Monthly Archives: March 2018

First, a bit of exploitation, then we’ll do a splashy sacrifice, eh, boys?

Pleasantly forgettable, The Crimson Cult (1968; this is cut version of Curse of the Crimson Altar) is one of those brittle UK examples of the period in which characterization is somewhat neglected, resulting in characters that come and go and flirt and die with perhaps less reasonableness and urgency than fulfills the modern sensibility. Add in segues between scenes of a staccato nature, and the movie shares that brittleness often seen in British films of this period.

Robert Manning and his brother, Peter, are antique dealers, and Peter has gone off into the countryside in search of merchandise. He sends some items to his brother and then fails to return home. Robert goes to the small village of his last known location, encountering a people celebrating the burning of a witch centuries ago, and a local mansion whose inhabitants either cannot speak or claim they’ve never heard of a Peter Manning.

He persists, romancing a lady of the mansion, Lavinia Morley, and finally recalls his brother often used a fake name. This elicits a response from the owner of the mansion, who, in fine upper-class British form proclaims he doesn’t where Peter went, but now Robert’s having nightmares in which a woman is on trial and he is  under pressure to do – something.

Creeping over the edge of his subconscious into reality, his arm is bleeding when he finds himself staring into the lake. A cop has ambled by and gets him back into the house – but after a bit of opportunistic nookie, he finds his blood trail leads into a wall. Behind that is a hidden room, and with his love interest in tow he discovers a room of fake cobwebs and items that come from his nightmares.

Well, hopping over the usual mistakes and flourishes, it comes out that the master of the household has been searching for all the Mannings and other descendants of those villagers instrumental in the death of the witch Morley all those centuries ago, and then running them through this trial through hypnosis. As the lass Morley had the poor taste of sleeping with Robert, she gets to share in his misfortune. Fortunately for these two, a local professor rumbles up in his wheelchair, finds the hidden room, and shoot the master of the mansion in the hand. He, however, has the presence of mind to set the room afire and dies in the resulting conflagaration.

Oh, yeah, his name was also Morley.

There is a little tension, and it was nice to not have this take the easy route into the supernatural, but the lack of connection to the characters made it hard to really care, despite the efforts of Boris Karloff, who carried the part of the professor with great gravitas. Great acting can only compensate so much for inferior stories.

In the end, harmless and a trifle dull.

Remember the candidacy of Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL) for the Senate seat of Jeff Sessions during the special election of last year? He came in third in the GOP primary, and during his concession speech he said:

I do not support the Islamic state.

Well, the outrageous attacks are continuing, this time in Mississippi where incumbent Senator Wicker (R-MS) is facing a primary challenge from a certain State Senator Chris McDaniels, who, according to the Clarion-Ledger, kicked off his campaign with these statements at a rallly:

State Sen. Chris McDaniel announced his challenge and immediately began trying to run to the right of incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker on Wednesday, calling him “one of the most liberal senators.”

“I’m tired of electing people to Washington to score points for the other team,” McDaniel told a crowd of about 200 in a packed auditorium at Jones County Junior College in Ellisville. “We’ve been reaching across the aisle for years and what have we got? Twenty-one trillion reasons not to reach across the aisle anymore.. Wicker votes more often with Charles Schumer than he does with Rand Paul.”

McDaniel promptly mentioned Wicker’s support for changing the Mississippi flag—  the last in the nation to include the Confederate battle emblem — a potential weakness for Wicker among conservative, white Republicans.

Surely Senator Wicker must be some sort of liberal villain? Bunk buddies with Senate Minority Leader Schumer (D-NY)? Ummm … no. As of this writing, Senator Wicker has a Trump Score of 97%, meaning he votes the way Trump would like him to vote 97% of the time. No person willing to do a bit of research will mistake Wicker for being a liberal. He’s more like Trump’s lapdog.

And, of course, the bland mention of the government debt and associating it with the Democrats ignores this Congress’ contribution to the debt going forward, as well as the spend-happy Congress of 2000-2006, when the Republicans also controlled all the wings of government.

But it’s this willingness to indulge in blatant lies and misdirection which indicates the depth of the wounds in the Republican Party – and potentially the Democrats as well. This is all about a lust for position and power that overwhelms any basic urges towards the decency on which any reasonable society must be built. If we’re unwilling to treat our neighbors and political adversaries – all fellow Americans – in an honest and forthright manner, then our mainstream political culture is badly broken.

Once upon a time, political gatekeepers would have bounced people like McDaniels, and whoever spread the slander about Brooks, out on their noses. Today, they’re respected – or feared – politicians and political operatives who terminally pollute the very lakes in which they swim.

Prepare for more outrageous remarks by those desperate for prestige and power. Fortunately, behavior like McDaniels’ marks them with a big red flag. The trick is for the citizenry to do their research and reject McDaniels’ and his poisonous ilk – whether they’re running on the right or the left.

A reader comments on future American weakness:

Yes, the damage to intelligent, skillful government functioning in this country is irreparably damaged, and will remain that way for 30 to 50 years, even if the current president does not make it to full term. Worse, by then the world will have essentially passed us by. America in 30 years will no longer be the world leader, nor have the diplomatic, military and economic clout it has today; it’ll be a has-been barring some catastrophic event which allows us to regain that position (.e.g. such as was WW2, and that’s a less desirable outcome).

While that is certainly a possibility, I do not consider it a certainty. Reports from the field indicate an awakening on the part of the Democrats and the irreligious to the current problems of and in government, resulting in a flood of candidates at all levels of government for seats. Given the erratic and poor performance of this GOP-dominated U. S. government, apparent to anyone not living within the echo chamber of the extremist right wing, the ideology of the right should be discredited to some extent, although there’s the possibility of the baby landing in the snowbank next to its bathwater.

And if there’s one thing this country can do, it can move fast when it wants to. I worry about future weakness in this country, but I also think that if a resurgence of rational people in important government positions occurs, we can clamber back to the top. We have educational centers, physical resources, human resources (just think of the Obama Administration personnel who could be ready to step up and bring their expertise to bear), and a number of other advantages which we can take advantage of – if we stop plopping second- and third- raters into government.

That’s the key.

Of diplomacy, that is. I’d never heard of White House Calligraphers before, yet today various news outlets are crowing over the fact that the chief White House Calligrapher holds a Top Secret clearance – while Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law and lead on many important diplomatic missions, has lost his.

CNN has a nice history on the office, but here’s a site by the former chief White House Calligrapher Rick Paulus, showing some distinguished examples of his work:

Comity:

The legal principle that political entities (such as states, nations, or courts from different jurisdictions) will mutually recognize each other’s legislative, executive, and judicial acts. The underlying notion is that different jurisdictions will reciprocate each other’s judgments out of deference, mutuality, and respect.

In Constitutional law, the Comity Clause refers to Article IV, § 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution (also known as the Privileges and Immunities Clause), which ensures that “The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” [Wex Legal Dictionary]

Noted in “Analysis of Microsoft-Ireland Supreme Court Oral Argument,” Andrew Keane Woods, Lawfare:

I would be surprised if the justices divide along ideological lines.  Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed most persuaded by Microsoft’s position, and Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed some sympathy too—suggesting that the government’s position was to “ignore” the extraterritorial aspects of the case. But Justice Stephen Breyer may be inclined to rule the other way.  He suggested that magistrate judges ought to be able to issue warrants for foreign-held data as long as they take account of comity concerns—factors like whether another state has a legitimate interest in the data’s disclosure.