Words Mean Nothing

How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?  Four.  Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.

Abraham Lincoln

A young man in Canada was shopping for car insurance and didn't like the price.  So he asked how much it would cost if he happened to be a woman.  Well, the price dropped by over $1000.  With this bit of information, he conceived a brilliant plan.  He declared that he was a woman and is now saving $91 a month on car insurance.  Who needs Geico?  Here is one of the unintended consequences of the current insanity regarding sex.  Science is pretty clear on the male/female dichotomy but law has abandoned biology.  The insurance company should have quoted him the same price because saying a man is a woman doesn't make him a woman.

The Judiciary's Class War

This Glenn Reynolds' pamphlet posits that the US is divided into two classes: Front Row Kids and Back Row Kids.  The Front Row kids are "mobile, global, and well educated."  Back Row kids are more religious, not as well educated, and usually live near where they were born.  Those who become judges are almost exclusively Front Row kids and are likely to rule with a Front Row kid bias.  He lists a variety of rulings over the decades that have favored Front Row attitudes over Back Row views.  He holds that this is a problem.

 

The Front Row kid bias is a fairly new phenomenon.  Justices were once drawn from a variety of sources but now are almost exclusively graduates of Harvard or Yale (Ruth Bader Ginsburg attended Harvard but graduated from Columbia).  Hmm, this reminds me of blogs I've written about the Presidency and the Senate.  There is entirely too much elitism in the government today.  To resolve this problem, Reynolds holds that a wider net should be cast for potential nominees, not just the Ivy Leaguers.  Also, the justices should be made to ride the circuit again.  At one time, justices would serve on circuit courts between sessions; this would give them a better sense of the rest of the country rather than just the echo chamber of the East Coast Corridor.  Another thought is to make the judges an elective office, which would require an amendment.  He offers a pair of rulings that would have resulted in a very effective attack ad in an election.

 

It is a short read and available on Amazon.  Recommended.

 

Super Troopers 2

Thanks to an unexplained incident involving Fred Savage, the super troopers are now working in a variety of jobs outside law enforcement.  Mac (Steve Lemme), Rabbit (Erik Stolhanske), and Farva (Kevin Heffernan) work construction.  Thorny (Jay Chandrasekhar) has grown an impressive beard and works as a lumberjack.  Foster (Paul Soter) is still with Ursula (Marisa Coughlan), who is now chief of the Spurbury Police Dept.  Bleak as their professional lives look, Captain O'Hagan (Brian Cox) has invited them on a fishing trip in Canada.  The fishing trip turns out to be a ruse.  Governor Jessman (Lynda Carter) explains that a recent land survey indicates the Vermont border should be further north.  She needs a police force to handle the transition and thought they deserved a second chance.  Let the antics begin.

 

The antics are basically the same as the last movie.  There are pranks pulled on Farva (often painful), Rabbit is still the oft-abused rookie, Mac finds an opportunity to get naked, Thorny brags about his mustache, and they have ongoing run-ins with the rival police force, this time the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  It's fun but basically a rehash.  Even so, it is great to see the further adventures of the Super Troopers.  Thumbs up.

 

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Fred Rogers was not a sniper.  Fred Rogers did not wear sweaters to cover military tattoos on his arms.  In fact, Mr. Rogers was never in the armed services; he was a Presbyterian minister.  He went into television because he found the then current slate of kids' shows to be horrendous.  His first show, The Children's Corner (1955), introduced Daniel Tiger, King Friday, and many of the other puppets who were later featured in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (1968).  He disliked the noisy, fast-paced "bombardment" of cartoons and clown shows, which is why his was slow-paced and had many periods of silence. Fred Rogers comes across as nice incarnate which, it turns out, is how all the interviewees describe him.  However, on those occasions when he was cross, he would use the voice of Lady Elaine with his sons.  Funny.  Mostly a sentimental biography that is well done and gives a greater appreciation of Fred Rogers.  Almost makes you want to go watch a few old episodes of the show.  Almost.  :)

Good movie and recommended for those who remember watching Mr. Rogers.

 

What Counts More: Words or Deeds?

Just on Twitchy and saw this:

 

 

This is the problem with Never Trumpers: they have forgotten the Obama Presidency and their objections to it.  Ignore the blather and just look at the results.  Is the economy better or worse?  Has Rule of Law improved or not?  Employment numbers improving?  Better foreign policy or worse?  More federal regulations or fewer?  Better judicial nominees or worse?  One does not have to like Trump to see that - from the conservative/libertarian perspective - the country is better off with Trump than Obama.

 

However, if one pays attention to the blather and ignores the results, Trump is a catastrophe.  Obama has a mellifluous voice, a professorial demeanor, an aloofness that isn't standoffish, and a calm self-control that was just magnificent to behold.  The man has presence.  By contrast, Trump sounds like a goon from a mafia film, say 'yuge' and 'believe me' and other catch phrases ad nausea, and uses constant hyperbole for both praise and criticism.  So much hyperbole.  And demeaning insults.  Ugh.  He's a used car salesman compared to Obama's professor.  Based on these optics, the US is in a Dark Age.

 

Did the Helsinki Summit - especially the joint press conference where Trump was outwardly friendly to Putin - demonstrate that the president is a Russian puppet?  Looking only at blather, maybe.  What about actions?  Trump sent cruise missiles into Rusia's ally Syria, holding Assad to the red line that Obama ignored.  Also, Russian mercenaries in Syria were killed in American airstrikes.  Probably not something Putin wanted.  Trump has approved selling arms to Ukraine.  Oh, Putin can't want that.  US pipelines have been approved, putting more oil on the world market and thus eating into Russia's profits.  Russia needs its oil revenue.  Trump blasted Merkel for buying oil from Russia, suggesting she shouldn't be funding NATO's putative adversary.  Hmm, don't think Putin is keen on that.  Trump also approved drilling in ANWR, putting even more oil in the market.  Trump opened up fracking on federal lands.  Oil and natural gas are the cash cows of Russia and Trump is lifting all the roadblocks so that Americans will dominate that industry.

 

Let's take this words vs. deeds theme and test it.  Politifact ruled that Trump's claim of being tougher on Russia than Obama was Mostly False.  Here's the money quote from their ruling:

 

On a broader geopolitical level, there has been a significant degree of consistency between the Obama and Trump administrations in actual U.S. policy, and even a few examples where Trump has gone further than Obama did. That said, Trump’s own record of Russia- and Putin-friendly comments have sent contrary messages about U.S. policy toward Russia.

 

First sentence says that Trump has basically stuck with Obama's policies (DEEDS) and gone further in some cases (translation: tougher).  However, Politifact has ruled that his comments (WORDS) undermine his claim.  I long ago learned to ignore what politicians say (they lie) and judge them on what they do.  On that basis, Trump's claim is Mostly True.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Since the catastrophe of Jurassic World, the park was completely abandoned and the dinosaurs roam free.  However, a dormant volcano on the island is threatening to erupt, which will kill all the dinosaurs.  Testifying to Congress, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) suggests that nothing be done and the dinosaurs be allowed to go extinct again.  Elsewhere, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) has become a dinosaur rights activist, citing the Endanger Species Act.  Yes, really.  Just when it looks like the dinosaurs will die off and stop the all-too-predictable disasters where dinosaurs eat park visitors, Ben Lockwood (James Cromwell) - a former partner of John "We spared no expense" Hammond - summons Claire and outlines a plan to rescue the dinosaurs, placing them on an uninhabited island with no human interaction.  Claire immediately signs up.  However, in order to rescue the raptors, she will need to recruit Owen (Chris Pratt).  Apparently, they split not too long after the last film but she nonetheless succeeds in dragging him along on her folly.  On the island, Ken Wheatley (Ted Levine) is in charge of a band of mercenaries who are rounding up the dinosaurs.  The task gets notably easier when Claire signs onto the tracking system and provides coordinates for all the dinosaurs.  No sooner has Owen managed to lure Blue the Raptor to him than the double-cross kicks in.  Abandoned in the island's jungle as the volcano erupts, Owen, Claire, and Franklin (Justice Smith) must find a way to escape.  The second half of the film has the bad guys selling the recovered dinosaurs for millions of dollars to international buyers.  Of course, some of the dinosaurs - notably the most dangerous one - escape and wreak havoc.  No, that's not a spoiler.  It was inevitable.

 

Having resurrected many species that had been extinct for millions of years, one can't help but wonder why everyone is so worried about them going extinct again.  They can just be reincarnated again.  On another topic, why don't the mercenaries carry guns than can kill dinosaurs?  They always have guns that just annoy them and tranquilizer darts that work only if the plot requires them to work.  Where's the elephant gun or it's new variant, the dinosaur gun?  Why are they always unprepared for an escaped dinosaur?  It gets old.  By the end of the movie, our 'heroes' have saved the dinosaurs and let them loose somewhere in Northern California.  Among the rescued dinosaurs are a T-Rex and a velociraptor.  That's terrific.  This should work out just peachy.  I'm sure they will live in peace with the local population.  Much better than letting them go extinct again.  Sigh.

 

The movie is full of action, loads of action.  Buckets and buckets of topflight CGI action.  It is also spilling over the brim with stupid.  Oh, so much stupid.  Probably the most egregious error: the island is doomed and the US government has declined to save the dinosaurs.  And it also has declined to even see if anyone else tried to save them.  When a ship full of highly dangerous dinosaurs heads to the US coast, no US Navy, no Coast Guard, no interdiction at all.  Sure, why not.

 

The movie concludes with Dr. Malcolm warning about genetic tinkering and that the genie is out of the bottle.  Jurassic World III: Rise of the Planet of the Dinosaurs opens in 2021.  Skip this one.

Ant-Man and the Wasp

After Scott (Paul Rudd) successfully returned from the quantum realm in the last movie, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) told his daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) that it may be possible to recover Janet (Michelle Pheiffer).  He dusted off some old plans for a quantum tunnel.  Fast forward to the present, Scott is on house arrest for his involvement in Captain America: Civil War.  He is only a few days from being released from house arrest when he has a bizarre dream of meeting Janet in the quantum realm and playing hide and seek with a very young Hope.  The following morning, he is abducted by Hope and Hank.  They think he is quantumly entangled with Janet and can lead them to her.  However, there are obstacles, including a phasing villain called Ghost, a well-connected dealer of ill-gotten high technology, FBI Agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Park as a hilariously G-Rated character), and Scott's comically bumbling crew: Luis (scene stealing Michael Pena), Dave, and Kurt.

 

Much like Thor in Ragnarok, Scott becomes more of a comic figure.  He was really quite brilliant and resourceful - see his skills in breaking into Hank's house and stealing the suit - but is now often clueless and needs everything explained.  He suffers a lot of slapstick from a malfunctioning suit that leaves him too big or too small.  He too often comes across as a hapless but charming loser rather than a hero.  By comparison, Wasp is infallible.  Hmm.

 

Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins) was a strange villain as he had no powers at all, just lots of goons to be rapidly dispatched by Ant-Man, Wasp, or Ghost, depending on the needs of the moment.  Burch takes over from Paxton (Bobby Cannavale) who returns as a minor ally rather than adversary.

 

The mass issue is even worse in this movie.  Hank carries around an array of shrunken vehicles that should have their normal weight if all that happens is the space between atoms is decreased.  The ten story building should sink into the earth once compacted to the size of a suitcase.

 

The mid and post-credit scenes play into the 'Snappening' of Avengers: Infinity War and provide a dark ending to a comparatively light and comic movie.

 

Fun movie.  Go see it.

 

More Pointless Indictments

Does anyone think that the American military is not actively hacking networks in Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Turkey, and countless other nations?  If they aren't, I am disappointed in US intelligence.  Should we extradite to these countries if they indict our hackers?  Obviously not.  This is pure idiocy.  Of course they are hacking us and we are hacking them.  These same indictments could be applied to most of our international adversaries and probably many of our allies.  This is what intelligence agencies do.  Just think of James Bond: he crosses borders illegally, breaks into secure locations, steals secret plans, assassinates enemy spies, and so forth.  This is not a court fight.  The only reason these bogus indictments exist is to feed the Russian Collusion narrative.  After all, if we can indict Russian hackers, why not indict the Russian soldiers who shot down an airliner over Ukraine?  Maybe we can indict the North Koreans who hacked Sony and put their extradition on the list of items for the next summit.  Then we can indict the Chinese hackers who stole American technology.  Foreign policy by indictment.

Maybe the Russians went to the equivalent of the FISA court in Moscow and got a warrant to hack US servers in much the same way that the FBI got a warrant to investigate Russian links to Trump's campaign.  Heck, look at what Snowden exposed on how the US government hacks its citizens but I should care about Russian hackers.  Ha.

The End of NATO?

President Trump openly and undiplomatically hammered NATO members for failing to pay the portion of GDP toward defense that the treaty specified.  The US has shouldered the majority of European defense since the end of World War II.  Of course, NATO was formed as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, which collapsed over a quarter of a century ago.  Why not declare victory and go home?

 

With Russia supposedly a rising power, the US needs to stay in Europe to protect the West from Putin.  Failure to do so just proves that Trump is Putin's stooge!  Really?  It might come as a surprise that the German economy is more than 2 1/2 times the size of Russia's.  The UK is 2.1 times as large.  France's economy is double.  Italy is 1.5 times the Russian economy.  As a whole, the European Union has a Gross Domestic Product that is 13 times the size of the Russian economy.  The EU can easily dominate Russia but has instead mostly disarmed to maintain generous nanny states, outsourcing defense to the US taxpayer.  To top it off, we have trade deficits with most of them.  With allies like these...

 

27 years after the Cold War ended, there is no reason for the United States to still be defending Europeans from an economic backwater.  Worse, Europe is funding Russia by getting 40% of its energy from Putin.  Germany's dependence on Russian oil and gas is higher still.  Russia is a vital trade partner to modern Europe but NATO was formed to be anti-Russian.

 

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.  Government programs, once launched, never disappear.  Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

Ronald Reagan

 

NATO is an expensive ($946 billion in 2017) relic of the Cold War, a governmental bureaucracy that completed its purpose but failed to close up shop.  Let's stick around for the 'attack on one is an attack on all' but nix the shared funding bit.  It's one thing to agree to come to your neighbor's aid if he is attacked and another to be unpaid security while he has a party.  The EU is a nuclear power (UK and France) and can afford to pay for its defense.  We'll be there if needed but it's time for them to pay the day to day costs.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ronald_reagan_147680

#WalkAway

There is a movement that may or may not be significant.  Brandon Straka, a man who claims that he is a liberal, has left the Democratic Party because he retains his liberal beliefs and thinks the party has abandoned them.  Between Facebook and YouTube, he's had about 2 million views.  As a good chunk of those are probably Republicans who are giddy to see erosion to the Democrats' support, this may be more hype than trend.  However, since it has been clearly shown that Bernie was cheated by the DNC during the primaries and that 12% of his voters went to Trump instead of Hillary, maybe this is serious.  The more shrill the Democrats get regarding Trump and Republicans, the more they may drive away the moderate Democrats and Independents.  Whether it is much ado about nothing or a major political shift will be determined in the midterm elections.  Blue Wave = it was nothing, Status Quo = concern for Democrats, Red Wave = panic for Democrats.  Of course, four months is an eternity in a campaign and what is happening now may be little more than a footnote come November.

 

To make matters worse, the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the Democratic Socialist as a party rock star moves the party further left.  Socialism may seduce young voters who don't know better but older voters remember the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and have seen the impact of socialism on Venezuela.  Promising handouts and free college is not the best of platforms during a good economy.

 

History is on the Democrats' side.  Typically, the out of power party makes gains in the off year election but the polling has tightened considerably and off year elections tend to have lower turnout, which benefits Republicans.  It is almost certain that Republicans will add to their majority in the Senate (Democrats have more senate seats up for grabs this year) but the House is certainly in play.

Ocean's Eight

Fresh out of prison, Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), cons her way into a luxury hotel room with recently purloined beauty products.  After pampering herself, she meets her former partner, Lou (Cate Blanchett) and outlines a jewelry heist.  Debbie has spent her five years in prison planning the heist and is sure it will work.  They look for a team.  They recruit a down-on-her luck fashion designer: Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter).  They need a jeweler: Amita (Mindy Kaling).  They need a computer hacker: Nine Ball (Rihanna).  Next is the pickpocket: Constance (Awkwafina).  Finally, they need a fence: Tammy (Sarah Paulson).  Yes, that is only 7 because 8 joins as a twist after the heist.  Of course, there is also the mark, noted actress Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway).  There are some appearances by members of Ocean's 11, such as Reuben (Elliot Gould), so this isn't an all-female reboot (e.g. Ghostbusters) but a continuation with a different member of the Ocean family.  Debbie is Danny's (George Clooney) sister.  Danny is purportedly dead though Debbie has some doubts when she visits his grave at a mausoleum.

 

As heist movies go, it is all right.  It felt a little too smooth.  The inevitable bumps were resolved entirely too easily.  I was particularly annoyed when Nine Ball's younger sister - who looked like she was 12 - solved the magnetic lock problem.  It was too easy and the stakes were too small.  The characters were never in any trouble.  Even after the heist, the insurance investigator (James Corden) knows that Debbie masterminded the whole thing but happily takes down the patsy she has framed.  Of course, the patsy is the one who sent her to jail so he deserves it.  Ha ha.  There is another twist that completely undercuts the risks they took to smuggle the jewels out of the gala.

Johnny Hooker: He threatened to kill me.
Henry Gondorff: Hell, kid, they don't do that, you know you're not getting to 'em.

That's an exchanged from The Sting (1973) that has always stuck with me.  By that standard, Ocean's Eight never got to them.  It never got to me either.  It is just okay. 

Return to Sender

Therese Patricia Okoumou immigrated to the United States from the Democratic Republic of Congo and joined the Social Justice Warriors the next day.  She has filed multiple lawsuits against employers and now she is a regular on the #Resist circuit and wants ICE to be abolished.  She is the poster child of why we need better screening for immigrants.  Her latest antics had her on the Statue of Liberty on the 4th of July.  This was not her first time getting arrested.  With all this resisting and complaining, one wonders why she migrated here?  If the USA is so bad, go back to Congo.  Or pick a different country.  With immigrants like Okoumou, is it any wonder why Americans have soured on immigration?

The Good the Bad the Weird (2008)

Here is a Korean version of the Sergio Leone classic The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.  The movie takes place in Manchuria during World War II.  There is a treasure map that is purported to show the location of a hidden treasury of the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912).  Chang-yi (the Bad) has been hired to steal the map.  Tae-goo (the Weird) stumbles upon the map and flees with it.  Do-won (the Good) is a bounty hunter who is after Chang-yi; he knows Chang-yi is after Tae-goo and thus keeps close to him, essentially joining forces: Good and Weird.  That is about as far as the story goes.  There are twists and turns with plentiful action and often slapstick comedy at Tae-goo's expense.  Tae-goo is a goofy hapless rogue who is easy to like.  He had Jackie Chan charm without the martial arts prowess.  Chang-yi is cold-blooded villain with an extra helping of nasty.  He kills his patron, he kills his followers, and he even shoots a woman because she is screaming in terror.  Though he gets all the money he could possibly need about half way through the film, he continues on his path.  There is more between him and Tae-goo than the map; revenge drives him.  Do-won is cool gunfighter personified, which made him the least interesting of the trio.  Unlike Tae-goo and Chang-yi, he has no backstory.  Of course, like the movie upon which it is modeled, the trio all find themselves at the X on the treasure map and face off in a three-way gun battle.  It is a big letdown by comparison.

 

There are lots of funny scenes and entertaining action but the overall movie is mediocre.  The action is too often over the top and the ending is unsatisfying.

Conservatives Against Trump

Max Boot - a long time Republican - has a piece in the Washington Post where he calls for the destruction of the Republican Party.  Comparing it to Germany and Japan in the wake of World War II, he says it must be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.  Gee, that's not just a little hyperbolic.

The straw that broke the camel's back is the separation of children from parents on the border.  Of course, the separation 'policy' dates back to the 90s and has been reconfirmed over the last 20 years.  This has been happening for years but a picture (taken during the Obama Administration!) was published with kids in cages and suddenly this blew sky high.  Boot should know this.  In fact, he probably does but this makes a good pretext for his continuing Trump hatred.  Basically, it boils down to criminals go to jail and their kids are put in protective services.  Should kids go to jail with their parents?  No.  Just like Americans, if you don't want to be separated from your kids, don't commit a crime that puts you in jail.  Duh!

 

I've long liked Max Boot - I own a couple of his books (Out of Order & War Made New) and definitely recommend them.  However, like George Will, he has somehow lost his way.  I don't know quite what it is about Trump that has driven so many staunch conservatives to support the increasingly socialist Democratic Party (e.g. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez).  Not resting his argument just on the child separation issue, Boot offers other reasons to vote Democrat:

"...a vote for the GOP in November is also a vote for egregious obstruction of justice

 

No example is provided; you just need to take his word on it.

 

...rampant conflicts of interest

 

No example is provided; you just need to take his word on it.

 

...the demonization of minorities

 

Trump has been hard on illegal immigration and that is often equated with anti-Hispanic because the vast majority of illegal immigrants are from Latin America.  Trump did indeed speak ill of MS-13 gang members, who deserve demonization.  Boot is embracing the Democrats tactic of conflating Trump's comments against MS-13 to all immigrants.

 

...the debasement of political discourse

 

Really?  How many times did Democrats accuse Republicans of being Nazis and racists?  Yes, Republicans have usually refrained from such talk even when Democrats accused them of being fascists, sexists, bigots, homophobes, etc.  I had a family member intimate that I might be racist because I opposed Obama.  Clearly, if Obama had been white, I would have been in favor of higher taxes, more regulation, and weak foreign policy.  The political discourse was debased decades ago but Trump is the first Republican President to punch back twice as hard.  Trump adopted the tactics of Democrats and none of the Washington Elite is going to forgive him for that.

 

...the alienation of America’s allies

 

Do you remember how Obama abandoned ally (Mubarak in Egypt) after ally (Poland & Czech Republic) after ally (Israel was always at fault and the Palestinians were blameless for 8 years) and tried to embrace enemy (Iran) after enemy (Russian Reset) after enemy (Cuba!), all to no avail?  Trump is trying to get NATO to pay their treaty obligations in defense; if that alienates them, they deserve it.  While Obama tossed allies overboard to the sharks, Trump insists allies do their part in swabbing the deck.

 

...the end of free trade

 

There is no free trade.  The US has trade deficits with most trade partners.  While the US moves toward free trade, our trade partners game the system to create a trade imbalance in their favor.  Trade with China is $375 billion in their favor, Mexico is $71 billion, Japan is $69 billion, Germany is $65 billion, and Canada is $18 billion.  He who pays the piper calls the tune.  The US is paying and if each of these deficits were cut in half, those nations would still be getting the better of the deal.  Trump is going to use his leverage (cf. The Art of the Deal).

 

...and the appeasement of dictators.

 

And you think the Democrats are the way to fix that?  The party that sided with the mullahs in Iran's 2009 Green Revolution and then gave billions in cash to the mullahs in the wake of the unenforceable and counter-productive Iran Deal?  The party that canceled a missile defense agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic to placate Russia?   The party that favored Hamas and the Fatah over Israel?

 

Like Will, Boot is a longtime insider who sees an outsider upsetting the apple cart.  Trump is like no president before.  Unlike most previous presidents, he has worked and thrived in the private sector.  The private sector will not long suffer detrimental policies and money-losing propositions.  If we are in deficit on trade, let's renegotiate.  If allies aren't paying their share (i.e. NATO dues), let's send a collector.  If regulations are choking economic growth, let's repeal them.  If conservatism is about limiting government, we haven't had it this good since Reagan.

 

If you think the boat is going the wrong direction, you try to correct course, you don't jump off the boat and yell "I hope you sink!"  This is what Will, Boot, and other Never Trumpers have done.

Cognitive Dissonance of George Will

Yet again, George Will has praised something that is only possible because Donald Trump is President.  In his latest article, he discusses how the Supreme Court has corrected an error it made 41 years ago when it ruled that non-union members could be coerced into paying agency fees since they benefit from the union's collective bargaining.  His tone indicates that this was a correction that was inevitable, much like Plessy vs. Ferguson (i.e. separate but equal).  However, the ruling was 5 to 4.  Huh.  Who were the five and who were the four?  Well, the 5 were justices appointed by Reagan (Kennedy), Bush I (Thomas), Bush II (Roberts and Alito), and Trump (Gorsuch).  The four were appointed by Clinton (Ginsburg and Breyer) and Obama (Sotomayor and Kagan).  What if, instead of Justice Gorsuch, we had an appointee from President Hillary Clinton?  How would this decision have gone in that case?  Almost certainly 5 - 4 in the other direction.

 

Trump is implementing policies more conservative than either George Bush or George W. Bush.  He is pushing issues that the Republican voters have requested for decades but the party has offered nothing but lip service.  Previous presidents have been very good at speaking but not very good at doing.  Trump has this reversed.  Of course, the old adage is to pay attention to what they do and not what they say.

Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts 2018

Dear Basketball: This love letter from Kobe Bryant to the game of basketball had mediocre sketch animation - like it incomplete and this was a working storyboard - and Kobe Bryant narrating.  It was a paean to Kobe himself, a long bragfest thinly disguised in love-of-game-made-me-great rhetoric.  This was the most difficult of the bunch to watch and yet it won the Oscar.  Wow, in the year of #MeToo, the 2003 rape accusation and out of court settlement didn't stop the Academy from giving the big prize to Kobe.

 

Garden Party: Frogs jump around an abandoned and overgrown garden.  Slowly, it becomes clear that something bad happened during the final party at this mansion: bullet holes, broken windows, an open safe.  At the end, a dead body bobs to the surface of the pool when the frogs accidentally turn on the fountains.  Though the animation is impressive, this is nothing but juxtaposing the comic antics of frogs with a crime scene.  Meh.

 

Lou: On a school playground, the kids are all called back to class and leave toys behind.  A mysterious figure zips through the playground, collects it all, and dumps it in the Lost and Found box.  Notable, the letters L, O, and U are missing from Lost and Found.  The mysterious figure proves to be the lost items: baseballs for eyes, jacket for body, baseball glove for a hand, etc.  When the kids come back out, Lou alerts the kids that the items are in the Lost and Found box.  Then a bully starts taking them and Lou has to teach the bully a lesson.  Animation is outstanding, which is no surprise since it is a Pixar production.  Cute.

 

Negative Space: A man demonstrates the process of properly packing a suitcase to get the most use of the space.  He explains how his father taught him and he used to pack his father's suitcase when he would go on business trips.  Odd though it was, he and his father had bonded on packing suitcases.  Today, he has packed a suitcase to attend his father's funeral.  Alone with his father who is laid out in the casket, his only thought is at all the wasted space.  Funny.  The animation is peculiar, appearing to be paper mache figures and settings.

 

Revolting Rhymes: The longest of the bunch at 29 minutes - the other 4 combined only amount to 25 minutes, it was also the best.  It tells a variant of some noteworthy fairy tales.  There are the 3 little pigs, Red Riding Hood, and Snow White.  The tale is told from the perspective of a wolf who seeks to correct the record while talking to a matronly woman in an unassuming diner.  She can't hold back a cheer when he tells the death of his nephew who tried to eat Red Riding Hood but she is later sympathetic to the wolf when the second nephew meets an untimely end trying to eat the third pig.  This is taken from a Roald Dahl story and is immensely entertaining.  It ends on a cliffhanger!  Highly recommended.