Monthly Archives: September 2018

It’s a Sad Terrible Day

The most depressing truth is that what you believe about Kavanaugh and Ford is principally determined by your political affiliation. I remember when the Monica Lewinski scandal broke during the Clinton administration and hearing liberal friends dismiss her entirely as not attractive enough to warrant Bill Clinton’s attention and later conservative friends commenting that without the infamous blue dress and it’s incriminating stain that the Clinton machine would have savaged and torn Ms. Lewinski apart in the court of public opinion. Of course the process of tearing a woman apart in the court of public opinion is going on right this moment and their concerns have evaporated.

Researching a story that required me to get into the head-space of a sexual assault survivor I have read dozens of survivors stories and I have absolutely no doubt that Dr. Ford is indeed a woman who survived such an assault.

However more important that Dr. Ford’s heartbreaking testimony is Judge Kavanaugh’s evasive response. I scarcely expect any person to confess to sexual crimes committed or attempted but his ‘choir boy’ facade, never drank to excess, had only the deepest respect, focused on study and church is laughably false, contradicted by his own yearbook associates from that time period. It is a lie of Trump-like proportions. It causes serious doubt as to his innocence.

Some have repeated that there is no evidence of the assault, and there is unlikely to be any, not after more than 30 years, but let’s look at the evidence argument.

If Judge Kavanaugh is innocent then he should not only welcome a through investigation of the events by the impartial and professional FBI, he should be demanding it. Hell, from my understanding there is not statute of limitation for that jurisdiction as an officer of the court shouldn’t his position be that the crime must be investigated to its fullest? But that’s is not his position. When directly asked if that was what he wanted he sat silent. Further more he asserted that this was a coordinated political hit, that the entire accusation was revenge for his participation in the Clinton sexual investigations. Hell, if that were the case then even more you would want the FBI poking around, pulling threads, and lifting rocks. If there were such a conspiracy you’d want it exposed. As a partisan you’d want to expose the opposition party with bloody red hands. But there is no evidence of this conspiracy. There is no call to investigate this conspiracy. There is only the accusation, made without support and taken at face value as fact.

So there we are, a woman in tears, recounting her sexual assault and not wavering at all in naming who was responsible and a powerful man insisting, without any evidence at all, that he is the victim of a vast left-wing conspiracy. The simplest explanation tends to be the accurate one and between a drunken assault and a coordinated conspiracy I have no doubt which is simplest.

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Streaming Review: Pitfall

For 2018 the San Diego Film Geeks are holding a yearlong celebration of film noirshowing a different noireach moth at the Digital Gym Cinema and this months movie was Pitfallstarring Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Raymond Burr, and Jane Wyatt. Because I had already had a bad reaction to Dick Powell in Murder my Sweet, I skipped seeing this one with the Film Geeks but instead watched it over two nights at home by way of Amazon Prime Streaming.

Dick Powel plays Johnny an insurance man, bored with his wife, Jane Wyatt, his son, and his life that is stuck in a dull predictable routine. When he has to reclaim items purchased with stolen money from the lovely Mona, Lizabeth Scott, he begins an affair. Mac, Raymond Burr, is a private eye who works on contract for the insurance company and who has developed an unhealthy obsession with Mona. The situation spirals out of control with Mac turning murderous and Johnny realizing the good life he has endangered with his short sighted and selfish drives.

Over all this is the sort of noirI like, an ordinary character drawn into extraordinary circumstances, but my reaction to Dick Powell remained and made me glad I had not seen the film at the theater. Also the final ending where the ‘loose woman’ suffers a terrible outcome but Johnny skates free because that’s the ‘moral’ outcome is a down check on this movie.

Johnny is the sort of wise cracking character that is actually very tricky to play. SF author John Scalzi has a saying, ‘The failure mode of clever is ass.’ It far too easy for someone who thinks they are being clever to come off as an ass and this it would seem turns on performance. Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falconcan wise crack as Sam Spade and it’s endearing, Peter Jurasik in Babylon 5can make you see the humanity within Londo Mollari even as he schemes and makes terrible choices, and Kristen Bell in The Good Placemakes Eleanor Shellstrop a relatable character even when in her own words ‘she’s kind of a monster’ but Dick Powell can’t pull off this trick. When the psychopathic Mac is beating the crap out of Johnny (Dick Powell) in front of his own house I found myself cheering Mac. The things is I’ve seen Powell in other roles and he was just fine, but he cannot walk that fine line between clever and ass. Invariably he falls over into ass.

Next month is Gun Crazyone of my favoritenoirs.

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The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

I want to start this off by saying my blog is not a book review site. While I will occasionally pop on here and yammer about a book I really enjoyed I will not be posting reviews of every book I read and quite unlike with my film reviews I will not come here with a critical take on a novel. The reason is quite simple, I believe that if you are posting honest book reviews then it hampers any working relationship you may have with editors and publishers for your own material. This is a small industry and there are plenty of site and places to get the full spectrum of reviews so for me this will be only about those few books that really hit it off with me.

Certainly one of those is The Calculating Starsby Mary Robinette Kowal. Set in an alternate 1950’s timeline, the novel is about the desperate bid to get humanity into the space and colonizing Mars when Earth’s near term habitability is destroyed by an asteroid strike into the Atlantic Ocean that wipes out the Eastern Seaboard and kick starts a runaway greenhouse effect. The story follows Elma York from her survival of the initial strike, helping establish the accelerated colony program, and her quest to become an astronaut, a daunting challenge for a woman in 1950’s America,

Ms. Kowal has a deft prose style that allows for fast action, large stakes, but without sacrificing deep character and meaningful relationships. Given the setting and the central drive of the character the novel explores the nature of various forms of bias in American culture both in the 1950s and sadly quite still with us today. The exploration of that bias never, for me, crosses the line into peachiness or lecturing and Ms. Kowal gives her protagonists the freedom to have their own biases, which are challenged over the course of the character’s growth.

Ms. Kowal also co-hosts a writing podcast Writing Excusesand it was listening to her theories and practices on the craft of writing that prompted me to give her novel a try.

The Calculating Starsis a prequel to the author’s previous works but it was the first prose fiction I have read by Ms. Kowal. That said the piece stands firmly and quit ably on its own and I feel no one need have read anything else to come into the book. The sequel, The Fated Skyis already out and will soon be joining my library.

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DVD Review: Top Secret!

Saturday I added to my movie library with the DVD of Paramount’s comedy Top Secret!. From the disturbed minds of Abrahams, Zucker and Zucker, this was their follow-up film to the smash hit Airplane!. (Yes, these guys do like their exclamation points.) Top Secret! failed to find an audience at the theaters and the movie, despite launching the career of Val Kilmer, quickly vanished. yet for many us the movie lives on as one of our favorite absurdist comedies. “Weird Al” Yankovic has this movie as a personal favorite.

American pop singer Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer) comes to East Germany to perform in an international cultural festival. However the East Germans, all uniformed and acting like WWII Nazi’s, are using the festival as a diversion while they destroy the NATO submarine fleet. Nick becomes involved with Hillary, daughter of a kidnapped scientist making a super weapon for the East Germans, and soon he and the French Resistance, yes the French Resistance in 1980’s East Germany this is part of the absurdist comedy, make a desperate bid the free the scientist and save the day, but there is a traitor among the resistance threatening everything.

If you have seen the previous film Airplane!Then you know the zany style that the filmmakers utilized in such an over the top plot. Unlike Airplane!, there were no parade of stars playing against type in Top Secret!, one of the elements that I think added to the box office failure. Additionally Airplane!came at the end of a nearly decade long run of disaster movies and satirized them perfectly but Top Secret!is parodying the WWII resistance move, combined with the teen pop musical, and neither style of film had been popular for decades so it was targeting forms that perhaps many in the audience had never seen.

The disc is spare on bonus features, boasting only an audio commentary track and a few deleted or altered scenes.

The movie has become a cult favorite and it still never fails to bring my mood up whenever I watch it.

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A Political Proposal for 2019

In an earlier post I suggested that the odds of the Democratic Party taking bot the Senate and the House were about 1/9, given that the odds for the House was, at that time 1/6 and the Senate 1/3. But on a recent 538 podcast I learn that I was in error, because I had treated the House and Senate as separate events but they are conjoined in the forces that create the outcomes and that the odds of the Democratic sweep is about 1/3. There is practically no scenario where the Democratic Party gains the senate and does not also gain the House.

So 1 in 3 are odds that favor the Republicans but they are from far impossible. Aside from much needed oversight of the Administration, and given that President Trump will be disinclined to sign into law Democratic objectives what should the Democratic Party push for should they control both all of Congress?

The most pressing issue we are currently facing is securing our elections from foreign interference and the most important election to secure is the Presidential one. Given our Federal system and directly managing elections is a responsibility of the various states I think the best measure to secure our presidential contests is to ditch the Electoral College and go to a direct popular vote for President. That of course requires a Constitutional Amendment.

Getting a constitutional amendment out of congress is difficult. It requires a 2/3 vote in both Houses and no matter how steep a hypothetical blue wave may appear in November it will not deliver those sort of the numbers. That I think should not dissuade the Democrats should they take the Senate and House. They should draft the amendment and make the Republicans take a very public stand on the issue of direct popular election of the President. This is not something that the Republicans want to vote for, in recent history they have benefited from the electoral misfires where the Electoral College installed the loser of the popular vote but let them stand before the American people and argue that the winner should not necessarily be the winner of the vote total. An additional benefit to doing this now is that a Constitutional Amendment does not require Presidential assent. The proposal should it pass, proceeds directly to the state for ratification, Trump would be out of the process. Again the climbs to pass this would be steep, there are more red states than blue one but a hard fight is one worth winning. Again let those who stand against the proposal argue why the will of the people must be subservient to the Electoral College.

Yes, there are those who argue that popular vote means the candidates could ignore smaller states, but today we have a situation where the largest states are ignored. No Republican contests in California and no Democratic candidate fights for Texas, winner takes all means it is foolish to waste resources in those states. With direct popular vote the Republican votes in California and the Democratic ones in Texas are valuable not wasted and the 21st century allows candidates to compete nationally in a manner not foreseen by the drafters of the Constitution. The Electoral College system in addition to naturally occurring misfires opens lines of attack for foreign enemies. They do not need to sway an entire nation, or even millions of people, just a handful in a few select states are enough to throw our process into chaos, weakening our nation and damaging out standing in the world. Direct popular vote would also tamp down the extremes of both parties, bringing a bit of sanity back to our government. If the Democratic Party wins in both houses, unlikely but possible, that should move to secure our elections and our future.

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Why Did You Make That Character {X}?

A common question I see people pose authors is often a variant of  “Why Did {Character} have to be [X]? Where the X is gay/ethnic/transgender/sex or some other classification that less often found in fiction and media. What I find fascinating about the inquiry is the assumptions that underline the question, that a character that is not representative of the ‘norm’ has to have their existence justified, that there must a reason, a sufficient reason, for creating a character with the questioned identity. The inverse of that is very rarely asked. Characters with common attributes are simply accepted.

Now sometimes a character is a member of a group because the story requires it in order to explore what the creator what to talk about. These are usually stories about bias, prejudice, and the way we treat the others. In my Nationalized Space novel Seth is an American for that very reason. Being an America, a man from a declined empire, is essential to the story and to the character. But there are lots of stories where the character isn’t there to explore injustice and prejudice. People of all stripes exist in stories beyond the injustices their groups have suffered and they should not be ghettoed to only stories about their pain.

If I make a character that occupies a role other than the expected ones it is usually because that is how the character works for me. I’ll start with just free form thinking about the character, imagining their relationship, their history, getting a sense have how they ‘taste’ in my mind. When an aspect feels right it gets locked in, aspects that scrape against the character, as they exist in my mind are rejected. It’s an intuitive process that doesn’t go for the default but rather questions in what way does this character not fit the default. The truth is that all of us vary from expected defaults and finding those way in fictional persons help make them deeper and more realistic simulations of persons rather than simply a collection of attributes fulfilling plot functions.

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An Unshakable Association

I find it curious just how easily a powerful association can be forged. Take the song above, every time I hear it, every time I head just the opening bars of that melody, my minds instantly flies back through the decades to a metropolitan transit buss, a cold cloudy grey winter’s day and the song playing though the headphones of my Walkman.

It was the winter of 1987 and I was taking courses at San Diego City College. One of my classes was an introduction to Western Civilization. I enjoyed the course, found the material fascinating, but what sticks with me is the crush I had on a fellow student, Suhara.

I had just come out of a relationship, adrift in the Sargasso of isolation when romance has failed, and found Suhara utterly compelling. She was an Iraqi, and it was from her that I learned the proper pronunciation of Iraq, looked like an Arabic Kirstie Alley, was smart as a whip — she was supplementing her course work at UCSD, and was engaged to be married, so there was never any possibility of a relationship beyond study partners and a passing friendship.

The winter of that semester as finals approached we made a study date at the library on the campus of UCSD and that was the cause of that afore mentioned bus trip. I brought along a couple of cassette tapes of music to pass the time as the bus ride took nearly an hour; isn’t mass transit grand? As I sat there, my head against the window, I can’t read on a moving vehicle and so music was my solace, the cool class against my forehead, the slate grey clouds spanning the sky from horizon to horizon, the song played, and forged an association that is unbroken to this day.

The thing is it isn’t even really about Suhara. I doubt that today I could honestly pull her out of a line up of similar looking women. It was a crush, an infatuation; we didn’t know each other enough for anything more significant to have formed emotionally. But still the song, the bus ride, that winter’s day, is forever locked together in my mind, a tangled knot that can never be unwound. That’s the power of the human mind to form links between experiences and their emotional triggers. It’s one of the defining elements of our existence that the powerful emotional reactions imprint on our selves and follow us for the rest of our years.

Be kind to each other, be good to each other, you never know what impression you are making that will echo through the decades.

Post Script:

And on the short drive from home to work what song played on the radio? California Dreaming.

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A Few Thoughts on the Kavanaugh Confirmation

I had thought that the Kavanaugh confirmation was a done deal unless something exploded to derail the process and now it looks as if something has done exactly that. The confirmation is in doubt, not killed, but certainly in doubt.

The accusation that he, when 17, drunkenly tried to rape a 15 year old girl has ignited a firestorm and where someone stands on the issue is more determined by the politics of the observer than any objective analysis or consideration. When presented with contradictory or confusing my standard is to go with the simplest explanation. Without supporting evidence, not conjecture, I reject conspiracy theories. The fact that there is a documented trail about Dr. Ford’s experience that well precedes the nomination is enough for me to dismiss that the charge itself is politically motivated. This is not a lie invented to derail the nomination. Someone assaulted Dr. Ford when she was a young teenager and she believes that person to be Judge Kavanaugh,

There are those who think that ‘mistakes’ made as a teenager should not be held against a person many decades later. Certainly that is good general principal but there are mistake and there are actions that transcend that bland descriptor. This was no aggressive flirting; this was no crude and lewd suggestion. This was a violent attempt to rape a young girl. Music turned up loud to cover the sounds, gagging her with his hand, this is not a sexual misadventure this is an assault. Some actions will follow you through you life and rape and trying to rape can certainly be one of those.

Does the drinking excuse?

No. I have read at least one piece that tries to construct a defense that some people are very different when they are drunk. Certainly some people behave very differently when they are drunk. Alcohol removes inhibitions revealing the elements of character that people strive to conceal. One way to think about it is that it is not that drunkenness creates a new persona but reveals the one that had been hidden.

Judge Kavanaugh has categorically denied the event ever took place. He has not claimed  ‘youthful indiscretion,’ he has not claimed to not remember the particulars because of heavy drinking, but flatly declares that he never participated in such an assault. After so many years there is no physical evidence that can be used to confirm contradict the account. Every conclusion observer’s reach will have to be by way on inference and judgment of character.

Eighteen hours after the story surfaced the administration provided a letter signed by 65 women who knew Judge Kavanaugh at that time attesting to his character. They were not at the party. They were not present in the room. I find the letter itself to be very interesting. To produce such a letter less than a day after the events became public is blazingly fast and suggests to me that the letter was prepared and ready to go. Yes, it is physically possibly to locate and contact that number of people in that time but it is less credible than the assumption that the letter was ready in advance. If it was prepared overnight that should be easy to demonstrate, phone logs, and the women themselves should vividly remember getting the calls throughout the night. No logs have been produced to counter the narrative that the letter was prepared in advance and the women have proved to be difficult to contact by the media. All this suggests that the letter was prepared in advanced, which it suggests that an issue of this nature was one that the confirmation team expected as a possibility. That calls into question Kavanaugh’s denials.

It is important to remember that this not a legal process but a political one. Judge Kavanaugh faces no legal consequences from this. He may not be confirmed to a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court but that is not an entitlement. Lifetime appointments need to be made with the utmost care. They are lifetime appointment because the concept is that the people who are confirmed to such position need to be insulated from the hubbub of the storm tossed political seas. Since removing someone from such an appointment is a difficult and rare proposition the people so confirmed need to be of excellent judgment and unimpeachable character.

How both people conduct themselves will be our only guide to their judgment and character.

 

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A Possible Political Future

The week I ended with an essay about the coming freak-out if the Democratic Party takes control of one or both of the House of congress, to day I’m going to write about the inverse. What if the Republican Party retains control of both?

Fivethrityeight.com currently give the odds of a Democratic success in the House and the senate at 5/6 and 1/3 respectively meaning the GOP stands at 1/6 and 2/3, or a combine odds of both events taking place 1/9. Those are steep odds but far from impossible. What would it mean if that happened?

First off and easiest to see coming is the abortion of any serious oversight of Trump’s administration. I think it would be likely that Trump would move against Sessions and implement his own ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ to kill the Muller investigation. To be sure elements of the investigation would continue, the web of suspected criminal actions extended into state jurisdiction where Trump has no ability to fire threatening district attorneys. However there are more far reaching implication that the immediate crises bedeviling the administration.

There is no greater force in politics than victory. That which wins are adopted, repeated, and enshrined. People who lead their political the power, particularly when the odds are against them, become the standards for the party and its philosophy. Ronal Reagan set the tone, standard, and expectation of every Republican that followed him for thirty years after his 1980 election. From the lowliest office all the way up to the Presidency every GOP candidate scrapped and clawed to wear the mantel of a ‘Reagan Republican.’ yet, just sixteen years before his election the brand of Republican politics Reagan championed had been soundly thrashed at the ballot box, an indication just how much things can change in a relatively short period of time.

This past weekend when I described the current political winds as being fairly strongly anti-republican a conservative friend said that they were ‘anti-Trump.’ That is correct but currently Trump isthe Republican Party. Those who stood against him are either being driven from the party or reinventing themselves as supporter to ward off challenges from Trump’s wing of the party. He is no longer a single candidate; he is a philosophy; a wing; a movement within the GOP. The question before us if this an aberration of the moment, or is this the future of the Republican Party?

November’s election does not have Trump on the ballot but it is a referendum on him, his character, and his presidency. Should the GOP pull off their 1 in 9 chance then the odds will favor Trump re-election in 2020, impacting not only his race, but also contests up and down the ballot with the census and redistricting hanging on the outcome. Trump and Trumpism could very become the replacement for Reaganism for decades. Instead of Saint Ronnie it could very well be Saint Donald and that candidate after candidate fight, and claw to wear his mantle, and the politics of the party his shadow conforms to Trump’s personality as it did following Reagan. This is a possible consequence of this year’s election, not just the next two years, not just the next presidential administration, but also the very course the Republican Party until the middle of century.

As someone who voted for Reagan I tell you that this is no election to sit on your hands and hide in foolish cynicism masquerading as wisdom.

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The Coming Freak Out

Our President is not known as a person capable of restraining his emotions. Particularly when it comes to anger and his need to lash out. Criticism, even when back up with facts and figures, is something he is unable to tolerate, one need not look any further than this reaction to the death toll in Puerto Rico see this in action. Any reasonable politician would simply state we have learned tragic lessons and pivot quickly to good news from the economy but Trump is incapable of ignoring anything he perceives as a slight. When the consequences are more than appearance his behavior becomes even more erratic. We have seen this in the Muller investigation.

Consider this the Muller investigation has been conducted while the President’s party runs interference in both houses of government. The chambers have not subpoenaed documents, forced the release of the Trump’s tax returns, or conducted any aggressive investigation of the President, his family, or the people around him. Even with this friendly terrain the President is unable to contain himself, show restraint, or refrain from disrupting his allies’ best plans with ill-advised twitter rants. Imagine if one or both Chambers fall into his opponent’s control.

The subpoenas will fly, the taxes will be exposed, the hounds will be released and what little control the people around Trump exerts will evaporate.

The left wing of the Democratic part will push for an impeach right way but that would be a major mistake. Do the work, investigate, and then under weight of evidence and transparency make the call. The site fivethrtyeight.com is predicting a 5/6 chance that the House will flip control and a 1/3 chance for the Senate. (If I am remembering correctly they gave Trump a 1/3 chance of winning and caught holly heck for It. 1/3 is unlikely but not unheard of.)

Even as I write this word is coming that Paul Manafort, the president’s one time campaign manager, is cooperating with the Muller investigation.

A storm greater than Florence is coming.

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