Author Archives: Hue White

CNN/Politics reports the depths to which President Trump is slipping:

President Donald Trump, facing scrutiny for hush money payments to a porn star and a former Playboy model, pleaded with evangelical leaders for political help during closed-door remarks on Monday, warning of dire consequences to their congregations should Republicans lose in November’s midterm elections.

“This November 6 election is very much a referendum on not only me, it’s a referendum on your religion, it’s a referendum on free speech and the First Amendment. It’s a referendum on so much,” Trump told the assemblage of pastors and other Christian leaders gathered in the State Dining Room, according to a recording from people in the room.

“It’s not a question of like or dislike, it’s a question that they will overturn everything that we’ve done and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence,” Trump said, describing what would happen should his voters fail to cast ballots. “The level of hatred, the level of anger is very unbelievable.”

Violence would be un-American and unbelievable – but Trump thinks his evangelical supporters, who have already compromised their morality through their continual support of Trump, are so credulous that they’ll eat that right up and run to the polls.

But how will news of rank lies like this affect independents? Not that there’s a lot of them likely to support Trump in the wake of his relative failures, boastfulness, and possible legal infringements, but this may put those who lean away from Democrats into at least not voting.

But it is a measure of just how deeply President Trump is about the upcoming mid-terms. Now comes the question: how addicted are the evangelicals and, more importantly, their leaders to their taste of influence and even power? Will they continue to ‘bed with the devil,’ as it were, in order to suck down the liquor of power?

I have very little musical experience, but my cousin Scott Chamberlain sings choir with the Minnesota Chorale and the Minnesota Orchestra. They recently traveled to South Africa, but during prep Scott was working with a visiting South African musician and had a chance to witness …. this:

I kept on eye on my guy, trying to discretely provide key bits of information—we in the Chorale have done this work dozens of times and it’s in our blood, but I can only imagine how bizarre the whole thing must seem to someone who is coming to it for the first time.

And it was at the very end, after the final chord finally stopped reverberating from the walls that that great Moment finally came.

I turned to my neighbor, and saw his face.

It was a look you only get from performing Beethoven’s Ninth for the first time.

It was look that was one part goofy delirium, one part radiant joy, one part Divine Inspiration, and one part… Holy —-, did we just —ing seriously do that??!!?!

I laughed, and laughed hard.  “So, what did you think of–“

He hugged me. And then with a smile wider than the 35W construction zone, he gave hug-handshakes to everyone around us.

And then he just sat down, laughed, and spoke in unfinished sentences.

“That was. They were so. Just a rehearsal? I can’t even.”  And he rounded it off by kissing his fingertips and blowing a kiss to the orchestra.

It’s a good post and Scott contributes to MinnPost, so we know he’s a good writer. It’s worth reading his stuff, particularly if you’re a musician who like orchestral work.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) is a movie about encouraging those around you to do better. This atypical story involves the aftermath of a rape and grisly murder of the daughter of Mildred Hayes, a somewhat embittered divorcee who, as she is driving home one day, realizes there are three billboards near the murder scene that are unused. She rents them on a monthly basis and posts a message across them asking the local sheriff why no progress has been made in the last seven months on her daughter’s murder.

As it happens, the sheriff is busy dying of cancer, a fact he thought was private but is, in fact, known to the citizens of Ebbing. This may not bother Mildred, but it bothers her fellow citizens that she would harass the sheriff, and this permits Mildred to explain, in vivid detail, why his condition is irrelevant to his duties, to her friends, enemies, abusive ex-husband, and a priest to whom she makes quite clear has no moral standing if he’s unwilling to root out the abusers in his own colleagues.

Working in the sheriff’s office is a young, directionless man, Dixon, who has absorbed, without noticing, all the hatred around him. He’s not so much bigoted towards minorities as he’s bigoted against anyone who makes his life uncomfortable, not even excepting his mother, with whom he still lives. His lone idol may be the sheriff, so when the sheriff commits suicide, he takes his anger out, not on Mildred, but on the local representative of the company who rented Mildred the billboards, Red Welby. This unfortunate young man is launched from a second floor window to the pavement below, and ends up in the hospital.

Unfortunately for Dixon, the sheriff’s replacement has already arrived and witnessed the incident, and Dixon is immediately fired. He returns home, emotionally lost and out of control. A lifeline appears – a goodbye letter from the sheriff, which he can pick up after the police station closes (he still has a key). The contents of the letter: the sheriff’s belief that Dixon is a good man and has the makings to be a good detective, a sentiment hard for the audience to square.

But while he’s reading the letter, Mildred firebombs the station house, and Dixon escapes the conflagration with burns and Mildred’s daughter’s case file. In the hospital, who’s his roommate?

Oh, you guessed it: Red Welby, the man he tossed out the window. In a touching scene, Welby forgives Dixon.

Dixon is now deeply confused, but, out of the hospital, by chance he happens to overhear a man bragging about a crime that seems to be the same as that which befell Mildred’s daughter. He follows up on it, collecting important information and giving it to the police, but they report the man was out of the country at the time of the crime. Mildred and Dixon, deeply disappointed, decide that justice still needs to be dispensed for this man’s nameless victim, even if they must do so personally.

Or should they? This is where the movie leaves off, with our two main characters questioning if they should take the low road or the high road, and while we cannot be sure, it seems likely that, after the first flush of rage, they will look to the high road, for that’s what both of these people have slowly learned.

To be better.

Full of open-ends, flawed people, and strong performances, this movie deserves every award it won.

Strongly recommended.

From WaPo:

India has more than 600 million people under 25, and they have greater access to technology and education than ever before. Yet millions have little hope of finding decent jobs, and a “bachelor bomb” of more than 37 million surplus men — a legacy of generations of a preference for sons and aborting female fetuses — threatens social stability for decades. …

Without solid prospects, many young men are gravitating to India’s growing right-wing nationalist organizations, where they find a sense of purpose.

Over time, a stereotype of a right-wing troll has emerged — keyboard jockeys with too much time on their hands, sitting in their childhood bedrooms furiously tweeting about every perceived slight to Hinduism and [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi.

I’ve visited India four times since 2000, but I won’t claim any special knowledge from those visits. It has 3 times the population of the United States, which would make it ridiculous to claim I know a damn thing. While it’s popularly seen to be a peaceful country, the reality is that since 1947 it’s fought four wars with its neighbor, Pakistan. I suspect that this surplus of young, troublemaking men will become fodder for another war with its neighbor, conveniently killing off the surplus males, but risking a nuclear exchange, as both countries are armed with nuclear weapons. Ordinarily, the United States would lead efforts to calm the waters before a nuclear exchange could take place, but Trump is so completely lost that I would have no hopes that he’d even understand that something evil is about to happen, nor do I have much hope for any of his aides or Cabinet members.

And have the Indians been reforming their culture to place more value on females? Nothing in the article suggests as much. A war would be a temporary pressure relief on a situation that is basically pathological.

The passing of Senator McCain over the weekend got me to thinking about why we publicly mourn certain members of our society on their deaths. To my mind, we as a society are more successful when we recognize those individuals who have put the good of society over our more personal personal or partisan interests. This behavior, as personified by Washington and many other Founding Fathers, not only brought our society into existence, but guided that society into stability and provided the structure to continue stability, even into a Civil War provoked by the endless selfishness of near-half the country. That’s why the deaths of McCain, his friend Senator Ted Kennedy, various Presidents to greater or lesser degrees, and many military personnel gain some form of immortality for their memories, while the deaths of mere millionaires, who by definition did not put society ahead of their own interests, or, at best, personally benefited from their efforts to improve society. Even such larger than life personalities as Gates, Buffet, or Musk, despite their reputations, have still operated to their own profit – it’s what made them prominent, after all – and not necessarily to benefit society, despite the promises of the free enterprise system. On their passing there will be a nod to how they transformed private enterprise, but there won’t be the mourning we see for the personality who sacrificed much for the nation.

Because that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? We, by which I mean most of us, are deeply selfish creatures who sometimes can’t even think generously about our own families. When an individual stands forth and recognizes the reasons for how the government is structured as it is, how we are all feeble creatures who have no credible claims on any sort of truth, which is the insistent basis of compromise, that our human enterprises are inevitably full of flaws, some of them terrible, requiring constant adjustment and repair, and when that personality puts forth the vociferous arguments in defense of that institution, even to their personal degradation and ruin, then we have someone worthy of mourning on their passing, celebrating their walking illustration of that which founded the Nation.

It is dismaying to see Senator Collins (R-Maine) say this:

“The lions are gone,” Ms. Collins said. “The lions of the Senate are gone. It is very sad.”  [The New York Times]

As if they were an exhausted natural resource? Senator Colllins, you could be a lion. Stop being a sheep. Defend the Senate against the incompetent ways of McConnell. What do you do when presented with incompetent judicial candidates, for instance?

Election to national office is not a passport to immortality. Names such as Ryan, McConnell, Nunes, Chaffetz had their opportunities, but instead clutched the party to their breasts and swore allegiance to it, without murmur as to its mistakes; their party shaped them, rather than they at least trying to shape their party; they have lost their opportunity to be mourned by more than their small coteries, if that, who benefited from their actions.

Will new Democratic lions, beyond Obama, stand forth? We’ll have to see.

American public mourning is a celebration of the values of the best of us. The private sector, important as it is, has nothing special to it in that it’s a center for the pursuit of selfishness, and that is exceedingly common among us; that some of us do it better than others is nothing to particularly celebrate when the achiever passes. One might muse on the concept that private enterprise doesn’t enable democracy, but instead it’s the other way around, and thus those that engage and excel in honest execution of that greater endeavour deserve the praise we shower upon them when they can no longer hear it.

And we should meditate on that.

When you’re investigating a cat’s disappearance, you’ll need all the help you can get.

My Arts Editor and I recently finished watching the BBC Cymru Wales TV series Dirk Gently (of 2010, not the later series), based on the character and books of the same character by Douglas Adams. Ending after four episodes, we enjoyed the series not only for its quirky characters and humor, but also because the characters did appear to be changing and maturing, so we were a little put out to discover only four episodes were made and there’s no chance of continuance. While these four constitute no great feats of drama or comedy in and of themselves, they did seem to be building a foundation from which greater leaps of fiction might be achieved.

So, too bad, BBC. It could have become something quite interesting.

The super-hero genre of story-telling is often used to explore viewpoints that are otherwise difficult to establish in a plausible manner, such as the consequences of having an all-powerful dude in charge of the defense of your planet, but, while issues of aging are often explored in more mainstream genres, the same issue is hardly ever explored in the super-hero genre. After all, it’s easy enough to explore without the super-hero duds and powers, right? I am not a super-hero aficionado, so I am no doubt deficient in the list department, but the only aging super-heroes who weren’t treated superfluously which I recall were The Comedian and The Owl (the first one) in The Watchmen movie (I have not read the graphic novels).

She should use those on her school art project.

I can now add to that list two from another series, the X-Men, from the movie Logan (2017). Logan was Wolverine’s given name, dating back to his birth in the mid-19th century. This explores the end-game of Wolverine’s life, his assumed burden of caring for Dr. Charles Xavier, who I thought had died in an earlier installment, but here is an aging man, afflicted by a dementia which manifests not only as delusions, but as a psychically broadcast delirium which shakes the people around him.  Worse yet, he has a terrible tragedy in his past with which he cannot cope.

Into their orbit, near the Mexican border, comes a young girl, Laura, maybe ten years old, who has few morals or even social manners, but lots of claws, reminiscent of Wolverine’s own, and, as he often did, a group of dedicated hunters looking for her. As Charles directs, Wolverine takes her and Charles north towards Canada, hoping for sanctuary. When the hunters close in on them, both Charles and Wolverine demonstrate their powers, if degraded, still function, but when Charles is taken unaware, we lose him to the death that he sorely wanted.

Wolverine and Laura continue north, but Wolverine’s body, sorely abused for more than a century, is failing him, and they do not quite achieve the border – but they stumble on a nest of surviving mutants. With the hunters hot on their trail, they make a break for Canada, and Wolverine proves he has one last killing rage in him even as the wretched ghosts of his past, brought to life by the faceless corporation who hunts him, prove that the soulless killing machine is indeed a wretched creature, a lost and destructive creature with no concept of mercy.

This is an ultra-violent movie, perhaps too much so, even if fans demand it. It suggests that extraordinary powers come with extraordinary responsibilities, and this is something Logan cannot avoid, no matter how much it endangers those around him, because technology is bringing those same extraordinary powers to people hardly equipped to properly manage them, and even stripped of the most vestigial moral capabilities. In the end, the sacrifice of the individual for the next generation, an ageless tenet of Western Civ, rings true even for those who are arguably not human.

A technically competent, well-acted movie, the violence may be a turn-off for the sensitive. Moreover, seeing it out of sequence may lessen its emotional impact, as it depends on the contrast of earlier depictions of Wolverine’s ability to recover from otherwise fatal wounds to accomplish his moral requirements, grumpy as he may be about them, in order to magnify the importance of his sacrifice.

It’s a good, if not great, movie.

The passing of the Senator McCain yesterday is a punctuation mark on a number of national events, from the Vietnam War to the moderate Republicans holding out against the extremists flooding the party, from those who would blame him for anything from causing a disaster on USS Forrestal to being captured during the Vietnam War, to his work as an elected representative. In a sense, he was the mythical Everyman, the warrior, father, and participant in the public conversation concerning the management of the Republic.

In his latter years, his reputation as a maverick was, I felt, inconsistently fulfilled, as elements of the right-wing agenda were achieved without public protest from him. But his protests against the mismanagement of the Senatorial processes were a badge of honor for him, for they rose about partisanship and addressed issues that are important for the proper functioning of the Senate in the greater scheme of the country, and did so without regard to his own positions on those agenda items that might benefit from mismanagement, if only in the short-term.

His death is a loss to the country, immense as it is inevitable, but I think the conservatives will feel it more, because they’ve lost someone who could properly invoke a moral position to which most Americans would respond, unlike most members of today’s conservative movement. No one’s motives are unmixed, to my mind, but McCain’s motives to become an elected representative appeared to be more worthy than most.

RIP, sir. I hope your successors are worthy of you.

Megan McArdle follows the consequences of not sending everyone to college in the pages of WaPo:

The increasing interlinkage of partisan leanings and cultural identity has allowed both sides of the political spectrum to consolidate control over key cultural institutions, which they can leverage to foment policy change. But it’s also concentrated partisan power within those nodes, leaving both sides dependent on them — and vulnerable to their decline.

And while tearing down the other side’s redoubts may seem like a win for your own, recent experience should give everyone pause. As Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a columnist at the Week, pointed out last year, liberals who thought they hated the Christian right were shocked to find that they disliked the post-Christian right even more. And in the twilight of the universities, conservatives might equally well find themselves trembling before an opposition that is no longer sheltered in institutions, nor constrained by institutional norms.

Perhaps the educated hater is more restrained, less savage than the unreasoning hater? The conservatives may see the university as a center of power for the left, but the university is also a primary conservator of secular moral values, and those values, which are the result of careful reasoning about the world and humanity, act as constraints on those who have learned to respect them.

Not incidentally, the rise of the ‘antifa’ movement on campus, and its employment of violence, both physical and mental, is troubling for the more traditional university graduate or student, as we’re taught that violence often begets violence, and violence is not conducive to a productive and happy society. I haven’t run across an investigation of the ‘antifa’ as to its origins, which could be authentic or manipulative, but I doubt are legal in the sense that they descend from valild university values.

Half the poultry barn was devoted to bunnies, the other half – to poultry.

Humble. Mr. Humble.

He doesn’t have a lot of patience with fooling around.

Dr. Seuss birds, of course. He always wins a ribbon at this show. Some say he’s bribed the judges.

Egyptian Faience:

Egyptian faience is a sintered–quartz ceramic displaying surface vitrification which creates a bright lustre of various colours, with blue-green being the most common. Defined as a “material made from powdered quartz covered with a true vitreous coating, usually in a transparent blue or green isotropic glass,” faience is distinct from the crystalline compound Egyptian blue.^[1] Notably, faience is considerably more porous than glass proper and can be cast in molds to create vessels or objects.^[2]Although it contains the major constituents of glass (silica, lime) and no clay until late periods, faience is frequently discussed in surveys of ancient pottery, as in stylistic and art-historical terms objects made of it are closer to pottery styles than ancient Egyptian glass. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “World Roundup,” Archaeology (September/October 2018):

ISRAEL: A small faience head from Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel may represent a king who lived during the 9th century B.C. The sculpture, which sports a manicured beard, wavy tresses, and a painted black and yellow headband, was likely part of a figurine that would have stood about 8 to 10 inches tall. Its high degree of artistry is leading experts to believe it may depict King Ahab of Israel, King Hazael of Aram- Damascus, or King Ethbaal of Tyre, three rulers known from the Bible.

Follow the link to see the picture.

I use ‘movie’ in a loose sense, the idea of a story, told in a theatrical format, committed to film or other medium which permits extensive editing. The filming of a play might not qualify; a TV mini-series, on the other hand, appears to fit the definition.

This particular mini-series was broadcast initially last April, but in Britain. I’ll call it ‘Belated’ because that’s how it feels.

Being part of this family is just fuckin’ exhausting isn’t it, sisters? Sisters? Oh, crap. This’ll make for an awkward dinner conversation.

There are two lessons to take from Ordeal by Innocence (2018), a BBC mini-series based on the Agatha Christie novel of the same name.

First, this may be the most insanely dysfunctional family I’ve ever seen.

Second, if you’re looking for revenge, don’t monologue^[1] about it. In this story about a dead step-son who is the sardonic witness to the family’s dysfunction, it’s his inclination to spew his plans for revenge which results in his untimely demise.

I shan’t get too much further into this movie, because my Arts Editor and I both found it difficult to connect names to faces and, sometimes, motivations to characters. Suffice it to say that the first victim in this three-victim story seems to have managed to inspire every character, with perhaps the exception of the maid, with a reason to commit mayhem upon her person; the second, our monologuer, might or might not be the fall guy, and the third also let his bitterness get the better of him. Or perhaps the story-tellers just tired of him. Where there’s a conscienceless murderer handy, there’s a way, as the old saying goes.

I thought this movie came close to being top-flight. There was the building suspense, the disbelief at each revelation of a new facet of dysfunction, the suggestion that the surrounding culture is also at fault, it was all fairly interesting. But I didn’t quite get there. Perhaps it was the subject matter, which is certainly not inspirational; nor was it easy to draw lessons from it, other than Don’t be English.

But maybe this was a cautionary tale about studying competing theological systems.

In the end, it’s about a collection of foster children trying to survive a family embedded in a society of hypocritical taboos and social expectations, and how their reaction to it can be equally horrible.

Don’t skip the ending. As if you could.

¹I ran across the term monologuing in The Incredibles (2004), where it is used to describe a villain who stops in the middle of the action to describe his evil plans to the hero, who, at the time, happens to be in a tight spot. I transfer the term loosely here, but the spirit is the same: announcing plans to the presumably helpless, who turn out to still be potent.

It’s been a while since I expressed disappointment at Australian Prime Minister Turnbull’s endorsement to build the world’s largest coal mine in Australia. Well, now Turnbull has been evicted from the Prime Minister’s residence (which he never physically occupied) because he was too ambitious on the issue of CO₂ emissions for his Liberal Party to stomach, and he’s being replaced with social conservative and, until now, Treasury Minister Scott Morrison. His position on anthropomorphic climate change?

In a country where the debate over climate change and clean energy has brought down several political leaders — including Turnbull — Morrison has been unequivocal in his support of Australia’s traditional power source.

He famously brought a lump of coal into parliament in February 2017. “This is coal,” Morrison shouted across the chamber. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared. It won’t hurt you. Those opposite have an ideological, pathological fear of coal.” [WaPo]

I suppose he denies that burning the stuff releases releases mercury, along with all the climate change gasses. The former Prime Minister’s description of his opponents certainly has a ring of familiarity for me:

Friday’s vote was the second one on Turnbull’s leadership in three days and the culmination of years of what Turnbull asserted was an “insurgency” by opponents aided by right-wing commentators and media outlets, including Sky News, the Australian equivalent of Fox News.

“There was a determined insurgency by a number of people, both in the party room and backed by powerful voices in the media . . . to bring down my prime ministership,” he told reporters.

I’m not sure how American right-wing and Australian right-wing commentators line up, but it’s probably not too far off. That Mr. Morrison is also an Evangelical Christian is also not surprising, as an existential crisis brought on by our own activities, supposedly blessed by the Divinity, seems a paradox.

Looks to be another step backwards. Fortunately, Morrison’s Liberal Party holds a razor thin majority in coalition with the National Party, so Labour may be able to take control soon. I’m not sure if they’re any better, though.

We attended the Minnesota State Fair on its first day – yesterday. Here’s a few pictures from the poultry barn of the non-poultry – the bunnies.

Coloration and buddyship.

Nice markings, reminds us of Smudge, a late kitty we had the privilege of hosting.

Cute!

I’m a sucker for gray cats. And gray bunnies are dignified, too.

I liked the size contrast.

Good markings! Too bad the pic is out of focus.

The pure black reminds me of our late cat Mischief.

You just want to grab those ear, don’t you?

Yoda.

A small cow.

Mr. Plush doesn’t care about you.

Two more minutes and I’ll have escaped. In six pieces, yes, but my sister is a tailor!

My ears disapprove of you. You may leave now.

Unfortunately, yelling at Mother Nature is neither effective nor satisfying.

That was from light winds and heavy rain. Since this is during the Minnesota State Fair, our street is lined with the vehicles of attendees, and I can only say I hope they feel lucky that those branches didn’t land on their expensive SUVs.

One of the unusual problems faced by prosecutors in the various investigations involving President Trump’s associates is his pardon power. If one of his associates are willing to take the hit of being found guilty of various crimes, they can hope that he’ll pardon them for their incidentally illegal services, and they can rise from the dead to serve him again.

At least, that’s true of federal prosecutions, but not true of state prosecutions, but most of these are federal prosecutions.

But as I was reading about Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, it struck me that the Feds have their own big cannon in this war – the use of immunity. This has been granted to Weisselberg. By promising a witness that he or she shan’t be visiting a prison for their misdeeds, they’ve basically rendered the Trump cannon impotent.

It must be a fascinating exercise in deciding when to use this weapon. After all, you are immunizing a probable criminal from the usual consequences of his or her illegal activities, and that has to hurt. But the key here is that the most senior person responsible for the illegal activities is the big target – not just for the sake of the pride of the prosecutors, but for the very practical reason that, if they are not caught and punished, they’ll just do it again. It’s part of their temperament, after all, because If they didn’t get caught last time, why should they this time? So let’s go off and reoffend again, collect the goods, and, well, hurt society again.

Usually immunity is used just to tempt a confession and more information out of someone already hip deep in the muck, but not so often used to immunize them from a Presidential pardon. Normally, potential criminals are more likely to have a turncoat assassinated; to have a crime pardoned is substantially different.

Maybe in the great scheme of things doesn’t mean much, but I find it interesting and anticipate it may influence the course of future events in ways not analogous to a big Mob investigation and eventual trial.

But, then again, aren’t we all, outside of a few gang members and extremists?

Anyways, if you were a family values voter, how would Representative Hunter’s response to being charged with treating his campaign funds as personal funds strike you? From CNN/Politics:

Rep. Duncan D. Hunter seemed to shift any blame onto his wife, Margaret, on Thursday for alleged campaign fund abuses, saying she was the one handling his finances.

“She was also the campaign manager, so whatever she did that’ll be looked at too, I’m sure,” the California Republican said on Fox News.

“But I didn’t do it,” Hunter said. “I didn’t spend any money illegally.”

>crunch<         >crunch<

Nothing quite like throwing your spouse under the bus, I suspect. But how will the typical family values voter respond to this defense? Sure glad I don’t have to pick between him and the ancient evil of Cthulhu, it’d be a hard choice.

Our historical obsession with hating other people, at least here in Western Civ, can be fascinating. Archaeology has a very short article on a recent find illustrating the practice:

A thin lead curse tablet dating to the fifth century A.D. that was folded and nailed shut to intensify its power has recently been opened, some 80 years after it was discovered beneath the hippodrome in Antioch, in modern-day Turkey. Curse tablets from the period are generally in Greek or Latin, but this one, although difficult to make out with the naked eye, turns out to have been written in a Jewish dialect of Aramaic using Hebrew lettering. “This means it was written by a Jewish scribe,” says Rivka Elitzur-Leiman of Tel Aviv University, “if not a Jewish magician.”

I’ll omit the pic, since they are using it with permission from the researchers, but you can see it at the above link. It makes our era a little less unusually cut-throat, doesn’t it? It turns out the message had something to do with a chariot race, so venality seems to be a universal constant.

It’s cousin saving time. Too bad he’s a barbaric wretch.

Once again, the Japanese are plagued with monsters in War Of the Gargantuas (1966), and, given the aplomb with which the Japanese defense officials face these situations, you’d think they’d have developed better strategies for dealing with creatures standing more than 100 feet tall. Perhaps they should hide all their cities underground?

Note stuff coming out of neck. Reeks aesthetically.

But this time around there’s a Western element, as some of the biological cells of … (wait for it) … Frankenstein … not Frankenstein’s Monster, which is different … are to blame for the eponymous characters. (I’m visualizing the costume crew working on labcoats for 100 foot tall scientists.) Why? Uh, it had something to do with cell replication, and, oh, I don’t know. The scientific team, lead by the American doctor (Russ Tamblyn) and including the attractive Japanese lady, were remarkably casual about the whole thing. It’s been maybe 30 years since I’ve read Frankenstein, and I don’t recall Shelley’s genesis of the Monster, except he was an amazing physical specimen, not the riveted together hunk of junk of the cinematic versions.

Let’s count up the monsters, shall we? First, there’s the giant octopus that has the cargo ship in its tentacles during the opening storm. Then there’s Gargantua #1, a big, hairy humanoid, which takes exception to the giant octopus harassing the ship, and chases it away. Hurrah for the ship’s crew, yes!

Oh, wait, this is more of a tantrum over a toy, isn’t it? And, not only does the ship go down, most of the crew becomes … dinner.

An intervening moment while the scientific team puzzles over what appears to be their “Frankenstein,” which is now huge and fond of human meat, as #1 ventures on land and ravages an airport, including a fairly shocking consumption of one of the would-be passengers. The Frankenstein they had been studying was peaceful and friendly, goldarnit!

But when the Japanese trap the Gargantua in an electrified river, all seems to be coming to a happy ending, until #2 Gargantua appears (that would be 3 outsized critters) and rescues #1. Equally huge, and in fact identical to #1 except in coloration, the two hide out in the forest and river, and during this Gargantua Golden Era one of the search teams ventures too near a cliff and the aforementioned Japanese lady scientist nearly tumbles to her death, only to be saved by #2, which, interestingly enough, hurts himself doing so. She is returned to the American scientist, but when #2 returns to tend to wounded #1, he (honestly, they appear to be sexless) discovers … chewed up human clothing. Extended pantomime suggests a line has been crossed, and soon enough the two are rolling (#2 with a limp) across Tokyo in a Gargantua death match, and eventually into Tokyo Bay they tumble, all the while the Japanese worrying about them shedding more skin cells that might turn into more Gargantua Frankensteins, which has comedic possibility written all over it in purple ink.

In a fittingly huge bit of deus ex machina, an underwater volcano in Tokyo Bay chooses this moment to erupt and build itself into an island, allegedly consuming the battling Gargantua in the process. Yep, there was a nudge-nudge wink-wink from the cast on not finding any corpses to, ah, study.

Yeah, just why did I waste all these bytes on this review, anyways? If there’s a thematic exploration in here, I missed it. Maybe it had something to do with titanic mistakes requiring titanic acts of God to cover up? Seems unlikely.

Make up your own. And, remember, having read this review, you needn’t actually watch the movie. Unless you enjoy watching models of military vehicles and cities being destroyed. Although I must admit to chortling when the Gargantua were running through various towns and cities. You’d expect each step to be its own earthquake, local humans jolting up and down in rhythm to their footsteps….

I personally found this paragraph from a WaPo report on Trump’s situation following the Cohen and Manafort disasters dismaying, if unsurprising:

Trump and his legal woes are unlikely to recede into the background. Republicans face 77 days of midterm campaigning that could be jolted by unwelcome legal surprises. Still, the president remains overwhelmingly popular in his own party — with an almost 90 percent approval rating. And supporters like [Trump supporter Dan] Eberhart still support much of the president’s agenda.

90% is where I start shaking my head. Granted, there’s not been much in the way of polling since Tuesday, so perhaps the Republican base might be losing its faith in a tainted President – but there’s little reason to make such an assumption, outside of a hopeful heart.

But I fear there’s two factors working against such an outcome. First, there’s the allegiance to conservative media which feeds them partial facts, dubious assertions, and then emotional appeals. Even on an ostensibly NeverTrump site such as The Resurgent, I ran across this ugly post from Marc Giller:

So far, the only one of that bunch serving any jail time is Anthony Weiner—and that’s because of his proclivity to sext with underage girls, not because he had a ton of Cilton’s emails, many of them classified, on his personal laptop. Even after an Inspector General investigation determined serious irregularities in the way that the FBI and the DOJ handled the probe into Clinton’s homebrew email server, not a single person in her orbit had been indicted, charged or tried for a crime.

Reading the first couple of responses was interesting^[1], which I’ll leave to the footnote.  Giller then commits the cardinal sin – he claims that none of this excuses Trump. The problem is he just spent a couple of paragraphs proclaiming that Trump is not being treated fairly, that the Democrats were just as bad – despite the obvious fact that Federal Prosecutors appointed BY Trump are also those ripping his former team members into shreds for their chronically illegal ways.

Does Giller really think these Federal Prosecutors, appointed by Trump, are just going to ignore these alleged crimes committed by Obama, Clinton, Holder, and anyone else from the previous Administration? Prosecutors don’t make their career by refraining from red meat prosecutions; taking down the high ‘n mighty can lead to even greater things for the ambitious, such as Guiliani, who went from a Federal prosecutor taking down Mob dons to the Mayor’s seat of New York City. On the other hand, pursuing a false prosecution could gain them a janitorial position at, say, the Barack Obama Elementary School in St. Paul (which is right across the street from my fencing club). Absent personal knowledge of ill-doing by members of the previous Administration, I think the sober citizen must take their cue from their fellow Americans who happen to be these Federal prosecutors and assume that whatever illegalities may have occurred in the previous Administration were exceedingly trivial and quite probably accidental.

But, ironically, Giller may be correct on his primary thesis – the GOP base will not be swayed by these legal hand grenades that Trump’s own Prosecutors are tossing into Trump’s backyard, because of the lies that people like Giller have decided to believe in. I’d be completely unsurprised if Giller said he really believed what he said, I just think it’s misinformation motivated by a mistrust of the evil liberals^[2] and the belief that conservatives, as a brand, cannot possibly be worse than conservatives, even if they ally themselves with Trump. It’s a strong emotional motivation for those who have committed themselves to the position that liberals are bad and conservatives are good.

Which is why I stay an independent and a strong believer that those folks who are within, say, a standard deviation of the political mean of this country have much to contribute – I’m more than willing to consider suggestions from both sides within that parameter. The problem for the GOP? They’re now mostly 2, 3, or more standard deviations out there, and heading further out because they’ve closed off their information intake. That is, they believe the mass media, which tries so hard to bring the truth to their customers because of the free market practices, is really fake news – despite a century long pedigree in many cases – while upstarts like Fox News, documented as not serving up all the information for its viewers that it should by Bartlett, and allied organizations continue to spoon feed them information which feeds into their sensibilities.

Giller is almost certainly right in his prediction – because of perceived unfair treatment, which is untrue in itself, but still rings true to me. His base will go off in a huff and “how about Clinton and Obama” with no idea that if there was something there, career-hungry prosecutors would be all over them like maggots on a bunny carcass.

So the problem isn’t Trump – it’s the tendency of the conservatives to believe the worst of their opponents without due consideration that maybe they’re wrong – maybe they’re being lead around by the nose.

And that second factor I mentioned? Sorry, I forget what it was. Maybe I worked it into the above. I suppose I could go back and rework that paragraph so I didn’t have to admit to this mental goof on my part, but what of it? My reader might as well know that I can be forgetful from time to time.

¹First came a fist pump for Trump, with a list of his accomplishments. The first one was truthful, if troubling for those who want a quality judiciary, the second, not an accomplishment but a failure, the other twelve mistakenly attributing to Trump what Obama had already accomplished – or just another mistake committed by Trump. That was followed by someone noting that, no, Clinton had not committed any crimes, so please stop fucking saying that. An honorable but, I fear, futile paean to truth.

²Which makes any reverence for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, or other leading, but ancient, liberals a bit of a conundrum. I classify them as liberal using my simple, yet fair, definitions of liberal and conservative.

The conservative is someone terrified of what the future might bring and bent on conserving that which has gotten them, or us, this far. This is a fair definition in that it recognizes that many cultural and legal practices are of value.

The liberal is someone who is horrified at certain events in the past and seeks to improve those aforementioned practices as a way to eliminate the horrors of the past. Sometimes they have foolish ideas, but at least they recognize there have been problems which can be addressed.

There is no doubt that Washington, et al, were liberals, as they were horrified at the abuses of the English monarchy, and sought to replace it with something new.

Equitation:

The art and practice of horsemanship and horse riding. [Oxford English Dictionaries]

Noted at the Minnesota State Fair today.

Regarding the indictment of two Trump supporters in Congress, a reader writes:

Since Citizens United allowed corporate money to buy politicians, and the Republicans accepted the most morally corrupt donations, (looking at you, NRA) it increasingly seems as if the only people left in the party are senile, crazy, or utterly corrupt. Fox “News” can broadcast what they want forever, but it won’t change the facts in an actual trial.

Incidentally, while Hunter has denied the charges, which Amber Phillips of The Fix has detailed here, it occurred to me that Hunter may be persuaded to step aside by his Party, and very soon. In both Collins’ and Hunter’s cases, the governor of their states are and/or will be Democrats. If these two alleged law-breakers succumb in criminal proceedings, they will be forced to give up their seats, meaning those governors can then appoint replacements, who would be Democrats. Appointing a moderate Democrat could crack open the grip the GOP has on these two seats, because voters are notorious for liking their elected officials on a personal basis, and then re-electing him.

But if they bow out in favor of another Republican candidate, then no doubt the Republicans will think they can retain the seat. It certainly makes sense out of context.

But within the context of a country in which the independents appear to be sick of the general incompetency of the GOP? I’m not sure their strategy will work.

Maybe Collins and Hunter should have tried to be a bit more law-abiding.

Back when I was reading REASON Magazine of libertarian fame, I ran across the concept (I forget the name) of “regulatory capture.” The basic idea is that regulatory agencies are supposed to regulate the behavior of their subject entities, but the entities will then maneuver to “capture” the agency and thus obviate the agencies’ goals and efficacy. The libertarians seemed to think that was as good a reason as any to not have regulations.

While reading the first part of Andrew Sullivan’s weekly tri-partite column concerning the recent Pennsylvania grand jury report on sexual abuse in six dioceses in the Catholic Church, and how the senior members of the hierarchy were either directly responsible, or at least covered for those who were, it suddenly occurred to me:

The unrepentant sinners have captured the Catholic Church.

Oh, maybe not the Pope himself, at least not this one. But unrepentant, yes:

One afternoon, the priest invited George, who was around 14 at the time, to a rectory 25 minutes south of Pittsburgh, where he met several other priests: “During a conversation about religious statues, the priests told George to get onto a bed and remove his shirt, and strike a pose like Jesus on the cross. Then they instructed him to strip off his pants and underwear,” writes the Philadelphia Inquirer. “In the unnerving moments that followed, George claimed that [the priests] began taking photos of him on a Polaroid camera. All of the priests giggled — and then added the photos of George to a collection of photos of other teen boys.” This was a grooming gang.

Yeow!

The Church is the regulator, the agency that lays down the rules, such as no rape or murder or theft or venerating other Gods. The regulated entities? Anyone else who has sinned. And, yet, here we see conscience-less sinners in the dress of priests, taking advantage of a child.

So, what of it? It’s a fair question. I’m not sure that anyone’s formally studied methods for rebuffing attempts to capture regulatory agencies, and if those attempts would be any different than understand that regulation is in place to protect the public from the negative side effects of those entities in their operations of existence, if you take my meaning.

And would those methods have general applicability, or not? Beats the hell out of me.

But I thought I’d mention it. It’s better than talking about the ultimate capture that took place a couple of years ago.

… and will the embankment be high enough to keep him on the track? I speak, of course, of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, whose own lawyer had this to say:

Asked on NPR whether Cohen would accept a pardon from Trump for his admitted crimes, Davis gave an emphatic “no.”

“I know that Mr. Cohen would never accept a pardon from a man that he considers to be both corrupt and a dangerous person in the Oval Office, and he has flatly authorized me to say under no circumstances would he accept a pardon from Mr. Trump,” Davis said.

He went on to criticize Trump as someone “who uses the pardon power in a way that no president in American history has ever used a pardon, to relieve people who have committed crimes who are political cronies of his.”

“Mr. Cohen is not interested in being dirtied by a pardon from such a man,” Davis said. [WaPo]

Tastes to me like someone who has suddenly realized he’s been drinking poison and it’s time to take the cure, no matter how noxious. Such as telling your former boss you’d rather be in prison than be pardoned by him.

He’s trying to make right with everyone who will be judging him in the future. Will it work? Hard to say. Someone’ll probably cut him a break when he gets out of prison.