Monthly Archives: August 2025

Yes, the magnitude of the bad breath is exponential to the number of people it’s killed. Frankly, its teeth should be rotting and her skull melting, it’s so bad. I mean, it might even be worse than mine after a night of snoring!

Death of a Unicorn (2025). Cool name for a story, isn’t it? Yeah?

Savor it. Because it’s the best part of this clunker. It starts right at the beginning, when I turned to my Arts Editor and said, “This feels like a paint-by-number movie.” The money-distracted divorced father, trying and failing to connect with the daughter. The disaffected daughter, alone among the crowd of … rich, yet money-besotted, family hosting them in the Canadian Rockies.

And what happens when the divorced father, trying to win his daughter’s, doesn’t notice that, ummmmm, unicorn standing in the middle of the road?

Yes, this is all painfully predictable, outside, perhaps, of the set of chompers these magical beasties sport. Impressive in what should be herbivores. I mean, that is a fermentation vat between their legs and not a meat grinder.

But never mind. It’s terrible. The unicorns are sort of fun. But this wretched story is just not worth it.

… of the Federal Government.

Right-wing pundit Erick Erickson is angry at his own side for the acquisition, by President Trump the Federal government, of 10% of old chip-maker Intel. From CNBC:

Intel, the only American company capable of making advanced chips on U.S. soil, said in a press release that the government made an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock, purchasing 433.3 million shares at a price of $20.47 per share, giving it a 10% stake in the company. Intel noted that the price the government paid was a discount to the current market price.

It’s not explicit, but the wording suggests the source of the shares is the Intel treasury and not the market. This, in turn, can signal to the market dilution, meaning voting power and the perceived value of each share just dropped, because future growth and dividends is now divided into 10% more shares.

But that’s not Erickson’s concern. Here it is:

But, again, the United States now is the largest shareholder of Intel, which puts every other microchip company at a disadvantage. Why? Because Intel now has subsidy by taxpayers. Instead of having to let the creative destruction of the market place pick apart Intel, which has chronically made bad decisions, the leadership that made those bad decisions has been rewarded.

Uncle Sam insists it will exercise no voting with its stock. But the fine print of the deal shows Uncle Sam is getting common stock with voting rights. Saying it will not vote and not actually voting are two different things. If the situation continues and a Democrat takes back the White House, you will see ESG and DEI explode as Intel seeks to humor its largest shareholder.

This is another step down a dangerous path. Defenders will say the government bailed out Fannie and Freddie. The government bailed out General Motors. The government even bailed out Chrysler. … [Chrysler] ultimately went bankrupt and got bought by Europeans, having never fully recovered.

Note the contradiction in Erickson’s post. He implies that now Intel will be successful, and yet gives examples of failure of other government interference. Additionally, he doesn’t explore context.

This is standard libertarian cant, and I’d like to emphasize that he’s not entirely wrong. The government trying to pick winners is, in an ideal environment, not a generally positive strategy. However, I don’t say that as if Intel’s competitors are now doomed, as I consider the government as just another evolutionary force.

From theoretical aspects, given general human psychology, this is not a guaranteed success. In fact, if Intel’s really in deep trouble – and, I confess, I’ve not followed Intel’s story, as I prefer the stocks of companies with market caps of substantially less than Intel’s, even if Intel’s has dropped off. Money does not guarantee success. Unless the Trump Administration reforms Intel in some way, such as looking at toxic culture, or poor technical innovation and development, or any or all of several other areas, Intel will just take longer to slump from market irrelevance to bankruptcy.

Practically, come on. This is the Trump Administration. They fail, fail, fail. Trump nominated and caused to be confirmed a pack of people inferior to himself, as I’ve noted before, so even if he doesn’t interfere personally, his minions will botch it.

That said, I found this statement dubious:

The government keeps making companies too big to fail and hiding behind “national security” as the excuse. In fact, that has become the consensus talking point among defenders who will say things like, “I’m uncomfortable with this, but national security…”. It is an excuse and justification, but not reality.

Unfortunately, the world is a dangerous place. That’s not abnormal, actually, there’s always someone out there gunning for #1, and #1 is currently being led by a demented moron. The report from CNBC included this:

Intel, the only American company capable of making advanced chips on U.S. soil…

While You play the hand you’re dealt is inadequate to the situation, it may make sense to boost Intel in a world where the biggest and best chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), is located in Taiwan, next door to belligerent China which claims the island nation, and primary chip equipment maker ASML is located in The Netherlands, arguably not all that far from equally belligerent Russia – and those missiles its President flings about with abandon.

So it’s worth considering the assertion that the thinly hidden agenda behind Erickson’s statement to be a foolish chase after ideological purity. Libertarianism, from the time when I thought it was a serious political philosophy, was very weak in foreign relations, and boiled down to rationales for Keep taxes low! and Keep your government out of my business!

Using reductionism in foreign relations is a greedy mug’s game.

Shouldn’t have greased those shoes, I suppose.

Which I’ve seen, but not since starting the blog, so no review. I recall Rear Window (1954) as being a tightly plotted mystery, as a woman disappears, someone else’s dog is found dead, all observed by a guy with a broken leg, watching his neighborhood from his rear window. (He’s a journalist, so of course he watches. It’s not creepy. At all.)

But what’s going on?

We binged our way through the first season of The Flight Attendant (2020) over the last week. While in many ways completely unlike Rear Window, such as nearly incessant sex, it’s also full of themes and techniques essential to Rear Window, such as inexplicable occurrences, red herrings that, maybe, aren’t. And it starts off fast, and slow.

Fast in that flight attendant Cassie wakes up next to a dead man in a hotel in Bangkok, his throat slit, guaranteed to get the adrenaline levels up.

Slow in that the mystery seems eminently solvable.

Right up until the unexpected inconsistencies smack you, and her, in the face. It just takes a little patience to get there. We nearly walked away. Then the interest heightens as Cassie starts running, right up until the double surprise ending.

I hate the title. But we’re looking forward to the second, and final, season.

I know I’m three weeks late here, but this remark by Dan K on Daily Kos is a mite intriguing. It’s all about special prosecutor Jack Smith, who it was rumored was about to shish kebab then-candidate Donald J. Trump when he won the Presidential election:

Is this firing really about Trump looking to appoint a different Fed governor?

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, announced on Tuesday he is filing a lawsuit to challenge President Donald Trump’s attempt to fire her on Monday evening.

“President Trump has no authority to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. His attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis. We will be filing a lawsuit challenging this illegal action,” he said in a statement sent to CNN.

The announcement comes hours after Trump posted on social media a letter addressed to Cook informing her that he had sufficient “cause” to fire her. [CNN/Business]

Is it just a racist reaction? Appointed by a Democrat?

Or is he terrified that the Fed will look ever so much more competent than he does? People who do not bear up under comparison sometimes seek to be rid of their competition. Is he so afraid of looking bad that he’d rather cripple a major force in the financial world?

For you goat entrail special elections enthusiasts, here’s the latest of which I’m aware, in the great State of Iowa:

Source: wcmelepub.wcicc.com

And how big a deal is this? From The Downballot:

Iowa Democrat Catelin Drey won a major upset on Tuesday night, flipping a deep-red seat in the state Senate and breaking the GOP’s supermajority in the chamber.

Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch by a wide 55-45 margin in a district Donald Trump carried by 11 points last year.

As ever, the usual caveats concerning special election voters apply. Still, non-Republicans have reason for hope.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaand in this corner, we have, hailing from a small town in Mexico, just south of the border ….. the Naked Rose!”

Finding Godzilla vs. Biollante (1989) was sort of like finding a Raiders movie from thirty years ago, as I was fairly sure I’d seen all the Godzillas out there.

Except, you know, there’s some definite ambivalence about spending a couple of hours of your life on the damn thing.

Is it good? Not particularly. Godzilla’s opponent is a ghastly hybrid of a plant, Godzilla himself, and the ghost, for want of a more descriptive word, of one of his victims. She was the daughter of a scientist who works on genetic engineering, but is now dispirited and droopy.

Sort of like an underwatered tomato plant. Yeah? Yeah? Well, aren’t you under-appreciative.

Godzilla eventually wades ashore, so to speak, through an active volcano and making one hell of an entrance, responding to the calls of the cells used to generate the houseplant, having laid waste to the Japanese Navy, and finds Biollante. In the subsequent fight, Biollante is no match for the notorious bad breath of Godzilla, and eventually the latter trots off, deed done. Maybe he’s looking for a thank you treat. The humans try out their latest technology on him, which makes for a few seconds of tension.

But, of course, Biollante is not vanquished, and the process of rising from the dead, besides shocking a couple of ESP-sensitive sorts – this is 1989, after all – who may have had an earlier appearance, or perhaps a series cross-appearance in a Gamera flick, ANYWAYS I need to stop musing on bad stories, where were we? Yeah, that’s a sentence fragment. Stop that, or I’ll make you into footnotes!

Anyways, rising from the dead gives Biollante an impressive set of chompers, I must say.

So, does this match up with the best of Godzilla, Godzilla Minus One (2023)? Good Gatsby, no! It’s just another painful mixture of rubber suits, cardboard characters, fantasies of the day, and a theme in painful evidence.

Genetic engineering is bad! Nevermind that GMOs have never been shown to hurt anyone, and are often helpful.

It’s colorful and action-filled, rather like an obscure American candy: empty calories. See it if you’re a Big G completist.

So here’s some pics.

Pics from the last week, I believe. Enjoy!

I’m going to argue that making an assertion that’ll infuriate your own voters simply to protect, errrr, try to protect your President must be worthy of a nomination.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) acknowledged that the public is seeing higher prices as a result of tariffs imposed by President Trump, but he argued the trade overhaul is “for the good of the country.”

“I think a lot of people are seeing higher prices. Our family’s in the construction business, and we get a lot of our timber from Canada and other countries. Yes, it’s higher. Steel prices are up, but it’s for the good of the country,” Norman said Saturday on Fox News when asked to explain the network’s July poll showing that 55 percent of Americans disapproved of the president’s handling of the economy.  [The Hill]

For those who don’t understand the mechanics of tariffs, this may sound reasonable, but just from observation I’d say not. It’s a double-squeeze on farmers, since cheap immigrant labor is being booted out for a perishable product; fresh produce, followed by most other food stuffs, will go up in price.

But Rep Norman’s position is entirely dependent on the President, so he has to hop into the boiling water on the say-so, and hope the President’s plans include Rep Norman.

A chancy business at best.

Otrovert:

Most people find it hard to imagine what it is like to not feel any particular affinity or loyalty towards any group. This is so unusual that it is understood by some as a psychological problem to be treated. However, over my 40 years as a clinical psychiatrist I have realised that for many of my patients (and for me) disinterest in group membership and assimilation isn’t a psychological problem – it is simply a personality type that hasn’t been recognised before.

Otroverts is the term I use for those who don’t feel the obligation to merge their identities with others. We are all born as otroverts, before the cultural conditioning of childhood cements our affiliations with various identities and groups. [“Introvert, extravert, otrovert? There’s a new personality type in town,” Rami Kaminski, NewScientist (16 August 2025, paywall)]

Just in case this word catches on.

I keep trying to get off the set of this movie and keep failing!

The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines (2006) is the sequel to The Librarian: Quest For The Spear (2004). The Librarian, now established in his job, must discover and safeguard a volume that may let its holder control time and space.

Why we’re not all under the iron control of some previous owner of the volume is never made clear.

After a clobber of his head and a theft, he discovers a noble thief, an archaeologist of flighty nature and more educated than he, and a guy with minions and a bloodthirsty urge to steal something the Librarian is carrying. From all this, we make it to said Mines and, ummmm, I suppose that was supposed to be a heartrending meet-up with the ghosts of various Librarian relatives.

Maybe?

It was all very silly, so very derivative of better stories without understanding what made them better, and quite unmemorable. I had to go look up the general plot, having seen the movie a month or so ago.

It’s not worth wasting your time on this one.

From a White House release of a conversation between President Trump and President Ilham Heydar Oghlu Aliyev of Azerbaijan, who’s generally considered a dictator:

Donald Trump 00:13:15-00:13:26 (11 sec)

Thank you very much. — Great leaders, how long have you been in the leadership position?

Ilham Aliyev 00:13:26-00:13:27 (1 sec)

It’s been 22 years.

Donald Trump 00:13:27-00:13:29 (2 sec)

22 years, that’s pretty good.

Ilham Aliyev 00:13:29-00:13:30 (1 sec)

Yeah, yeah.

Donald Trump 00:13:30-00:13:37 (7 sec)

That means he’s tough and smart. And it’s a — an amazing part of the world. Congratulations.

Ilham Aliyev 00:13:37-00:13:37 ( sec)

Thank you.

Donald Trump 00:13:37-00:13:38 (2 sec)

What a great honor to be involved.

Ilham Aliyev 00:13:38-00:13:39 (1 sec)

Thank you very much.

Yep, President is not Donny’s best role.

He should have been editor-in-chief, a sinecure to be sure, of the quarterly Dictator Review.

This caught me by surprise.

Sales of personal computers had dropped like a stone starting about 15 years ago as we gorged on buying smartphones and tablets like the iPad. Now, though, computer sales have perked back up while we’re buying fewer smartphones and tablets every year, according to research firm IDC. [WaPo]

This computer came with an exclusive addition: Cat pee.

I’ve never been without a big workstation, relative to the times, usually running Linux, starting with the Yggdrasil release if memory serves. When I ran social media, aka Citadel-86, I had a second machine, usually dedicated to the task. When virtual machines (VM) came along, I could consolidate into a single piece of hardware, running the VM when I needed a Windows system.

These days, I have a Linux workstation running Fedora, and while I’m sure I have, or had, a Windows [10?] system under a VM somewhere on it, I actually haven’t needed it in so long I don’t recall how to bring it up. Or if it’s even installed. A work laptop serves to remind me of how much I dislike laptops.

On that Linux system there is, or was, also a DOSBox for running a Citadel-86 system. A while ago I found DOSBox was unstable, but that was long ago; today I should hope DOSBox would be rock solid. I mused recently about resurrecting C86 and advertising it as being ‘social media free of AI images and text‘, and then firmly put that thought away.

There’s also an inherited Surface from the 2013 time frame, reserved for use on vacations. It might not come up next time I try. Also, a smartphone.

And I figured I was just set in my ways, me preferring the big workstation and all.

Maybe I was wrong. While the article is indistinct as to reasons, my personal experience is that smartphones are read-only with a tiny screen, laptops without auxiliary devices are not quite read-only, but requires a determined user to actually generate content or code, with auxiliary devices it’s now a bit messy, physically speaking, and the laptop’s computing power may be a limiting factor.

And, yes, a workstation can also be a bit “messy”, but buying a modern workstation may mean the mainbox is now integrated into the video unit. And that misses the real point of having more power. It may not be a supercomputer on your desk, but the power is significant.

Since the laptop showed up, it’s a balance between convenience and power. This is similar to the appearance of the Walkman in the era of Hi-Fi stereos – it didn’t have the quality sound of the stereos, but carrying a Hi-Fi while you’re out for a walk was out of the question.

So, hurrah! for the workstation? Eh. Soberly consider your computing needs when looking and don’t follow the sheep to the shearing station.

But I can’t help grinning.

Ex ante:

The term ex-ante (sometimes written ex ante or exante) is a New Latin phrase meaning “before the event”.

In economics, ex-ante or notional demand refers to the desire for goods and services that is not backed by the ability to pay for those goods and services. This is also termed as ‘wants of people’.

Ex-ante is used most commonly in the commercial world, where results of a particular action, or series of actions, are forecast (or intended). The opposite of ex-ante is ex-post (actual) (or ex post). Buying a lottery ticket loses you money ex ante (in expectation), but if you win, it was the right decision ex post. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Donald Trump Is Not Gonna Bomb Iran,” Daniel W. Drezner, Drezner’s World:

Now I could easily be wrong — which is why I’m making the prediction. This seems like one of those moments when making an ex ante prediction is worth doing as a test of my international relations acumen. If I’m wrong, people can and will mock me. If I’m right, well, everyone gets lucky once in a while.

Why do every single one of these government officials sound like they’re hysterically defending themselves with frantic lies and irrelevancies?

Stephen Miller: "All these demonstrators that you've seen out here in recent days, all these elderly white hippies, they're not part of the city and never have been … we're gonna ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over 90 years old."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-08-20T16:57:32.931Z

In case the BlueSky post disappears:

Stephen Miller: “All these demonstrators that you’ve seen out here in recent days, all these elderly white hippies, they’re not part of the city and never have been … we’re gonna ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old.”

This’ll certainly appeal to some folks through confirmation bias, but it’s ridiculous on its face, in my estimation. This is important, as are all the other utterances of Miller and other members of the Trump Administration, because the more such unsupported ludicrous claims are made, the more undecided and even conservative citizens will add together all the evidence and come to the conclusion that this Administration, for the good of the country, should be replaced – even possibly before the next election.

This is the painful process of realizing a major political party is falling into evil. Not supernatural evil – I’m an agnostic – but the simple human evil that, as we observed in Cambodia, the Soviet Union, Japan, and, yes, Germany, is so horrific that we don’t need supernatural evil to be convinced that it’s wrong. Not that the Republicans have achieved anything like those examples, but they’re walking down that path. An important set of cobblestones in that path is arrogance, an arrogance convinced that anything it does is justified by its goal – and, in this case, backed up by God.

Never mind they never talk to the Divine, objectively speaking.

This may turn out to be a very hard path to tread, although I hope not. A key part of the Republican Party’s path is information compartmentalization, which means keeping voters from knowing and understanding the wrong things perpetrated by the Party’s leaders. One of the Republicans’ hurdles is the Bible, which seeks to teach good, to its credit, even if it’s often twisted into something else entirely. Add to that the bloviating, mendacious braggarts making up their ranks, frantic to grasp after fame and power. The end result is that they’ll strangle themselves in all likelihood.

But it doesn’t help that the Democrats have managed the mean feat of being even less popular than the Republicans, due to a variety of positions and methods which have added up to the general impression that Democrats are no longer connected to the working class or even the technocrats, but to ideological warriors holding bizarre beliefs and positions such as identitarianism. I think there’s a yawning abyss for one or more new political parties. Not Elon Musk’s threatened new party, because that would turn out to be a vehicle for his wacky ideas and would not appeal to enough independents, but parties much like that of forty years ago – willing to compromise, aware & wary of positions smacking of arrogance and autocracy, etc. And humble!

Let’s hope those parties form.

It has a little bit of swordplay, so that’s a plus.

The Assassination Bureau (1969) is a 1960s Brit film – bright, farcical, and brittle. It’s built on the idea of a assassination bureau, which kills for a fee. This goes along OK until someone takes out a contract on the Chairman of the Bureau. The Chairman accepts the contract, forcing the members of Board of Directors to try to knock him off, an excuse for having some lovely views of various locations in Europe.

But little effort is made to introduce reality, tension, or any real plot, and when we reach the end, it’s all about the romp and nothing about theme, barely anything about resolution.

It has moments of cleverness, but it’s not to my taste. Maybe it’ll be to yours. Or maybe you like museum pieces.

Dominion Voting Systems wins again:

Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle one of the last outstanding defamation lawsuits against a news organization for airing false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems — the same voting-technology company that had received a $787 million settlement from Fox News over its election coverage — brought the lawsuit against Newsmax. A trial was scheduled to begin in October.

In the lawsuit, filed in the months after the 2020 election, Dominion accused the cable news network of spreading false claims that the company’s voting technology had been manipulated to help Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. Like other right-wing news networks, Newsmax featured Trump allies who promoted these conspiracies, including former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and supporter Mike Lindell of My Pillow. [NPR]

Regardless of who you were cheering on in Dancing with the Stars the 2020 Presidential Election, the matter of media honesty, which was poorly exhibited by Newsmax and Fox News, should be of vital importance, and the loss in court by both sites should be a signal of a potentially existential rot in the right-side media, no doubt motivated by offers of potential wealth by their audience – and possibly others.

One losing in court can be overlooked as perhaps a bias in the judge, but both losing – indeed, Newsmax settled and is paying in installments, while Fox News settled and I think paid in a lump sum, but I could be wrong – suggests a confirmation of a pus-filled wound in the right’s side.

It’s worth meditating on the implications of a settlement. I see two mutually exclusive interpretations:

1. The offer from the adversary is so small that it’s not worth the litigation. The fact that Newsmax is paying in installments suggests this interpretation is invalid in this case.
2. The requested damages is so large, and the guilt of the defendant so inarguable, that paying a settlement, even one that announces to the world your shameful guilt, is the better option.

I’ll take #2. Fox News and Newsmax should be changing out their management and other responsible parties. I doubt we’ll see that.

There have been similar, if of lesser magnitude, accusations of the mainstream media, and the left. Both sides need to remedy the situation.

At least here in the Twin Cities, so let’s have some perky pictures. Here’s a common, but lovely, zinnia.

Here’s another:

A monarch on its throne.

And a nice lily to finish off the sequence.

Hadal:

The hadal zone is the ocean region extending from 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) down to the bottom of the deepest trenches, which can reach nearly 11,000 meters (36,089 feet). These depths are found exclusively within long, narrow submarine canyons formed where one of Earth’s tectonic plates subducts beneath another. The combined area of all these trenches is roughly the size of Australia.

Life in this zone must withstand hydrostatic pressure that can exceed 1,000 times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. This pressure is equivalent to about 100 elephants standing on a dinner plate.

Beyond the pressure, the hadal environment is characterized by perpetual darkness, as sunlight cannot penetrate these depths. The only light is produced by bioluminescent organisms. Water temperatures are consistently just above freezing, typically ranging from 1°C to 4°C, due to the lack of solar heating. [Biology Insights]

Noted in “How life thrives in one of the most hostile environments on Earth,” James Woodford, NewScientist (9 August 2025, paywall):

[Mengran Du at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Sanya] and her colleagues completed 24 dives in a crewed submersible between 8 July and 17 August 2024, exploring 2500 kilometres of the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench and western parts of the Aleutian Trench, at depths ranging from 5800 to 9533 metres. The hadal zone, a near-freezing area more than 6000 metres deep, is devoid of light and has crushing pressure.

The life there is called the hadal biosphere. It survives by either harvesting energy from nutrients that descend from the surface, which were created via photosynthesis, or by chemosynthesis, where chemicals are the energy source.

The moviemakers only paid for the top half of their heads. It didn’t go well.

The Librarian: Quest For The Spear (2004) is a comedic adventure story along the lines of, but created before, the unrelated Warehouse 13 (2009-2014) television series. This, the first in the series, introduces the Library, located in an unnamed American city; their induction of a new Librarian into his position; his introduction to his staff of assistants; and the first task.

The search for the bits and pieces of the Spear of Destiny (see the unrelated Constantine (2005)) is the task du jour, not to mention surviving multiple capture/assassination attempts, leaping from an airplane sans parachute, surviving the amour of his bodyguard (just kidding!), and, well, I’m sure other things.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Remembering this story isn’t in the cards. It’s fun, yes, and the Librarian has his moments, along with experienced comedians in supporting roles. The cast is not inferior.

It’s the story. It needed multiple rewrites and a rethink to discover what they were trying to say, and it didn’t get it.

See this if you need to pass some time, but don’t look for important life lessons, except for those of persistence and knowledge.

So much knowledge.

It’s nicely done.

In case it disappears, or my reader wants the complete message:

DONALD IS FINISHED — HE IS NO LONGER “HOT.” FIRST THE HANDS (SO TINY) AND NOW ME — GAVIN C. NEWSOM — HAVE TAKEN AWAY HIS “STEP.” MANY ARE SAYING HE CAN’T EVEN DO THE “BIG STAIRS” ON AIR FORCE ONE ANYMORE — USES THE LITTLE BABY STAIRS NOW. SAD! TOMORROW HE’S GOT HIS “MEETING” WITH PUTIN IN “RUSSIA.” NOBODY CARES. ALL THE TELEVISION CAMERAS ARE ON ME, AMERICA’S FAVORITE GOVERNOR. EVEN LOW-RATINGS LAURA INGRAM (EDITS THE TAPES!) CAN’T STOP TALKING ABOUT MY BEAUTIFUL MAPS. YOU’RE WELCOME FOR LIBERATION DAY, AMERICA! DONNIE J MISSED “THE DEADLINE” (WHOOPS!) AND NOW I RUN THE SHOW. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GCN

If Newsom ends up as a national leader, I hope we aren’t looking at an omen, but only a parody, right here.

“I’m sorry, but my war experiences have made me a trifle … blurry.”

A Month In The Country (1987) follows the lives of two British veterans of The Great War, aka World War I, for a month of the post-war era.

One is an archaeologist, James Moon, an outsider to the community who’s been asked to find the bones of a non-Christian, buried near the cemetery. He also hopes to find evidence of a Saxon church. He searches for both between episodes of PTSD and blazing loneliness. He is one of the few survivors of his regiment.

A friend he makes is Tom Birkin, also an outsider, hired by the local church to restore a mural in their chapel. He sleeps in their belfry and is therefore awakened each morning by the clanging of the bells. Part of the progression of the story is his relations with various community members: the Church of England vicar and his wife, and a family who get to know him, have him ’round for Sunday dinners, and introduce him to others in the community. The vicar, meanwhile. disapproves of the hiring of Birkin for the restoration of the mural, but is ineffectual in the face of the funding bequest as accepted by his superiors, the local church council. He, and his wife, putter about their large house, doing little.

If this review seems a bit flat, well, that’s how the movie comes across.

Generally, I avoid reading up on the movies I review, but in this case, it being a while since I’d seen the movie, I glanced at the plot in Wikipedia and was pleased to discover there was far more going on than I, an American (or colonial, if you prefer) would pick up on. The happy little family isn’t members of the Church of England, but part of the Nonconformists, a collection of groups who cannot become civil servants, go to University, etc; I suspect they, in contrast with a vicar and wife no doubt representing the the empty character of the Church of England in the opinion of the storytellers, suggest the joyfulness and solid community still available even to a repressed religious minority in England at the time. There are strains under the surface that, for someone who’s aware, no doubt add a great deal to the sotry.

I may have to watch this again, trying to appreciate the subtle strains of a society still employing religious repression, while still subsisting on the deeper pastoral myths from the past. As a contrasting strain of thought, meditation on the opposite society in which all religions are accepted and associated bigotry is disapproved, may also be in order.

This isn’t a clumsy Hollywood blockbuster, but a surprisingly provincial story in that it doesn’t explain peculiarly British salients; audience must know of them going in, I suspect, in order to have a proper appreciation of the story. That said, it’s also beautifully made, and the putative mystery bothering these friends, unmentioned here, is a bit fun in itself.

This is that rare bird for Americans, a movie requiring prior research, but you may find it worth the time to do so.

President Trump sticking his fingers into these pies could lead to an unfortunate observation by interested observers.

Former President Joe Biden went further, seeking to shape the actual structure of industry. His Inflation Reduction Act authorized $400 billion in clean-energy loans. The Chips and Science Act earmarked $39 billion in subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Of that, $8.5 billion went to Intel, giving Trump leverage to demand the removal of its CEO over past ties to China. (Intel so far has refused.)

Biden overrode U.S. Steel’s management and shareholders to block Nippon Steel’s takeover, though his staff saw no national-security risk. Trump reversed that veto while extracting the “golden share” that he can use to influence the company’s decisions. In design and name it mimics the golden shares that private Chinese companies must issue to the CCP.

Biden officials had mulled a sovereign-wealth fund to finance strategically important but commercially risky projects such as in critical minerals, which China dominates. Last month, Trump’s Department of Defense said it would take a 15% stake in MP Materials, a miner of critical minerals.

Many in the West admire China for its ability to turbocharge growth through massive feats of infrastructure building, scientific advance and promotion of favored industries. American efforts are often bogged down amid the checks, balances and compromises of pluralistic democracy. [“The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics,” Greg Ip, Wall Street Journal]

It’s difficult to see that and not visualize a pack of opponents baying “Socialist! Socialist! Socialist!”.

Not at all.

This paragraph has to be treated with the obvious care, though.

Many in the West admire China for its ability to turbocharge growth through massive feats of infrastructure building, scientific advance and promotion of favored industries. American efforts are often bogged down amid the checks, balances and compromises of pluralistic democracy.

China’s numbers are always suspect. For years, as someone on the Treehuggers site once observed – I think – China hits its 6% growth number every year, like clockwork. It finally came out that they just announced the number every year with no proof.

So I hesitate to admire China. It’s run by Communists, a group utterly notorious for its piranha-like pursuit of power, utterly lacking in an obvious morality. Honesty? Mendacity?

Which works best today?

In the meantime … “Socialist! Trump is a Socialist!” It has the added benefit of being true.

I’d expect half of the House of Representatives GOP caucus to see their hair fall out.

Hit me, beat me, make me write bad checks!