When Police Kill

Franklin Zimring, criminologist and law professor at UC Berkley, was a guest on EconTalk and they discussed his 2017 book, When Police Kill.  He posited that police are far too willing to resort to deadly force.  Far more people are killed by police than are executed after a conviction.  To resolve this, he suggested specific rules for police officers so as to reduce the number of civilian deaths.  For example, a suspect armed with a gun is a truly lethal threat but a knife or a bat is virtually never lethal according to the statistics.  Therefore, rules should be established for not shooting given certain circumstances.  If the officer does shoot, sanctions can be imposed and the police department can be sued.  Many civilians die because police continue to shoot.  If struck by one bullet, survival odds are good.  With each additional bullet, the odds of death go up.  Zimring proposes a stop shooting rule.  Zimring observed that NYC was a model to follow as the civilian deaths had fallen from 70+ a year in the 1970s to less than 10.  However, he doesn't detail what NYC did to improve the numbers.  Did NYPD institute his new rules?

Overall, I found his proposals to be mostly ludicrous.  The reason that bats and knives are rarely lethal to police officers is because the assailant brought a knife/bat to a gunfight.  If police must match threat level, the lethality of knives and bats will go up.  He puts most of the onus on the police to prevent civilian deaths but none on the assailants.  Gee, if you didn't rush the officer, fight with the officer, refuse to follow instructions, you would be just fine in 99% of the cases.  On the EconTalk webpage, the comments were almost all in opposition to Zimring's arguments.

Though the topic is clearly an important and timely one, Zimring is the wrong person to address it.  He came across as anti-police rather than someone out to improve policing.  His primary method of modifying police behavior was to expose them to substantial fines.  Police departments already get sued and it is the taxpayer who pays.

Generally, not an episode I would suggest.  I was mostly annoyed by it.  As mentioned, the commentary was almost entirely anti-Zimring and often more thoughtful than Zimring.  I got a better understanding of police shootings based on the commentary than from the podcast.

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

A pair of bushwhackers flee from a posse and find themselves in a peculiar Indian burial ground.  There is eerie howling that doesn't sound natural.  Suddenly, one is shot in the throat and the other flees for his life.  Eleven days later, he finds himself in the town of Bright Hope.  His manner attracts the attention of Sheriff Hunt (Kurt Russell).  As he tries to run, Hunt shoots him in the leg.  With the town doctor drunk, Mrs. O'Dwyer (Lili Simmons) is summoned to the jail to extract the bullet.  By morning, the prisoner, the deputy, and Mrs. O'Dwyer are missing along with half a dozen horses.  The stable boy is dead.  An unusual arrow is found and a local Indian identifies it as belonging to troglodytes, a savage band of cannibals who reside in the Valley of Starving Men.  Sheriff Hunt, Deputy Chicory (Richard Jenkins), John Brooder (Matthew Fox) and Arthur O'Dwyer (Patrick Wilson) set out to rescue the missing people.

Though the story has a horror element to it, it mostly plays as a standard western until the final act.  The four men who set our are not well-suited to the task.  O'Dwyer has a broken leg, the reason why he was still in town rather than herding cattle north to Wyoming with most of the town's other men.  Though urged to stay behind, he must try to rescue his wife.  Brooder is a dandy who kills without compunction and has a special dislike for Indians.  He is the best equipped of the group.  Sheriff Hunt is competent but has only nominal command over Brooder and O'Dwyer.  Chicory is an elderly fellow who talks endlessly, much to the irritation of his fellows.

As promised, the troglodytes are cannibals who speak by howling and keep their 'meals' alive until it's time to dine.  Their weapons are amazingly crude but lethal.  Of note, they use an animals jawbone as an axe, the titular bone tomahawk.

The movie has one particularly funny bit.  Brooder claims to be the smartest member of the posse.  When challenged on that by Chicory, he states that O'Dwyer and Hunt are married and Chicory is a widower.  So?  "Smart men don't get married."  QED.  :)

The movie is overlong and spends much of its time on the journey to the Valley of the Starving Men.  Though they encounter hazards along the way, it is never the troglodytes.  Imagine Aliens where three quarters of the movie is spent before the characters engage the aliens.  There is a lot of time spent on the interrelationships of the posse and not a lot of fighting the monsters.

Just okay.

Free Market Health Care

Anesthesiologist Kevin Smith was a guest on Econtalk.  He established the Surgery Center of Oklahoma in the late 90s.  The goal of the center was to offer posted prices for various surgical procedures.  Amazingly, by removing insurance and providing cash-only procedures, the surgery center costs a fraction of what it does under the predominant system. The repeated example during the discussion was a back surgery that was listed at $100,000 on the hospital bill. The insurance company 'negotiated' a payment of $13,000. Wow, that sounds like they did a great job. The surgery center provides the same procedure for $10,000. That is a tenth of the 'supposed' price and even 30% below the 'negotiated' price. How does any of this make sense?

According to Kevin, insurance companies take the 'savings' to their customers and then ask for a percentage. Thus, in the case of the back surgery, they 'saved' the client $87,000 and request 10% of the savings, $8,700. The client is still only paying $22,700 for a $100,000 procedure. It's still a deal, right? On the other side, the hospital can report $87,000 of uncompensated care to get money from government funding. An inflated list price benefits both the hospital and the insurance company.

Also noteworthy was the number of Canadians who travel to Oklahoma and pay for a surgery despite the fact that they have full coverage under the Canadian system. What's up with that? It turns out that a single payer system leads to long wait times. You can wait 3 months in Canada or come to Oklahoma.

Our health care cost structure is intentionally indecipherable because the complexity benefits insurance companies and some in the health care industry. Smith has no trouble luring surgeons to his center on a piecework basis; cash work pays better than the headache of Medicare, Medicaid, insurance submissions, etc. Smith holds that a movement toward free market health care is underway and will transform the health care industry.

Faster, please!

Brandon Straka

Just watched a YouTube video of Brandon Straka, founder of the #WalkAway movement.  I had blogged about the movement shortly before the 2018 midterms and, based on the results, figured it was more hype than grassroots movement.  What was interesting about the video was Brandon's backstory.  He had been a Democrat voter all his life and voted for Hillary in 2016.  He loathed Trump, especially for Trump's mocking of a disabled reporter.  Check it out here.  Brandon blasted Trump supporters with this incident, asking how they could support such a person.  One of those Trump supporters asked him to view this.  It turns out that this is something Trump does when criticizing people and had nothing to do with the disability.  This was Brandon's epiphany.  This was the moment when Brandon asked if the media was lying to him?  A long time fan of MSNBC, he now questioned what the network reported.  His belief system collapsed and #WalkAway was born.

That this small event should be the keystone to Brandon's politics is strange.  Trust, once broken, is hard to restore.  Once he questioned the reporting, he had to confirm the accuracy.  Of course, the Very Fine People Hoax only confirmed that the media lied about Trump, a lie that is still being told in the current presidential campaign.  Glenn Reynolds suggests that if you view the mainstream media as Democrats with bylines, you won't go far wrong.

Is #WalkAway a real movement now?  Maybe.  It didn't make a difference in 2018.  Will it in 2020?  Maybe.  There is also Blexit (Black Exit), the movement launched by Candace Owens to convince African-Americans to leave the Democratic Party.  Is it a real thing or just hype?  These and more questions to be answered in November.

Read the Transcript

Joe Biden has referenced the Very Fine People Hoax again.  If you read the transcript, not only does Trump explain who he meant by fine people, he also explicitly condemns Neo-Nazis and white supremacists.  This is exactly why he rants about fake news.

Check it out for yourself here.

According to Scott Adams, Joe Biden has either shown that he doesn't know it's a hoax (in which case he is too dumb to be president) or he does know and wants to divide the country for his electoral benefit (in which case he is evil and not fit to be president).  It is most likely the former.  Joe doesn't seem like the kind of guy who could Google it.  He probably takes the word of his handlers.

Mail-In Voting Fiasco

Many say that mail-in voting is no different than absentee voting.  Why all the panic?  Why will it be a disaster, Trump?  One needs to request an absentee ballot.  In fact, if everyone requested an absentee ballot under the current system, we could do mail-in voting already.

One must apply for an absentee ballot.  Once the request has been submitted, the ballot is provided and the voter can send it in before the deadline.  Easy peasy.  But note that first part: one must apply for the ballot.  Under the proposed plan for mail-in voting, ballots will be mailed en masse to registered voters.  I still get mail for the previous owners of this house; will I get a ballot for them?  Could I send it in?  Under the current system, only 60% of voters bother to go to the polls.  It is under 50% during non-presidential election years.  How much you want to bet someone will collect that 40% of mailed ballots and send them in?  The opportunity for fraud is staggering.  Then there is the problem of rejecting ballots and delayed counts, like in the NY primary.  You can't reject 20% to 30% of the mail in votes and then declare a winner in a close contest that will be accepted by the losing side.  Heck, it turned into a court case.  Remember how well it went when the court 'decided' the 2000 election.  Now, that's the ballots that arrived to be counted.  What about the ones that got lost by the post office?  Not likely?  Well, CBS ran a test.  On the first batch, 3% didn't arrive.  Well, that's not so bad.  On the second batch, 21% didn't arrive.  Oh, this is going to go great.

Given 40% apathetic voters with 'unused' ballots, plus 3% to 20% loss in the mail, plus 20% to 30% mail-in ballot rejection, I am totally going to trust whatever the results are.  Yeah, there isn't going to be any doubt about the results.  If the mail-in results overturn the polling station results, look for Scott Adams' civil war to commence soon after.

If it is safe enough to go to the grocery store, it is safe enough to go to the polls.  If you can't be bothered to either go to the polls or at least apply for the absentee ballot, you shouldn't vote.

Quiz for Low Info Voters

Scott Adams proposed a test to determine if one is a low-information voter.  Here are some of his suggested questions:

1. Did Trump colluded with Russia to rig the 2016 election?

2. Did the FBI colluded to overthrow the government?

3. Do you believe the Fine People hoax?

4. Has science proven that HCQ is ineffective for COVID and in fact is dangerous?

5. Do we already know which leaders did a good vs. bad job on coronavirus management?

6. Do you believe China is more of a threat or a partner?

None of these are opinion questions.  All have factual answers.  Have you answered them?  Okay, here are the correct answers, per Scott Adams:

1. No

2. Yes

3. No

4. No

5. No

6. Threat

Depending on how many you got correct, you may be a low information voter.  If you are a low information voter, expand your sources for news.

Yellowbeard (1983)

In 1687, Yellowbeard (Graham Chapman) captured the treasure of El Nebuloso (Tommy Chong) and his sidekick, El Segundo (Cheech Marin).  Soon thereafter, he was tossed into prison for tax evasion.  Twenty years later, he escaped to recover the vast treasure he had hidden on a Caribbean island.  Among those who try to follow him are his treacherous former first mate, Mr. Moon (Peter Boyle), and Commander Clement (Eric Idle) of the Royal Navy.

A mini-reunion of the Monty Python cast, Chapman and Idle were joined by John Cleese.  Cleese plays a blind man who has an uncanny knack of hearing every bit of news relevant to the plot.  Madeline Kahn appears as Yellowbeard's wife, Betty.  Betty drops the news that, just before Yellowbeard went to prison, she was pregnant with his son, Dan (Martin Hewitt).  Yellowbeard is not thrilled to hear that Dan is a gardener who has killed no one and committed no rapes.

The movie is mostly an excuse for a string of pirate-related skits.  There is a middle part that plays like Mutiny on the Bounty, which sees Captain Hughes (James Mason) set adrift in a longboat.  Mason was clearly on the downside of his career with this part although Mr. Prostitute (Greta Blackburn) was a hilarious addition to the crew.

Not a particularly good movie but it has its moments.  Though the titular character, Yellowbeard is mostly acting on the fringes of the story.  It is an ensemble piece and mostly follows the tale of Dan, who tends to be a hapless pawn.  Casting Peter Bull as Queen Anne was strange but funny.  I wonder what the opinion of Queen Anne is in England.  In this comedic telling, Lady Churchill (Susannah York) is the true ruler of England which is echoed in The Favourite.

The film is dedicated to Marty Feldman.  He died during the production, explaining his absence from the film's final act.

The Coming Civil Wars

Scott Adams has predicted that civil wars - yes, plural! - are coming.

Civil War # 1: The coming election is likely to be a disaster, by design.  Mail-in voting will provide for a huge amount of fraud and/or disenfranchisement.  Unless one candidate wins by landslide regardless of voting concerns, the losing side will go ballistic.  Mail-in voting increases the likely would of an unclear outcome and will lead to a contested election like 2000 where individual votes were argued based on the condition of the chad on the ballot.  That was in Florida only.  Now do that nationwide.

If Biden pulls out a win in the same manner of Al Franken in 2008 (i.e. after the initial count and first recount gave the win to his opponent, a 2nd recount 'found' votes that put Franken in office), we might see a civil war where red states secede.  Unlikely, but it has been a high-stress year; high stress can lead to crazy results.

If Trump wins by anything other than a massive landslide (unlikely), it will inevitably be declared a rigged election.  There will be claims of disenfranchisement or Russian collusion or Chinese collusion or whatever sounds good at the time.  That will probably happen even if Trump wins 50 states and the District of Columbia.  If it is less than a landslide (likely), Antifa and BLM will up their games.

Civil War # 2: The body camera footage of the George Floyd arrest has been released.  He had been placed in the back of the police car but struggled to get back out, saying he couldn't breath.  He was making claims about being unable to breath prior to being held on the ground.  That would obviously change what the officers thought when he continued saying it.  The likelihood that they are found not guilty just rose dramatically.  If we've had nationwide protests in the wake of Floyd's death, what will happen when the officers are acquitted?

Scott views these as coming and we should prepare.  He has been shown to be pretty good at predicting events.

Moral Decay

Back in 1976 and 1980, I recall the question as to whether a divorced man could be elected president.  Ronald Reagan's first wife divorced him and he remarried.  Divorced was a moral failure.  If you can't maintain your marriage, how do you run a country?  This was just before divorce really kicked into gear across the country.  It turned out that a divorced man could be elected but it is interesting that the question was asked.

In 1992, many asked if a philanderer could be elected?  Sure, we had had philanderers throughout US history but with the modern media that was not so easy to conceal.  Being unfaithful to one's spouse was a moral failure.  If you can't be true to your spouse, can you be true to the country?  Bill and Hillary appeared on 60 Minutes to say that their marriage wasn't perfect but they had worked through difficulties to become stronger.  It turned out he could be elected, and even re-elected.

Today, the mainstream media are not asking if a woman who advanced her career by having an affair with a married man is electable.  Indeed, in 1994, Kamala Harris was having an affair with California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.  Brown appointed her to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission.  She was 29, he was 60.  Gee, this sounds like another scandal from the 90s.  However, the Clinton Presidency mostly ended these sorts of questions, at least as far as Democrats running for office.  Republican sex lives are still fair game.

As mentioned, most of our presidents and vice presidents have had moral failings but they were not widely known among the public.  Now that it is, the public doesn't care.  Yes, one wants to have candidates with the 'correct' policy positions but is there really a lack of such people who also have morals?  It seems so.

Kanye 2020

The word is that Kanye West is running for president.  No, never mind, he isn't.  No, wait.  Yes he is. In fact, he even has a platform online: Kanye2020.  Let's check this out.

1. Restore faith and freedom of religion, notably by having prayer in the classroom.

Hmm.  Sounds like a Republican issue.  It should be noted that public education in America was founded in 1639 for the purpose of teaching literacy so people could read the Bible.  It's come a long way since then.

2. Restore sound national economy.  Reduce household and student debt.

Debt reduction?  That sounds like the TEA Party.  Both the Democrats and the Republicans hated the TEA Party.  The whole point of getting elected is to spend other people's money.

3. Restructure the education system to allow widest possible range of educational and vocational paths to opportunities and careers.

This is a sufficiently murky plank that it could be anything.  That he is concerned about the most at-risk and vulnerable populations says he wants to do something about inner-city schools.  Does this mean just more money (Democrat) or vouchers/charter schools (Republican)?  That it is qualified with a proverb from the Bible might lean toward the Republican view.

4. Maintain strong national defense but no quagmires that don't advance national interests.

This sounds like Trump.  Both Republicans and Democrats have been only too eager to engage in foreign adventures that have little to no benefit for the US.

5 Reform the legal system to provide true justice.  Recognize disparity in verdicts and sentences caused by lack of financial resources.

Hey, this is a good one!  Why do the wealthy elites secure a slap on the wrist for the same crime that results in a long prison sentence for someone who had a public defender?  Neither party wants this because they are all part of the wealthy elite!

6. Reform policing to treat all Americans the same.  Refocus on real crime.  Eliminate federal sentencing guidelines.

Generally ambivalent on this one.  The police already treat all criminal suspects more or less the same.  Sadly, blacks are more likely to be criminal suspects (FBI crime stats show that a greater portion of black population engages in crime than any other racial group).  That's a hard pill to swallow if you are a member of that group.  This one needs to be expanded to see where he wants to go with it.

7. Take care of the environment.  Make renewables a top priority.

Meh.  I have nothing against private enterprise trying to make a buck with renewables but all too often this turns into an effort to abolish more efficient and economical options.  Let the market decide.

8. Ensure that we always place Americans' interests first in foreign affairs.

Hey, the Trump Doctrine again.  Yes, America first.  The American government's top priority should be America.  Let the Mexican government look out for Mexico, the Canadian government for Canada, and so on.  For too long, our presidents have made deals with other countries that were far more beneficial to them than to us.

9. Support faith-based groups to provide local services.

Hmm.  That sounds like George Bush's Thousand Points of Light.  Rather than having government co-opt local groups, let's get the government out of the welfare business.  If the government pulls out, something will fill that vacuum.  It used to be churches and local charities that cared for the poor.  In fact, locals have a greater incentive to help local people than does a distant government that just sends a check or provides food stamps.

10. Creativity and the arts can be an important source of innovation and development.

Is this an argument for the National Endowment for the Arts?  Count me out.  If the market doesn't want to willing support your art, then the federal government sure as hell shouldn't tax you to support it.  In this day and age of crowdfunding sites, there is no reason you can't find a paying audience for your art.  I myself have funding movies, graphic novels, documentaries, and web series.  Abolish the NEA, defund PBS and NPR.

There are a few planks I can support but it generally shows too much faith in the ability of government to produce positive results.

A Woman on the Ticket

To my great surprise, I read a tweet from Hillary Clinton that was both accurate and funny.  Worth reposting here:

How does the Times even print such a story?  No one said, "Gee, Maureen, what about Hillary?"  Nope.  It is this kind of high quality journalism that allows people to embrace Trump's claims that the news is fake.

On the other hand, Dowd's statement is absolutely correct.  It is framed as a male nominee choosing a female VP.  The only other male nominee to choose a female VP was McCain, but he was Republican (nominally).  In her article, Dowd does mention Hillary's run and is clearly opining about the failure of the Democrats to pick another woman for the VP spot.  She reports that Ferraro was treated poorly by the culture of the time and that the landslide loss may have contributed to Democrats avoiding female VP candidates since.  Really, it's a perfectly reasonable opinion article.  The blame goes to the @nytopinion tweet for failing to make that obvious.

The Old Guard (2020)

There is a small cadre of immortals who find work as mercenaries.  They are led by Andromache of Scythia, an Amazon queen of Greek Myth.  She goes by Andy these days.  Andy (Charlize Theron) has a bad feeling about a new job that Booker has arranged.  Sure enough, they all get killed in an ambush.  A minute later, they stand up and slaughter their ambushers.  Clearly, their secret is out and they need to go on the offensive against Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the man who set them up.

It turns out that Copley wants to hand them to the unscrupulous CEO of a big pharma company so that they can be studied.  Maybe cures can be discovered.  It's for the greater good.  Besides, his wife died a horrible death from cancer, so Copley is really a good guy, just a little misguided.  Yeah, right.  His transformation from villain to ally was unbelievable.

No sooner does the team set out to find Copley than they dream about a new immortal.  The new immortal proves to be a US Marine stationed in Afghanistan.  Obviously, Andy just goes to Afghanistan, infiltrates a US military base, beats down several Marines, and extracts Nile (KiKi Layne) in a Humvee.  Yeah, how did that extraction work?  We didn't actually see her infiltrate the base.  No, she just appeared around a corner.  Nor did we see her leave.  It was Nile's point of view and she was unconscious from the fight until she woke up in the Humvee.  What strange powers do immortals have?  Ah, the power of plot.

The immortals are an odd bunch.  There are two hypermasculine women, the gay Crusaders, and Booker the Traitor.  Andy and Nile get along winningly.  Like most women, they have to get in a fight.  It's that standard fight between eventual allies, like Robin Hood and Little John.  Women do that, right?  I get the feeling this was written by a man.  Yeah, sure enough.  Just so we don't have too much masculinity, there are the gay Crusaders, a Muslim and a Christian who fell in love.  Yes, look at the tenderness between them.  Listen to one tell how these non-immortals cannot understand the depths of his love.  Even during a battle, when one is shot, the other has to go check on him because... well, of course he'll be fine but he needs to check anyway even though they are in the middle of a gunfight.  Love.  That brings us to Booker the Traitor.  Booker is French and he has given up.  What originality!  Yes, he took the job that got them all killed knowing that it was an ambush.  But then why didn't Copley just warn the ambushers to disarm them?  Wait, this makes no sense in retrospect.

There is a John Wick feel to some of the gunfights where Andy plays John Wick.  I have no issue with Andy mopping the floor with a score of men in a gun battle.  She has centuries of experience in combat.  However, when she gets into a brawl, the suspension of disbelief gets stretch a bit too far.  She may be immortal but she's still just 120 lbs. with ordinary strength.  She may heal quickly but that doesn't make her bones harder to break.  Not buying it.

The big villain, Merrick, is just crazy.  Once he has captured a couple of immortals, he tells them to their face that he is going to vivisect them until he determines what makes them tick and monetizes it.  He is supremely confident that the tables will never turn.  No, they will never... What?  They escaped?  Luckily, I have this pistol so I can shoot them.  Ugh.

It reminds me of Highlander, a far better movie about immortals.  In that, decapitation was fatal.  For these immortals, they expect to survive being burned at the stake.  What's left to heal?

There is a great idea here but the execution is terrible.  I don't like any of these immortals.  Nor do I like any of the mortals.  Skip it.

Will Biden Bow Out?

Joe Biden is clearly going senile.  Zogby, not a Republican polling firm, found that a majority of Americans think Biden is in the early stages of dementia.  It should be noted that Biden had multiple brain surgeries in 1988 because he had two brain aneurysms.  He was given less than a 50% chance of a full recovery.  Did he fully recover?  Let's consider some of the following quotes:

“A man I’m proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next president of the United States—Barack America!”

“Look, John [McCain’s] last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the No. 1 job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs.”

“If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there’s still a 30 percent chance we’re going to get it wrong.”

"Every single morning since I've been 27 years old, I've got up and someone's handed me a card like the one I have in my pocket with the schedule on it, of all the things I'm gonna do. I don't know what to do if I didn't have that card."

I want to know who's preparing that card.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed.”

Let's see.  Hoover was president in 1929 and the radio was the medium of the day.

"If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black!"

Dan Quayle misspelled 'potatoe' and that is the story of his career.  Or maybe his tiff with Murphy Brown.  He has since been proven right; single motherhood is a terrible thing to intentionally do to a child.  By contrast, Biden has an endless collection of gaffes.  However, I do like that Joe is able to be politically incorrect with almost no consequences.  Compliment segregationist senators?  That's just Joe.  Say something vaguely racist about 7-11 owners?  Good old Joe.  You ain't black?  He didn't mean anything by it.  Anyone else would apologize or be cancelled.  Not Joe.

Covfefe showed Trump was a dummy.  Let's check out Biden's use of "expodentially."  Hasn't anyone on his staff corrected him?  I bet they have and yet...  Joe's losing his marbles and everyone around him knows it.  There is talk of not having debates.  Gee, I wonder why.  If he doesn't bow out and somehow wins, his VP pick will be elevated to president shortly after January 20, 2021.  That's a long, long shot.

Having won the nomination, he could admit to his mental decline and gracefully bow out.  The Democratic Convention has a floor fight to pick the nominee.  That could generate a lot of excitement though it does have the problem of nixing the primary results.  Then again, COVID had already nixed a lot of the primaries.  If Biden does bow out, Democrats will angle for a black woman.  Then, any criticism of her - or her policies - will be either racist or sexist, possibly both.

Daredevil (Season 3)

Daredevil (Charlie Cox) washes out of a storm drain and falls to the ground.  Some time later, a curious taxi driver checks to see if he's dead.  No.  Just able to ask for help, he is transported to the church where he grew up.  Sister Maggie (Joanne Whalley) tends to his wounds.  As he is believed to be dead, Matt decides it is better that way.  He is a danger to his friends.  Meanwhile, Wilson "Kingpin" Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) has decided to snitch to the FBI.  Agent Ray Nadeem (Jay Ali) is thrilled by the unexpected coup.  In order to protect his source, he argues that Fisk is moved from prison.  Fisk's enemies attempt to assassinate him during the move, killing several FBI agents.  Only thanks to Agent Ben "Dex" Poindexter is the assassination averted.  Dex has an uncanny aim.  That's impressive.  With Fisk out of prison, Daredevil must act but always finds that he is several steps behind Kingpin.  Fisk seems to predict his every move before he makes it.  Eventually, he must ask his former partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and reporter Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) for help.

The return of Kingpin and the introduction of Bullseye are the high points of this season.  Kingpin is the mastermind of most of the events, having planned well in advance to have leverage against virtually anyone who could stand against him.  With each person manipulated, he gains power and resources to turn more and more to his service.

Daredevil feels sorry for himself in the vast majority of the episodes.  His arguments with Sister Maggie were an endless stream of clichés.  The Man without Fear shouldn't be this boring. Then he spends several episodes arguing for the benefits of just murdering Kingpin.  But he sabotages himself in that.  Worse still, he is constantly beaten to a pulp.  How is he still walking?  Maybe he should get back in his armored suit if he's going to be fighting this much.  Sigh.  Let's get back to Kingpin.

Then there was Karen.  Ugh.  Karen is always on the brink of an emotional breakdown and her backstory to explain it is told.  It turns out that Karen spent a lot of time high on drugs or drunk when she lived in Vermont.  She dated a drug dealer and even dealt drugs for him.  Her relationship with her father was horrendous and she spent most of their shared scenes telling him that he would fall apart if she left for college.  So she stayed and killed her younger brother while driving drunk.  Wow.  Now I like Karen even less.

On the other hand, Foggy comes off quite well.  As annoying as he was in season 2, here he is the good natured paragon of law.  Like Daredevil, he thinks something must be done about Kingpin but wants it to be done in court.  Despite setbacks, he never lost faith in the system.  A constant contrast with mopey Matt, Foggy is well-adjusted and mentally sound.  It was always nice to see what Foggy was doing after the drudgery of watching Daredevil's moodiness or Karen's emotional wreckage.

The finale ends with a tease about the return of Bullseye.  Sadly, the series has been cancelled.  Disney, owner of Marvel, has its own streaming service and opted not to run content on their competitor, Netflix.

The Leaning Rocket of Boca Chica

SpaceX has successfully flown the SN5 Starship.  As the engine was not in the center of the cylinder, the ship leaned as it took flight and hovered in the air before landing a short distance from last year's flying wonder, the Star Hopper.  Impressive stuff.  Here is a clip of the brief but historic flight.  Can the Starship be ready in its final form by the next Mars launch window?  It will be exciting to find out.

Margaret Sanger Cancelled

More than 50 years after her death, Margaret Sanger's name is being removed from the New York Planned Parenthood.  It turns out that Sanger believed in eugenics and had some racist views.  Indeed, she pushed her 'reproductive health services' to black neighborhoods.  Some people shouldn't be reproducing.  Strange that it has taken so long to discover this.  Mostly, it has been kept silent lest it negatively impact the abortion cause.  Thanks to the easy access to virtually any information on the internet, the gatekeepers have lost the ability to bury certain unflattering facts about certain historical figures.  Gee, who were those gatekeepers and why were they burying this?  Qui bono?

Despite her death, her eugenic strategy continues to this day.  Though blacks constitute only 13% of the US population, they account for 36% of the abortions.  Margaret would be so proud.

Absence of Malice (1981)

Joey Diaz, a union official from Miami, has gone missing and is presumed dead.  The federal task force investigating has found nothing after more than 6 months on the job.  Deciding to take a new tact, Elliot Rosen (Bob Balaban) decides to squeeze Michael Gallagher (Paul Newman).  Gallagher's father was a bootlegger, loan shark, and well-connected crime boss.  As such, Gallagher is related to or has contacts with criminal sources.  Rosen leaks his investigation to Megan Carter (Sally Field), a reporter for the Miami Standard.  She prints the story and attributes it "knowledgeable sources."   The story cripples Gallagher's business, since all his union employees strike.  He wants to know who the knowledgeable sources are.  The paper's lawyer explains that there is an 'absence of malice' and thus the paper cannot be sued even if the story proves not to be true.

Paul Newman is good but the role isn't demanding.  He mostly comes off as the righteous man out to correct the record or make someone pay.  It's hard not to like Sally Field in any roles but I didn't much like Megan Carter.  She varies from being charming, manipulative, mercenary, or contrite.  Her arc is the most noteworthy in that she goes from being a full-of-herself reporter to being the interviewee of another full-of-herself reporter.  She gets to see both sides.  Epiphany!  Though he only shows up in the climax, Wilford Brimley dominates the final act.  Newman and Field barely register in the scene.

An interesting film about how the press can parrot false stories from government and take no blame from the harm that may follow.  Wow, 40 year old film covers fake news.  Recommended.

Of course, I watched this today because Wilford Brimley died yesterday.  One of his great roles.  RIP

Splashdown

The Endeavor has landed in the Gulf of Mexico, completing the Demo-2 mission.  The US has a new spacecraft in the rotation.  Like the shuttle, there are a lot of reusable parts to reduce costs.  The shuttle had a 30 year run (1981 to 2011) with 135 launches, which averages a flight every 81 days.  Impressive when you consider the 2 year hiatus after each disaster.  The average cost per astronaut on the shuttle was $170 million while the Dragon comes in at a comparatively cheap $55 million per astronaut. Triple the astronauts and $5 million in savings for the same funding. Better still, now that we don't need to hitch a ride on the Russian Soyuz for $80 million per astronaut, we deny Putin another source of income.

The Crew-1 mission with 4 astronauts will launch in September and the Crew-2 mission in February. The American space program has returned to manned missions! It's about time.