastrophic radiation leak that killed the entire crew with the exception of Dave Lister (Craig Charles), vending machine technician, 3rd class, who was in stasis as a punishment for brining a cat onboard.  As the ship was irradiated, it took 3 million years before it was safe to let Dave out of stasis.  In order that he wouldn't be lonely, his bunkmate, Arnold Judas Rimmer (Chris Barrie), was 'revived' as a hologram.  It should be noted that Rimmer was responsible for the radiation leak.  Dave's cat, cleverly named Frankenstien, survived the radiation and spawned a race of cat people who had lived on Red Dwarf but now only Cat (great name, that) remains.  Lastly, there is Kryten, an android recovered from a wreck in the premier of series 2.  No greater band of misfits has ever been assembled to explore space.

 

The 6 episodes of series X are comic gold.  Lister explores his father-son relationship, which is unusual since he is his own father.  The crew find themselves on Earth in 23 AD and meet Jesus!  Oh, the antics!  In a grand finale, the team must face a bloodthirsty band of humanity-hating simulants while armed with 2 forks and a pencil sharpener.

 

Despite a near 30 year run, there are only 73 episodes.  Every sci-fi trope is explored to its peak of hilarity.  Highly recommended.

 

The Establishment Protests

George W Bush has once again spoken his mind on the state of affairs.  Amazing that he was able to hold his tongue for 8 years while Barack Obama hammered him on everything from the state of US foreign policy to the state of the economy.  No more!  He needs to speak.  According to Bush, the forces of bigotry have been emboldened of late and he fears that the US is slipping toward white supremacy.  No names are mentioned but it's pretty clear who he is blaming.  Just the other day, John McCain criticized spurious nationalism.  Yes, the establishment is furious.

 

The source of all this nationalism and white supremacy nonsense is that Trump has instructed ICE, the Border Patrol, et al. to enforce the laws that Congress had passed and his predecessors had signed.  No new laws have been passed.  After decades of neglect, those laws appear draconian.  Amazingly, enforcing immigrations laws has long been a winning issue that neither party was interested in pursuing.  Bush sought to pass an amnesty - Path to Citizenship - and was shot down.  Bush's brother, JEB, described illegal immigration as an 'act of love.'  McCain is a big amnesty proponent except when he is running for re-election every 6 years.  Obama didn't even bother with Congress and enacted a limited amnesty via executive order: DACA.  The establishment doesn't like the voters and is importing new voters.

 

Bush is part of the establishment, a true believer in big government, which he termed 'compassionate' conservatism.  Moreover, he has personal reasons to dislike Trump, the man who easily squashed his brother's presidential run.  These are not the wise musings of a dispassionate statesman.  This is a member of the establishment trying to damage an outsider lest that outsider derail the deep state.

 

The rebellion against the establishment is a global phenomenon.  Brexit?  Catalonia?  The rise of the right in France, Germany, Austria, Hungary?  Trump is just the American version of this rebellion.  Remember, the establishment with all their Ivy League degrees managed to estrange the electorate to such a degree that the electorate voted for Trump!  Bush and his fellow scolds need to take a long look in the mirror to discover how we came to this point.