Category: Movies

Posted on

Ugh! The News and politics is already back to the Obama era.

I was reminded this morning why I’d lost interest in politics and the news during Obama. It wasn’t that I was actually disinterested, it was that no matter what, there was almost zero serious discussion about anything Obama or his minions did. Anything and everything was amazing and just wonderful. That makes me suspicious. No president, administration, politician, or government is wonderful and amazing all the time.

Just as it is untrue that anything and everything Trump did for the past four years according to the media, was; wrong, evil, bad, racist, or whatever negative descriptive you can think of.

Then I remembered the movie Protocol with Goldie Hawn. I’ll be digging it out of the library later today.

Just thinking about it made me smile, and I could use a laugh or two.

I honestly don’t give a runny crap about who is in power. But I absolutely care about fair play, and politicians that actually work for the people.

I don’t believe that we have either now and doubt seriously that we’re getting fair and accurate news reporting about the goings on in Washington DC.

It’s the imbalance in reporting that makes me question. Now that we don’t have a President that the media can target, the Media and many of the politicians have switched to targeting anyone who disagrees with the prevailing narrative, or who supported the former President.

This is not a hallmark of a democratic republic. It’s a hallmark of a totalitarian state.

I’d stopped watching the goings on in Washington during the last four years of Obama. Every time I sat down to watch the Obama press conferences or state of the union I found myself having far more questions than were answered. I found that I fundamentally disagreed with the direction then President Obama was taking the country.

Apparently so did many in congress which led to nothing but wasted time and money because nothing was getting done. I was very displeased with Obama’s use of executive orders because it felt very much like he was a King, not an American President.

To be fair Trump also used executive orders, but not the the extent that Obama and now Biden have.

I think we’re in for yet another four years of congressional deadlock and infighting rather than congress doing the job they exist to do. How long can a country survive doing nothing for the people? 12 years? 16 Years? 20 years?

About 1/2 this country no longer believes in voting. Not because Biden won, but because no-one in the courts would even hear the voices of the people upraised in protest.

Last week there was an article in Time magazine that essentially says there was something going on designed to make sure Biden won. Whether this collusion behind the scenes is illegal or not we will probably never know, because the courts will refuse to hear any cases about it.

The article is here. The article could be read to imply that votes don’t actually matter in this country anymore. But that politicians and corporate oligarchs are deciding our fate.

I’ll grant you that American politics is, and always has been a dirty business. That doesn’t mitigate the fact that a very large number of people were demanding answers as is their right and were dismissed like spoiled children from the dinner table.

That was insult enough. But those in power are compounding the insult with what appear to be blatant misuses of their power by continuing to silence all opposition, engaging in what looks a lot like settling vendettas against their enemies.

It hasn’t gone un-noticed that the nation is suddenly calmer, that protests and riots are no longer front page news. Many predicted this would be the case. It’s also worthy to note the SPLC has designated, (and the party in power agrees,) quite a few right leaning groups (note I said leaning, not right wing) as terrorist organizations, but that the groups responsible for billions of dollars in damage in cities nationwide have not earned a similar designation.

It is also interesting that states which had been locked down for COVID are opening up. One could say that is a result of the vaccine, but the timing is somewhat coincidental especially in light of the limited availability of the vaccine itself. Many also predicted this would happen.

I find myself once again wanting to turn a blind eye. But I’ve tried that, hoping that the problem would go away.

It didn’t work

I hoped that the politicians would correct the problem because it’s their job.

They didn’t.

I hoped that my vote still counted.

It didn’t.

I believed that the rule of law still held sway in my country.

It doesn’t

I thought that justice was blind.

It isn’t.

I’m a relatively moderate conservative leaning person. If I’m thinking things like this, I have to wonder what other more disenfranchised people are thinking. I wonder if Germans in pre-Hitler Germany were asking the same questions.

If they were, then along comes Hitler who promises them their place in the world. He promises to restore their national pride, and tells them he will make it happen, and has a plan…

We all know, or should know how that turned out.

Logically I have to ask, “What happens if a gifted orator comes along and manages to speak to the masses of disenfranchised Americans who are asking these same questions?”

Despite what the media pundits said about Trump being Hitler. We can all agree he wasn’t a gifted orator. Neither is Biden or Harris…

But what happens when a really gifted orator comes along?

Somehow I can’t get past the feeling that we’re all sitting on a powder keg and someone is playing with matches.

I can have that opinion, it’s been demonstrated time and again over the past four years that what we feel is true… Actual Facts be damned!

So I’m going to watch Protocol, and perhaps The American President both are sweet comedies and make me smile.

Posted on

I caught a deal…

I was wandering through the Apple TV Movies and noticed that Good Night and Good Luck was not only available, but on sale!

For those of you that may not know this movie, it’s a dramatization of Edward R. Murrow taking on Senator Joseph McCarthy while Murrow was working at CBS.

The movie was released in 2005 and I’d purchased a copy of it on DVD, but never replaced that copy once it was lost.

The movie has an all star cast, including amazing performances by Jazz singer Dianne Reeves.

Edward R Murrow

The subject matter of the movie is timely. It could be argued that Murrow was among the first victims of cancel culture.

He called out Joseph McCarthy at the height of the McCarthy hearings and essentially said what you’re doing is wrong and un-American.

For those who don’t know who Joseph McCarthy was, here’s a brief synopsis of what I remember from history.

McCarthy in the late 1940s and early 1950s chaired a house subcommittee that was supposed to root out communists that McCarthy said had infiltrated the State Department. You need to remember that the cold war was raging and America was just out of World War II.

McCarthy subsequently targeted LGBT people as easily compromised. His lasting legacy was that gay people were considered a security risk well into the 1980s.

Joseph McCarthy

McCarthy terrorized Hollywood, created black lists of suspected communists and through these black lists ended the careers of many average people, and writers, actors, producers, and journalists.

The movie mentions one journalist killing himself over the accusation that he was affiliated with communist subversives.

There’s a great deal more negative that the McCarthy hearings did. Look it up for yourself.

Although, in the context of today’s events, I do sometimes find myself wondering if McCarthy might have been right. Perhaps he was just 50 years ahead of his time…

I hadn’t seen the movie in many years, but remembered the jazz. So I bought it last night and sat back to be entertained. There was an irony in the movie because as I watched, I was struck by how the names, causes, and political party has changed but the persecution today is much the same. McCarthy was a Republican, but could as easily have been one of todays politicians of either party.

Edward Murrow, effectively won. But winning cost him his prime time Tuesday evening show. He went on to produce numerous shows until about 1960, and died in 1965.

I remember his voice from my early childhood. I don’t remember the context in which I heard his voice, only that it was distinctive. He was a true journalist, based on what I recall from some of the things I recall reading about him.

I ran across some of his writing at the UK library when I lived in KY. His words were clear and what he said was said plainly and directly. I don’t recall him being apologetic in his writing. What I think I remember most was his somewhat terse style and his eloquent use of English. I learned some new words reading him. (no, they weren’t dirty words.)

He seems to have stood by his words believing in presenting the truth of a situation as he saw it, but assumed that the audience was intelligent enough to draw their own conclusions.

I recall reading an apology to a viewer where he said something to the effect; “Reading your letter, I have rethought my position and you may be right. I apologize for any harm my words may have caused you.” That’s not an exact quote but I remember that it struck me how this fairly powerful journalist saw fit to actually put in writing that he’d reevaluated his position and told a viewer so.

After watching the movie, I still appreciated the vocals of Dianne Reeves. As I watched the credits roll I thought, “We need journalists like Murrow again.”

As is pointed out in one scene, Murrow tried to behave as if he was above editorializing, but he did editorialize to some extent. I thought it was interesting that he was portrayed as accepting the criticism and the consequences as part of doing business.

I thought about that, and have concluded we’re all human, we all editorialize, but a journalist is supposed to keep that natural tendency in check. They’re supposed to present the facts as dispassionately as they possibly can.

One line in the movie is, “We report the news, we don’t make it.” If only journalists still operated on that premise, we’d all be better informed and perhaps less prone to passionate outbursts based on half the information and our emotional response to it.

If you get a chance, check out the movie it’s 94 minutes of your life well spent. Especially if it makes you stop reacting and start thinking.

Oh, if you play the movie, your TV isn’t broken… The whole thing is shot in period correct Black & White.

Posted on

Finally! Who’d have thought it would be a Michael Moore production?

My brother sent me the link to this film.

Watch it soon, there’s no way of telling how long it will be up on YouTube especially since it blows the hell out of the New Green Energy deal.

I’m sure YouTube will find something in it that violates their terms of service, and take it down.

I watched it all. It’s an exposé about how so called green energy isn’t actually all that green. To make batteries, and solar panels, you have to mine and refine rare earth elements.

A lot of folks may not know that solar panels come in varying efficiencies. The most efficient (hence expensive) panels only convert about 20% of the light falling on them to useable electricity and that is at maximum. Add some clouds, haze, or if sun isn’t striking the panels dead on, and the efficiency drops. Solar panels also degrade over their life and have to be replaced.

Here’s a personal example, I have a portable 20W solar panel. It does indeed produce 20W in full direct sunlight if it is angled so that the sun is striking the panel at 90 degrees. But that requires realigning the panel about every 15 minutes or so.

Realistically my 20W panel in normal operation produces 7  to 12 watts. That’s enough to recharge my phone or iPad directly from the panel. It’s not enough to charge my computer. So I connect the panel to a battery pack. The panel charges the pack and the pack charges my other devices.

However, you’re almost always in a diminishing cycle. You’re pulling more power from the battery pack than you can replace.

One solution is to get bigger panels.

Yep, I can connect my 20W panel to a 30W panel and between the two I can charge my battery pack in a shorter amount of time, or if it’s overcast I can charge the pack in 6 – 12 hours. What I can’t do consistently is charge devices and the pack.

It’s a rare day indeed if I can stay on the positive side of the charge curve. It’s not that big a deal since this rig is for camping. I’ve not even talked about camp lights.

My point is this. It takes a large solar surface area to generate power. And that power generation is only working when the sun is out. At night or on a dark rainy day you’ve got no power generation.

In my case with proper energy management this solution works fine for camping. After all I’m camping to get away from technology right? The problem is, it’s not really all that scalable.

I can say this because I’ve actually experienced the process.

I’d guess that a large percentage of the population hasn’t actually worked with a solar panel and because of this, they simply believe that solar power is a 100% solution.

It’s not the average Joe’s fault that they don’t have experience.

I can hold the rabidly Green Deal people to account because they should have actual facts before preaching at the rest of us. (Greta, I’m looking at you.)

When you start doing the math, it becomes obvious quickly that you need a large array of solar panels in an area of the country where you get sun 99% of the time and you need some kind of very efficient storage medium (battery) to store what you don’t use so that you can use it later.

For instance, the roof of a house provides a large surface area and can give you a big array of panels. Without storage, at night you’re going to be dependent on the standard electrical grid.

That’s how most of the home solar installations work. In daytime the roof panels power most, if not all the house needs. At night the house switches over to the normal electrical grid. After all you don’t want your fridge, or heater not running at night or inoperative during the winter. 

The practical upshot of this is you’ll always need to have a big generator running at a public utility somewhere.

Don’t get me wrong, I think houses should all have solar, if for no other reason than it would allow the reduction of power demand on the power plant, meaning overall, less power demand would mean less pollution.

It should also be pointed out, research into solar panels is ongoing and at some point we might be able to get panels with much higher efficiencies.

However, this comes at a cost. Solar panels are made of some pretty exotic materials and creation of panels means mining and processing those exotic materials.

Guess what? There are some really nasty chemicals involved in solar panel, computer chip, and battery manufacture. Not to mention the strip mining, pollution, and deforestation required to obtain and process those raw materials.

Solar is not a complete solution and it may never be.

Wind turbines have essentially the same problems, they don’t produce power if the wind isn’t blowing. With turbines you also need a very large amount of space.

As an aside, I personally enjoy pissing off the smug, rabidly green electric car owners. I do it with a simple question, “How is the electricity you charge your car with being produced?”

The ensuing conversation is often a wonderful demonstration of faulty logic, and lack of understanding about science, or how things work.

Again don’t take this the wrong way, electric cars are great. They’re fast, zero emission, and quiet. In cities they’re probably the best way to reduce air pollution and contribute to the overall health of the folks living in the cities, especially, in the case of those folks with respiratory problems.

But the solution isn’t perfect. Somewhere, there is an electric plant burning something to spin generators to make the power to charge that car.

Somewhere there’s a strip mine that’s produced the lithium used in that car’s batteries. At the end of the batteries usable life, there’s going to be a toxic dump stacked high with battery packs that no-one wants.

Most of us notice our phone batteries start not lasting the whole day after a couple of years. Imagine that in your car. What happens when you can’t make it to the grocery store and back on a full charge? You either get a new car, or new batteries. Either way, something is going to end up in a dump someplace.

I’ve always asked, “Just how green is that?”

I tend to keep cars 10 or 20 years. I maintain them and drive ‘em until they fall apart or are totaled by some idiot driver hitting me. I tend to keep my cellphone for much longer than other people. Though not as long as some of my friends. 

For me it’s about cost versus return on investment, and factored into that is also responsibility. Do I need to have a new car, phone, computer, or TV, every 3 years? Do I want to add something substantial to the pile of waste?

Usually, I find myself saying nope, and I’m good with keeping my good old reliable stuff for another few years.

I’m not even particularly Green. I’m simply a guy who thinks we shouldn’t be wasteful. Call it a philosophy of trying to live my life like a backpacker. Pack out your trash… Leave it as you found it.

Many electric car owners are smug and often self righteous about “being green” until you point out where the components and power come from. They get really pissed off when you point out that all they’ve done is shifted the problem to another part of the country or world.

It’s not that these people are mean or stupid, they’ve just never connected the dots. They’ve bought into the illusion that green energy is reducing pollution. A lot of these folks are content to live in an “out of sight, out of mind” vision of the world.

When they do connect the dots, they’re usually pissed off and never look at their 65K electric car in quite the same way again.

That’s why I was pleased to see a movie like Planet of the Humans, it’s probably not all 100% accurate, but it points out that shifting the issue isn’t solving the issue.

I really enjoyed the part about biomass.

Somehow that group thinks that burning wood is better than burning oil.

On its face that makes no sense!

One need only look at the energy density of wood versus oil to see that we’ll deforest the planet in short order, maintaining our current energy output with wood. 

Ask yourself this question. What is oil?

Oil, in its purest sense is concentrated biomass. So theoretically burning oil efficiently is going to be better than burning wood to generate power.

I’ll admit that I thought the biomass generation plants were burning stuff from landfills. If that were true then every kilowatt from that source is a win. (Assuming there was no increase in toxic chemicals being released into the air.) But if you’re cutting down trees to fuel the biomass plants then you’ve lost your mind.

There was one glaring omission from this movie. Nuclear power.

I know that all the green activists, and even those who are not so green are opposed to nuclear power. There are indeed risks with nuclear.

That being said, I’d suggest that you watch Pandora’s Promise with an open mind before you categorically say no to nuclear power.

I saw this on Netflix a while ago, It’s currently available on YouTube for rent, and Amazon Prime.

Planet of the Humans, indirectly suggests that population control is the only way out of the climate problem. There is one person in the movie that mentions we think technology will save us. Then the movie kind of brushes past the technology issue.

Pandora’s Promise presents another option. It may not be the best option but it might be a viable one that could substantially reduce our consumption of, and reliance on fossil fuels.

There’s another type of reactor that essentially uses the waste materials from the reactors we’ve been using for decades. Guess what? They may have the potential to help solve the problem of spent fuel rods that are currently in storage around the world.

These spent rods are radioactive and hazardous. Wouldn’t it be better to get rid of them, generate power doing it, and not have to worry about leaking fuel rod storage? Just asking…

In a perfect world, we’d feed our nuclear warheads into these reactors and metaphorically beat our swords into plowshares. Again, just a thought…

I should mention I’m not convinced that Climate Change is anything under our control. For me, these issues are more about clean air, drinkable water, and living in a beautiful world.

Let’s face it we’ve been teenagers leaving our shit all over our room. I think it’s time that we grew up and recognized that a clean room, house, or planet, is simply a better way to live.

That belief doesn’t require you to agree with any political agenda or pick any sides. It’s a belief that probably most of the people on the planet can agree to without any coercion.

Give it a thought. You don’t have to agree…

Have a great day.