Wife tries to hire hit man to murder husband

I guess some people take "Until death do us part" a little too literally. I don't know how many stupid people have to get busted trying to solicit murder until the word gets out that trying to do this will almost inevitably wind up with the would be killer revealing themselves as an undercover police officer and the so-called shot-caller going to prison.  I mean I think I read at least one of these stories every six months or so somewhere in the United States. 

I'm also a little surprised that the husband doesn't want his wife to go to prison. Heck if that were me I'd want her under the prison like yesterday. For me anyway, it would be more than a little dismaying to learn that the person who is supposed to be your other half, the woman who's got your back, the one person who you can really count on, is making plans for your funeral arrangements...and you're not even sick. I mean this woman had all sorts of ideas about the best way to commit murder and get away with it.  I also think I might be a little cagey with my wife about exactly how much my life insurance was worth or precisely who the beneficiary was. But again, there's a thin line between love and hate and that's often quite evident in domestic violence cases. Six years seems a little light for sentencing but then again perhaps trying and failing to have your husband killed is better (or at least not as bad) than trying and actually succeeding in having your husband killed. Sometimes we wonder how much we're worth to the people that say they love us. I guess Mr. Merfeld knows the answer to that question. About $400,000 give or take.

An investigation into a 20-year-old West Michigan woman who later pleaded guilty to soliciting the murder of her 27-year-old husband included videotaped meetings with an undercover police detective. On the video, Julia Charlene Merfeld of Muskegon is heard telling the detective posing as a hit man that the killing would be "easier than divorcing him." Merfeld said that if he was killed she wouldn't have to worry about her family's judgment or "breaking his heart."  Two videos made in April were released to WZZM 13 by prosecutors. Merfeld pleaded guilty last month to soliciting a murder. She's jailed ahead of sentencing July 30 and is expected to face prison time. Authorities say she wanted her husband's $400,000 life insurance policy, and promised to pay $50,000 for the killing.

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Book Reviews-We Will Shoot Back, The Rise of The Fourth Reich, The Sundered Realm

We Will Shoot Back
by Akinyele Omowale Umoja

Some believe that the modern US Civil Rights Movement started with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, reached its zenith in the March on Washington and/or the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and died with the assassination of MLK. This story version normally shows black people and some supportive whites being beaten, insulted, spit on, shot at, and even killed all without even trying to protect themselves. The blacks are long suffering martyrs who look mutely to Washington D.C. for guidance and protection. Well. This book puts the lie to that fantasy.

While certainly MLK believed in non-violence as both a moral necessity and the only realistic tactical choice available to an outnumbered, mostly unarmed and incredibly despised minority, MLK's views never achieved 100% acceptance in the movement, even among people inclined to support him like many SCLC, SNCC, NAACP, and CORE members. Some people, even those who meant well, were under the incorrect impression that southern blacks were more comfortable with non-violence and turning the other cheek while those crazy blacks from the NOI or Panthers (usually from the North or West) were the ones supported defensive, retaliatory or pre-emptive violence. Some black movement participants had this viewpoint before they came south.

This simply wasn't the case. The Civil Rights movement needs to be understood as not just something that happened in the fifties and sixties in the South but rather as an ongoing struggle by black people throughout American history to claim their independence and constitutional rights. Several southern born and bred black men and black women simply did not believe in turning the other cheek. The fact that occasionally they HAD to did not mean they accepted it. Some simply didn't do so under any circumstances. Often such people were considered "crazy n******s" and wound up dead, imprisoned or in insane asylums. But it did not go unnoticed that white racists normally gave such people a wide berth. It's one thing to abuse people who won't fight back. It's something else to mess with people who have guns and will use them.

In some very real ways the Civil Rights movement (The author focuses on Mississippi and prefers the term "The Mississippi Freedom Movement") wasn't about individual black people deciding they had had enough but rather different people linking together to struggle. There were lots of different ways to fight for freedom, all of which could be extremely dangerous, especially in Mississippi. 

This book examines the struggle in post WW2 Mississippi, perhaps the place which most fiercely embodied the racist dedication to white supremacy and terror. It was black southerners, often WWI/WW2/Korean War veterans with long bitter experience of racism, who provided housing, transportation, and security for many civil rights workers. It was black men and women, who eschewing non-violence, armed themselves and occasionally engaged in shootouts with Klan nightriders, wounding and allegedly killing a few of them. It was black southerners operating under southern gun-friendly laws, who occasionally showed up armed at civil rights protests, just so police and other reactionary forces would be marginally less likely to resort to violence. Black southerners created formal and informal paramilitary forces to protect civil rights workers, enforce boycotts and keep an eye on any unfamiliar (i.e non civil rights workers) whites in black neighborhoods. This was an indigenous movement that was organized and run by Black Mississippi citizens with a history of resisting white racism. They converted more SNCC workers to their POV than the other way around. 

This was astounding stuff. There was American apartheid. Like apartheid elsewhere this system required, really demanded that black people accept their own inferiority. When black people stopped doing this and more importantly could not be made to do so, the system started to crumble. I was familiar with some stories but you would have to read the book or talk to someone who grew up under the Southern regime to understand how petty, cruel and arbitrary this all was. Are you black and wearing a suit during the week? You might have a problem. Contradict or disagree with a white person? Problem. Own your own land/business and thus don't work for white people? SERIOUS problem. Try to register to vote or actually vote? Look a white person in the eye or flirt with a white woman? Death was an immediate possibility.

This book shows that armed resistance was a small but crucial movement element. The knowledge (or often even the bluff) that there were black men with guns who didn't mind shooting back gave many black people the courage to march, agitate and engage in protest and boycotts. The Klan, associated groups and police suddenly discovered that their regularly scheduled night time shooting and bombing ventures into black communities were not cost free activities. The simple deterrent effect of being armed was a much bigger factor than actual shooting incidents, though the book details many of those. We Will Shoot Back explains the how the singular heroism of such men as C.O. Chinn, who upon hearing that a white man rudely told his mother to get him involved in menial labor went to the white man's house with a gun and politely advised him to stay the f*** out of Chinn family business, was reworked into a collective response to oppression.





The Rise of The Fourth Reich
by Jim Marrs

I try to be rational and find evidence for ideas before accepting them. Nevertheless I have a soft spot for some conspiracy theories, if only because so many things that most people once thought were outrageous and proof that the person who believed them had a leaky brain have since been proven true. Who would have believed that the US government would experiment on civilians and military personnel by deliberately exposing them to radiation or handing out LSD. But that's true. Who would have thought that the US government would make common cause with organized crime elements to eliminate Castro or destroy European political movements? But that happened as well. And do we really believe that an apolitical small time incompetent criminal murdered the leading civil rights personality of his generation and escaped overseas, after conveniently leaving behind "evidence" that he did it?  Or that a crazy Palestinian murdered a Presidential candidate even though the candidate was shot in the head from behind while the assailant was always in the front? And who would have imagined that the FBI would run programs of murder, surveillance, intimidation and blackmail designed to disrupt and destroy black political movements. But they did just that.

All the same I read this book skeptically. However as luck would have it I finished this just as the Snowden NSA revelations broke and otherwise liberal people (cough Joy Reid cough) fell over themselves to defend and praise the national security state. So that was ironic. Still, although this is a very interesting book, especially if you have a bent towards conspiracy theories, it ultimately can't sustain its argument.

The book starts with some facts which are not necessarily well known and then uses those to produce an overarching tale of conspiracy and secret history. For some these facts are enough to "prove" everything that comes afterwards. For me, even though I was definitely sympathetic to the argument, they weren't. For my money the author's thesis is strongest when he's sticking to what can be proved and making modest logical assertions based on those facts. But some later claims either can't be demonstrated to be true or could have a multitude of other causal factors which the author ignores or glides over.

The book's theme is that the West and most especially the United States may have defeated the Nazis militarily but that the Nazi virus was not specific to German heritage. The author argues that for reasons of self-interest, ideology, and shared hostility to real democracy the US leadership class has internalized many Nazi ideals about authoritarianism, class, race, and military primacy. I don't necessarily disagree with this. I just disagree that by the seventies any Nazis were required for this process. I also don't think, as the author holds, that the Nazis found the Templar (Solomon's) Treasure or had put together a workable low yield nuclear bomb which they used at Kursk.

Marrs provides excellent documented information about how several US corporations aided the Nazis before, during and after WW2. Some prominent US families, including most infamously the Bushes and the Dulles, had Nazi ties. There's some fascinating (and I think probably true) arguments that Rudolf Hess actually provided a legitimate peace offer from Hitler to the British Royal Family, which had Nazi sympathizers within. The author details the various US or Vatican programs which assisted Nazis in leaving Europe and resettling in the US or South America. The US space program would have looked very different without Nazi assistance. Some people will find it offensive but the book makes a valid argument that Stalin intended to invade the West and Hitler merely beat him to the punch.

The book is at its strongest when it sticks to wartime or immediately post-war actions. By the time it gets to the seventies and beyond the author has been reduced to arguing that the manner in which American society has grown (huge security state and military, low levels of dissent, lots of drugs, close connections between business and government) is congruent with how Nazis would have wanted things. This may or may not be true but it's certainly not akin to claiming, as the book does elsewhere that there are or by this time, were, secret societies, filled with former Nazis or sympathizers who sought to influence events to their liking.

Several Republican ethnic outreach coordinators were either linked to or were themselves former Nazis. Pat Buchanan used to make a hobby of defending these folks. This was an interesting book. After the early chapters the remainder is a critique of American political, drug, criminal, economic and social practices.





The Sundered Realm 
by Robert E. Vardeman and Victor Milan

My brother often teases me that there are many books I read as a kid that our parents probably wouldn't have let me read if they had known what was in them. Well I certainly wasn't going to tell my parents and with a few exceptions neither were my siblings or cousins. The Sundered Realm is definitely such a book. I recently reordered the entire War of Powers series and started re-reading. It was about as good as I remembered it to be. Certainly there are some things which haven't aged as well but generally I thought the story held up. There is also the hypothesis, which may be true, that my parents knew exactly what I was reading but had a strong belief in letting teens find their own way, within certain guidelines. Who can say.

This book is miles apart from the works of Tolkien, in which apparently sex is not a primary motivating factor or those of Martin where seemingly everybody who wins is evil. Probably the closest comparison is to Robert E. Howard. In this story the heroes are often good but don't mind cheating on occasion while the bad guys have reason to be bad. And everybody who still can, enjoys sex. This is a raunchy tale. This book is the first of a six book series. However all six books combined are roughly equivalent to just one of Martin's tomes. This is quick reading, though admittedly not at all near the quality of a Martin or a Stephen King. Motivations are quickly detailed. The world back history is outlined at the beginning of each book and via character revelations throughout the story. So yes this might be considered the literary equivalent of fast food but heck sometimes fast food hits the spot.

In a world with uneven seasons and where magic works, the dominant human realm is the Sky City. This is just what is sounds like, a city in the clouds that rotates around a fixed point in the ground. The humans who live here have access to advanced magic and technology. However they didn't create those things and don't know how to use all of them. The city was created by a race of evil lizard men who tried and failed to exterminate all of humanity. Eons ago, in a cataclysmic war involving demons and gods, humanity won and drove away much of the lizard men. However some humans took over the Sky City. They now view their fellow humans with much of the same contempt that the lizard men once did.They call such humans "groundlings".

Fost Longstrider is a low born "groundling". Women have reason to know that his last name doesn't just apply to his travel speed. Fost Longstrider is a courier and sometime warrior who is hired to deliver a vase/jug to a wizard. However when he reaches his destination he finds that the wizard is dead. Fost is then attacked by Sky City troops, whom he defeats and kills. It turns out the jug contains the spirit of the long since dead philosopher/magician Erimenes, who, when alive preached a pure asceticism and hatred of the body. So when he died, instead of transitioning to the next stage, his shade stayed on this plane. However in the 1400 years since his death, Erimenes has had a change of heart. He is now a hopeless horndog voyeur who thinks life is wasted on the living. He desperately craves to see sex and violence. And if none is forthcoming he'll try to stir some up. 

Erimenes knows the whereabouts of some VERY powerful magical amulets which is 1) why the dead wizard wanted him, 2) why the Sky City troops wanted him and 3) why Fost encounters a beautiful woman who tries to kill him and steal the jug. Their knockdown dragout fight turns into something equally vigorous but much more pleasurable. But in the morning the woman is gone, along with Erimenes' jug. The woman was Moriana, rightful heir to the Sky City throne, who needs Erimenes' knowledge to battle her older sister Synalon, usurper Queen of Sky City, and one EVIL albeit sexy woman. But Fost is not into one night stands unless he's the one doing the dumping. Anyway Fost's professional pride won't permit him to let anyone steal from him, even if he likes how she looks naked. He sets out after Moriana and runs into a buzzsaw of political and business intrigue, sorcerous sibling rivalry, war, torture, derring do, extremely dangerous adversaries, non-human plans for revenge, battle between gods and demons, and of course a vexing affection and perhaps ultimately even love for Moriana. This book was just over 200 pages and a fun read.

ObamaCare Employer Mandate/Fines Delayed

In case you missed the news the Obama Administration announced that by the authority vested in it from (I'm not sure exactly since the implementation date was specifically written in law) it was delaying the requirement of the employer mandate to provide health insurance or face fines until January 1st, 2015. It thus gave something of a victory to conservative and business groups who had argued that the employer mandate would cost jobs, lower wages and make the cost of doing business more expensive. Because most large companies already offer health insurance coverage for their workers the impact on worker coverage is not expected to be that great.  

Of course, many people who were against the law popularly known as ObamaCare had already pointed this out and claimed that the employer mandate was a tremendous interference in the private marketplace which was largely unnecessary. The Administration had previously ignored these complaints but for some reason recently changed its mind.

Employers who don't provide health insurance will be spared penalties of up to $3,000 per worker until 2015, a one-year delay of a major component of President Barack Obama's health care reform law, the Treasury Department announced Tuesday. Under Obamacare, companies with at least 50 full-time employees are required to provide qualifying health benefits to workers or face financial penalties called "shared responsibility payments." The provision of the law aims to shore up and strengthen the system that provides health benefits to most covered Americans. Under regulatory guidance to be published next week, the Obama administration will free companies from this mandate and from rules that they report information about their health benefits to the federal government next year.

"During this 2014 transition period, we strongly encourage employers to maintain or expand health coverage," Mark Mazur, assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department, said in a statement. The change does not affect people who will buy health insurance on their own or small businesses that will buy coverage through the law's health insurance exchanges.

More than half of Americans, 170 million people, are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance, according the census data. Of companies with at least 50 workers, 94 percent already offer health benefits, a survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation shows. The one-year delay of the penalties won't have a meaningful effect on jobs being the leading source of health care coverage, said Paul Fronstin, a senior research associate with the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

"The fact is, employers have been offering coverage voluntarily for how many years now. They didn't drop it before the law was passed. They offered it for business reasons," Fronstin said. "I don't think you'll see a mass exodus because of this."

LINK

I am among other things an IT project manager, albeit a relatively low ranking one. Missing the implementation date is usually a very bad thing. It normally means that the project manager, team leaders and other project sponsors proceeded on bad information or that somebody at a higher level withdrew their support. It is definitely the kind of thing which gets you dinged on your performance review. Make a habit of it and you can expect to see a few "did not meet expectations" in your 360 degree comments. Pick up a number of those and you can forget about staying on track for your next promotion or salary increase. You might not get a good project the next time and/or be exiled to an undesirable area of your company. But I digress.  

The Administration and supporters will probably wish to spin this as no big deal. And they may well be right. Things get delayed and pushed back all the time, (remember Bush's Medicaid Modernization Act ?) especially in an organization as huge as the US government. Trying to enforce employer mandates may have been a small section of ObamaCare and some supporters are arguing it wasn't even that important anyway.  And for now anyway the mandate for individuals to purchase insurance is still planned to proceed on time.  But this is at least the second time this year that the Administration has decided that what the law required wouldn't actually work and either delayed implementation or gave people a pass. In April the Administration admitted that workers at small businesses wouldn't actually be able to choose their own health care and would instead need to accept what their employers offered. I was not and am not a supporter of ObamaCare. I do not like the individual mandate. I do not think that premiums will drop for most people. But what really interests me about this latest move are two things.

1. What gives any President and/or his Administration to suspend implementation of a law. The fact that other Presidents have done this is of little interest to me. If President Obama can say well we aren't going to require this until 2015 what if anything prevents a future conservative President, as unlikely as that seems now, from saying we won't require it until 2175? So it's not technically a repeal, it's just a refusal to enforce the law. I'm not sure I'm fond of executives deciding which laws to enforce. Yes I know it may be necessary sometimes but this particular law had a hard date written into it. So let's stick to that date.
2. Am I being somewhat cynical in noticing that the new planned date for employer mandates just happens to be after midterm Congressional elections? To me that means that in the short term at least the Administration does not expect the benefits of employer mandates to be immediately obvious to voters. Because if they did they would be moving up the implementation date, not delaying it by a year. 

But who knows. Perhaps I am just a dead-ender on this issue. I don't say no to that. I do find it somewhat humorous that people who waved bloody shirts and told us that any delay to this law in its entirety would make people DIE and opponents would be responsible, are now seemingly ok with a year long delay for, what looks like to me, primarily political reasons. I think, my feelings about this law aside, the Administration is setting a bad precedent by seemingly giving in to constant criticism. Because I can absolutely guarantee that now that the employer mandate has been delayed, people opposed to other sections of the law will now gleefully ask, why don't we delay these parts as well.

What's your take?

Movie Reviews-Compulsion, Snitch

Compulsion
directed by Egidio Coccimiglio

This weird sad little indie film is a remake of the South Korean film 301, 302. It stars Heather Graham, Carrie Anne Moss, Joe Mantegna and Kevin Dillon. It's something of a mix between a thriller, horror film and parody, although I'm not quite sure what it's parodying. As you might surmise from the cover Graham is seen in really tight form fitting cleavage bearing clothing complete with heels and stockings throughout the entire film. 

Amy (Graham) is an evidently independently wealthy dilettante whose primary indulgence is food. I don't mean just eating it. I mean creating it. She's right up there with Hannibal Lector in her obsession with choosing the exact right amount and type of food for her exquisite palate. She never eats out. She strongly prefers to do all of the cooking for herself and her businessman fiancee Fred (Kevin Dillon). Amy intends to be a television chef someday and may be working towards that goal. Or she may just be delusional. In any event Amy loves to cook. Unfortunately she also loves appreciation for her cooking. I mean a LOT of appreciation. She is one of those annoying people who will do something nice for you and then ask you over and over and over and over again if you appreciated it, how much did you appreciate it, did you appreciate it more than the last time she did it and so on. Food and sex are very connected for Amy. She can almost go to the Promised Land so to speak just from inhaling the aroma of the food she creates. The flip side of this is that even when she's engaged in intimate activities with Fred, anything that is even a little bit off about her food or the appreciation she craves can quickly ruin her mood and shut things down. Amy's constant hectoring of Fred for compliments and feedback gets on Fred's nerves. He starts looking for outside nookie and almost as unforgivably from Amy's POV, outside (fast) food.

Amy discovers that her next door neighbor is Saffron (Carrie-Anne Moss) a former child actress and next big thing, who now ekes out a living as a women's magazine sex/advice columnist while trying and so far failing to hang on to an acting career where she must compete against younger and more attractive women. Amy was a huge Saffron fan. Amy is a complete extrovert and is totally and at first hilariously oblivious to the fact that the decidedly INTROVERTED Saffron wants to be left alone and is rather obviously not finished processing some serious pain and sorrow in her life. This original source of this pain is shown in flashbacks from Saffron's pov. Saffron's eating disorders are one way of dealing with her pain. It also becomes apparent that Amy's interest in Saffron is well, romantic and physical. This is nowhere near as erotic or as exploitative as one might think, despite the images. Or at least I didn't think it was. YMMV. If you're expecting a version of Bound you shouldn't be. It's not that kind of party. Saffron and Amy are very damaged women indeed. This movie is much more about nihilism, cynicism and how things from our past hold us back than it is about Graham and Moss making out. There is no nudity.

Visually this film really pulls you in with bold bright primary colors and incredible outfits. It looks like something from the early sixties with Technicolor. I really liked the look. Imagine a live action comic-book. Well maybe not to that level but the lighting and colors really do heighten the sense of unreality. Graham's increasingly unhinged Amy is a pretty interesting character study. With the exception of one early warning the viewer may not know how loony this woman is until much later. Or maybe by her standards she's not loony. This was an okay movie but the thrills and horror are VERY understated, so much so you may miss them if you're not careful. Do not expect tons of action, violence or sex (with the exception of one unerotic scene and Amy's revealing clothing, sexy banter and general va-va-voom style). There is an understated shock ending which may come out of left field if you weren't paying attention. If you were taking notice then the ending makes sense. Joe Mantegna is a detective who is snooping around for reasons that become obvious as the movie moves forward. This movie was ok if you're looking for something off the beaten path.
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Snitch
directed by Ric Roman Waugh

I missed this film in theaters unfortunately, perhaps in part because I thought it would be another shoot-em up and surprisingly at the time I wasn't in the mood for that. Go figure. Well that's what I get for ASSuming. The most surprising thing about this film is that Dwayne Johnson isn't playing a tough talking bada$$ who's secretly a former Navy SEAL or Special Forces or Green Beret or Mob hitman or Covert Ops specialist who's gonna rip off his regular guy persona and show the bad guys that they messed with the wrong man this time! No. Not at all. Instead John Matthews (Johnson) is a law abiding hard working construction/trucking company owner who's living the dream.  He may be 6-4 and full of muscles but he's no criminal or tough guy and has no taste for violence. He's got a huge mansion, a young pretty wife Analisa (Nadine Velazquez) and a cute daughter. He's confident, cocky and verbally assertive (I mean this IS The Rock after all) and still reminds me of one of my cousins but it's not as if he's going to layeth the smacketh down on anyone who can't smell what he's cooking.

Nope, John Matthews stays busy being the boss man, writing checks, hustling up business and stopping by to pitch in and help lower level employees to show them he's the kind of boss who doesn't mind getting his hands dirty, successful though he might be. However he gets a call from his ex-wife Sylvie (Melina Kanakaredes) that sends his world to s*** and causes him to try to take a walk on the wild side. Evidently John and Sylvie's son Jason, (Rafi Gavron) who never quite got over his parents' divorce, has fallen in with a bad crowd. Jason's buddy sent him a package to hold for a few days. This package is a shipment of Ecstasy pills. But Jason did not know that his buddy had already been busted and agreed to set Jason up for a sentence reduction. So when Jason accepts the package he in turn is arrested by the DEA. Because this is a federal charge with mandatory minimum sentencing there really isn't much room for negotiation. As the politically ambitious and initially bored US Attorney Keeghan (Susan Sarandon) explains to John and Sylvie there's not much that anyone can do for Jason. If Jason makes her take the case to trial he might get as much as 30 years. Or he can save her team the work and plead out now to get 10 years. But she doesn't think her office will lose the case as they don't lose many, especially not with young punks like Jason on the other side. The only way she could see herself helping Jason, if she were interested, which she's really not, is if Jason could bring her another drug dealer.

However Jason doesn't know any other drug dealers as he was the lowest on the totem pole. And he won't set up any of his friends either. He's willing to take his chances at trial. This macho bravado sends both of his parents into tears and near hysterics, especially as it becomes evident thru their visits to see their son that Jason may not last much longer behind bars. He's getting daily beatings. He could end up permanently disabled,raped or even killed. So, in desperation John browbeats Keeghan into allowing that if John were to get her a conviction of an important drug kingpin she might be able to do something for Jason. And if her uncle had ovaries she'd be Keeghan's aunt. Keeghan doesn't think John can do anything. So she agrees thinking that this will just stop John from annoying her.

Unfortunately John doesn't know any drug dealers either. In a scene that reminds me of a similar set piece in Office Space, John starts searching on the internet for information about drug cartels and drugs. This, combined with a trip to a "bad part" of town, doesn't get John anywhere. So he starts searching his company's HR records for anyone who was convicted of narcotics crimes. This leads him to Daniel (Jon Bernthal from The Walking Dead), a former top hoodlum in local Hispanic organized crime circles. John initially approaches Daniel looking for an introduction to other criminals. Daniel has pretty much the same response that you or I might have if our boss did that. It's even more intense in Daniel's case as he already has two strikes. A third felony conviction leads to life imprisonment. Daniel has a wife and young son that he wants to provide for and protect. This means staying away from criminal activity no matter how much John will pay. And as the wily Daniel points out, even talking about such things is conspiracy. 

Obviously Daniel changes his mind. Eventually John is introduced to Daniel's former associate Malik (Michael Kenneth Williams from The Wire and Boardwalk Empire) a local drug bigshot who has links to the Mexican cartel overseen by El Topo (Benjamin Bratt). Now John is cooking with gas on and actually has Keeghan's attention. But DEA agent Cooper (Barry Pepper) is worried that John is getting in too deep. And even though he was out of the life, Daniel still has his street smarts. He's wary of John and his motives. He does some checking and finds some things that don't add up. And things proceed apace.

What I liked about this movie was the detailing of the seeming arbitrary manner in which a life can be turned upside down with just one mistake. Jason is guilty of course so I didn't have a whole lot of sympathy for him but his plight did make me think of a few things. Imagine if you were accused (falsely or not) of a crime. Do you have tens of thousands of dollars available to put the best lawyers on retainer? Can you afford $700/hr and up legal bills? How would you handle one day sleeping in your own bed, coming and leaving when you please and the very next day having every single decision being made by someone who not only doesn't like you but whose job it is not to like you? To prevent further hassles would you be ready to respond with extreme ultraviolence to someone in prison who simply looked at you the wrong way? Are you ready to take a beating and still come up swinging to show you're no punk? Could you remain polite and/or deferential when you're talking to a judge, warden or prosecutor who's obviously irritated that you're even in their office? Can you imagine looking at your own flesh and blood being hurt on a daily basis and being unable to do anything about it?

Although there are multiple shootouts and some action, John Matthews is just trying to survive. He's scared. He's not snarking off one liners. Often he doesn't even have a gun. The tension doesn't just come from the violence but from the threat of violence and John's not unreasonable worry that someone will discover what he's up to and harm (legally or otherwise) his family. Even though most of John's worst case scenarios don't pan out he certainly believes they might and so do you. And occasionally they do. So it's an emotionally involving movie. John's motives are understandable but at the same time he's totally willing to use Daniel and throw him away. So is John really a hero?

This movie does have a message, one that is skillfully woven around an intriguing story. The drug war has become a way for politicians to get campaign contributions and higher office. The drug war is a tool for prison investors and and the law enforcement superstructure to get higher profits and higher budgets. The drug war is a process by which sentencing power has shifted away from the jury and judge and to the prosecutor, who may or may not be interested in doing justice. Perversely the drug war provides methods by which the true drug kingpins, since they are at the top, always have a way to avoid prison by ratting out their numerous drug dealing underlings, while the schmuck selling vials in nightclubs or the street has nothing with which to bargain and thus gets long sentences. Though this film mostly avoided mentioning it, the drug war is unevenly waged against blacks and hispanics, who get longer sentences and disproportionately lose voting rights. So there was a lot here to think about. Unfortunately I didn't care that much about Jason. John might have been better off if he had just left his son to his fate. Still, this was a fun movie although Williams and especially Bratt don't get enough to do. Johnson continues to grow as an actor. You see different aspects of his abilities. He carried this film easily. It takes more than a slight suspension of disbelief to imagine that a strait-laced trucking/construction businessman can so quickly get next to major narcotics players, but this is a movie.
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Honor and Pride in The Godfather and A Game of Thrones

The patriarchs of both the Corleone and Stark families make some very critical mistakes which bring each of their families to the brink of utter and complete destruction. Neither of them realizes that their world has changed in some very fundamental ways since they ascended to leadership. Therefore each leader is a little too secure in his authority and doesn't realize quickly enough that other people are playing by a different set of rules.

Ned Stark doesn't recognize that Queen Cersei or the relatively low-born Littlefinger can actually be threats. So he, from misguided mercy and possibly benevolent sexism, informs Cersei that he knows her secret and intends to act against her, never imagining that she will dare to harm him or the king, in order to keep her incest, adultery and cuckoldry secret. Ned makes his disgust with Littlefinger clear and contemptuously refuses to take or even pretend to consider Littlefinger's advice. Ned states that he will act in a manner which is clearly opposed to Littlefinger's best interests. He is nonetheless quite shocked that both Littlefinger and Cersei act in ways which, while dishonorable and underhanded, advance their own interests to Ned's fatal cost. Ned's pride in his status as Hand of the King, Warden of the North, and Lord of the oldest House makes him blind to the fact that he has a very weak position in King's Landing, especially after Robert's death. Ned has a very rigid stance on honor and rectitude, one that he's unwilling to part with even at the cost of his own life.  By the time he is willing to shelve his honor and perhaps even regret his extension of mercy to Cersei it's too late to save his life or spare his daughters from some very hard times indeed.  Ned thought people should have obeyed him because it was the right thing to do. That may have been true but in Ned's world and ours getting people to do the right thing may require an application of force, a realistic threat of the same and an appreciation of other people's self-interest. Ned lacked all of that.


Vito Corleone doesn't suffer from either mercy or honor (as least as Ned Stark would understand the term) but he does have Ned's pride. And it's this pride which makes Vito think he can impose his personal distaste for drugs onto the entire NY Mafia. It's pride which makes Vito overestimate Luca's abilities and his own craftiness, thus throwing away his most valuable asset even before the war begins. It's pride which makes him think that his primary businesses of loan sharking, gambling and extortion are more "respectable" than narcotics trafficking. It's pride (an unwillingness to look into details?) which leaves him unaware that Paulie is a traitor until it's too late. Similar to Ned's contempt for the pimp Littlefinger, Vito has contempt for the pimp Solozzo. In Vito's worldview, real men are not pimps so he dramatically underestimates Solozzo and his supposed patron Tattaglia. Like Ned with Cersei, Vito simply can't take Solozzo as seriously as he ought to, in part because Solozzo violates Vito's ideals of gender and masculinity. Vito was under the impression that a pimp meekly accepts dictates. He certainly doesn't murder your top enforcer, bribe your driver/bodyguard, kidnap your counselor and adopted son and almost succeed in knocking you off on two separate occasions. Vito doesn't pay the same price that Ned does but the initial impact is the same. Like Ned, Vito's oldest son has to take over family leadership a few years before he's ready.

Robb Stark is like his father in just about every way. He might even be a little more dangerous on the battlefield. He never loses a battle. Similar to how Sonny is described, Robb Stark is (literally) a relentless executioner who doesn't mind getting his hands bloody. But just like Sonny Corleone, he lacks the ability to see the big picture. His long string of tactical victories blinds him to his strategic weaknesses. Finally his enemies use his greatest assets (his honor and need to play by the rules) against him. Trying to make amends for a broken betrothal Robb is betrayed in a very ugly way. He never saw it coming. The Stark family power appears to be permanently broken.

Sonny possesses all of Vito's martial strengths and then some. Like Robb Stark, he's won numerous battles with his family's enemies. Although calling Sonny honorable might be a stretch he does very strongly believe in protecting the younger and weaker members of his family, a positive quality that much like Robb's honor is calculatedly turned against him and used to bring about his demise. Just like Robb, he is betrayed by someone very close to him as much for personally vindictive reasons as for business. Sonny's death forces Vito to sue for peace. The Corleones lose respect and power as the rival Barzini Family seizes the top spot in the NY Mafia. Robb marries for love and is murdered by his spurned putative father-in-law. Sonny tries to protect his baby sister and is set up to be murdered by his brother-in-law. Both Robb and Sonny take actions based on love. These things are totally understandable and even admirable but are strategically unwise and strictly speaking violations of expected protocol. The Corleones are "luckier" than the Starks in that Sonny's mistakes result in only Sonny's death. Both Sonny and Robb die in a case of literal overkill from which there was no possible escape. Both Sonny's and Robb's corpses are mocked and mutilated after their death as a sign that their power (and that of their family?) is at an end.  

In The Godfather the Corleones had Michael to step in after what looked like total disaster, get a satisfying revenge and make the Family even stronger than before. Michael was able to learn from his father's and brother's mistakes (and his own loss-the death of Apollonia) and get a crash course in being a boss from his father.
In the series A Song of Ice and Fire, it's an open question as to whether Martin even wants to venture down the Stark revenge path. He quite evidently enjoys subverting expectations, maybe too much so at times for my taste. As Lord Commander Mormont once told Jon Snow, the war in the South is completely meaningless compared to what's beyond the Wall. Martin may well feel the same way. He might have pulled the greatest bait and switch of all time, that is if you happen to be a Stark fan and/or were expecting some Stark payback. The Red Wedding could be Martin's way of beating into everyone's thick skulls for once and for all that the Starks are not central to his story-at least not in the way that we might have originally thought. His story is deeper and more grandiose than that.

The remaining Starks are still very young but they might not be out of the game just yet. Martin has not finished the series so no one except Martin and the HBO show runners know what his ultimate plans are. Martin has consistently said that he expects the ending to be bittersweet. Like Michael Corleone, the younger Starks are learning some hard lessons about how the world really works. Unlike Michael Corleone they lack any loving parental figure to give them advice and counsel. Even more so than Michael Corleone they will need to make their own way in the world. Honor and pride are no longer concepts the remaining Starks can use, or rather one might say these are not concepts which they can privilege above all others. They will need to be more realistic and flexible than either Ned or Robb were capable of being. Seeing the world as it is and not how you would want it to be is what they will have to do. Perhaps though, after all is said and done, the Starks will get some measure of justice/revenge/rebirth. Their totem animal is the direwolf. The initial (since dropped) title for the final book in the series was "A Time for Wolves". 

Obviously if you've read all the books, please don't discuss things which haven't happened in the HBO series yet. That said, you really should read the books....

Paula Deen and her defenders

I think just about everything that can be said on the Paula Deen situation has been said already and I don't have a whole lot to add except for the following.
There seems to be some misunderstanding about what "free speech" is. All free speech means is that you have the right to say what you want or think what you want without being jailed or sued or fined by the federal or state or municipal governments. Of course I am sure some intelligent reader or lawyer can find a few exceptions as there are exceptions to almost everything but no prior restraint on speech is the essence of the First Amendment.

And if you've read this blog for any period of time you know that I am a stickler for abiding by the letter and the spirit of the Bill of Rights. It's important to remember however that the First Amendment is a restriction on the ability of governments to stop you from saying something or punishing you if you do. It says absolutely nothing however, about the ability of other citizens to criticize what you say or for private businesses or organizations to decide that they'd rather not be associated with you or set rules for their partners or employees.

For example, I don't believe that there is a state or federal law against a man going to the top floor of an office building, finding a good looking woman Executive VP and telling her how good looking he thinks she is in quite crude language. There is no law against walking up to a male Executive VP and telling him that I think he's an incompetent dolt who only has a job because his father-in-law and grandfather worked for the company. If I were stupid enough to do those things I would be immediately terminated from my company. In fact further job interviews in my industry and elsewhere would probably open with the interviewer telling me (before they asked me to leave)  "Oh you're the fellow who likes to tell the women he works with that they have nice ****. So look around buddy. Are there any women here that you think have nice ****? Are there any incompetents in this firm you think should be fired?". A company has the obligation to ensure that its employees/associates will add to its bottom line and not be disruptive.

Paula Deen used racist language to describe black people and pined for trappings of segregationist days long gone. As a result her employer/business partner The Food Network decided to sever ties with her. Some other companies are following suit. It's not good business for most corporations to have a blatant bigot representing them. The Food Network has that right. There is nothing new or surprising about this.

Another line of defense is that Paula Deen was born in a time when such ways of thinking were common. Well that's true. When she was born segregation was still a going concern. The people who point this out in order to defend Deen don't seem to 1) realize that there were other whites who were born in such times and rose above such beliefs and 2) such defenders never give the black people born in similar times any sort of pass. I mean if we can say that Deen didn't know any better and is just regurgitating the values of her times, then surely we must do the same for Reverend Wright, Minister Farrakhan, and any other black person who grew up in the bad old days and thus has excellent reason to have a generalized suspicion and distrust of whites. Yet when those people say something that may be out of line they don't get many people rushing to their defense. No one stops to ponder that maybe someone who grew up in a time where blacks were called "boy", "girl" or "auntie" or had to watch their parents submit to oppression in order to survive might have some resentments to vent from time to time.

So Paula Deen has her defenders and supporters. I am not surprised. It is important however to remember that all of this brouhaha came to light because one Lisa Jackson, another white woman, decided that she had had enough of a workplace atmosphere which allegedly included racial and sexual harassment and discrimination. Maybe Jackson is telling the truth, maybe she is not. But as Deen has already admitted to slurs the self-inflicted damage has been done. I never cared for Deen anyway so I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the controversy. I am however angry that the nostalgia for the Old South is so powerful and defended by so many. I simply can't imagine anyone wanting to have a wedding with Jewish people dressed as concentration camp inmates. But that's just me. Deen has every right to use whatever language she pleases. And others have every right to disassociate from her.

Breaking News- Bobby Bland Dies

Bobby "Blue " Bland, who was one of the greatest singers all of time, just passed away at 83. Although he was primarily known as a "blues" singer, his singular style encompassed everything from soul, jazz, blues, funk and gospel , rock-n-roll, and occasionally a little country.  He was one of my favorite singers. I wrote on him here.  I first discovered his music when I was a young teen. It was miles apart from Muddy Waters or Jimi Hendrix which is what I was into at the time so I didn't pay him a lot of mind. It wasn't until I had grown up a bit, gone through some heartbreak of my own and gotten some bass in my voice that I went back to my parents' Bobby Bland records and really listened. I think I also got interested in his music when I learned that he was tight with BB King, who I've always been crazy about. In any event, he's passed on to his ancestors and left a lot of good music behind. In a lot of aspects Bobby Bland was the epitome of cool to me, along with people like Johnny Hartmann, Isaac Hayes and Otis Redding. He could scream if he had to but his crooning baritone voice was something I loved listening to and always tried to emulate. He showed that even in music that was called "blues" there were just a million and one different styles, sounds and approaches. If you weren't hip to him shame on you because you missed out but his music lives on.

LINK

Bobby (Blue) Bland, the debonair balladeer whose sophisticated, emotionally fraught performances helped modernize the blues, died on Sunday in Memphis. He was 83.The cause was complications from an ongoing illness, The Associated Press reported, quoting his son Rodd. Though he possessed gifts on a par with his most consummate peers, Mr. Bland never achieved the popular acclaim enjoyed by contemporaries like Ray Charles and B. B. King. His restrained vocals, punctuated by the occasional squalling shout, nevertheless made him a mainstay on the rhythm-and-blues charts and club circuit for decades. 

Exhibiting a delicacy of phrasing and command of dynamics akin to those of the most urbane pop and jazz crooners, his intimate pleading left its mark on everyone from the soul singers Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett to rock groups like the Allman Brothers and the Band. The rapper Jay-Z sampled Mr. Bland’s 1974 single “Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City” on his 2001 album, “The Blueprint.”Mr. Bland’s signature mix of blues, jazz, pop, gospel and country music was a good decade in the making. His first recordings, made in the early 1950s, found him working in the lean, unvarnished style of Mr. King, even to the point of employing falsetto vocal leaps patterned after Mr. King’s. Mr. Bland’s mid-50s singles were more accomplished; hits like “It’s My Life, Baby” and “Farther Up the Road” are now regarded as hard-blues classics, but they still featured the driving rhythms and stinging electric guitar favored by Mr. King and others.

It wasn’t until 1958’s “Little Boy Blue,” a record inspired by the homiletic delivery of the Rev. C. L. Franklin, that Mr. Bland arrived at his trademark vocal technique.“That’s where I got my squall from,” Mr. Bland said, referring to the sermons of Mr. Franklin — “Aretha’s daddy,” as he called him — in a 1979 interview with the author Peter Guralnick. “After I had that I lost the high falsetto. I had to get some other kind of gimmick, you know, to be identified with.” 

The corresponding softness in Mr. Bland’s voice, a refinement matched by the elegant formal wear in which he appeared onstage, came from listening to records by pop crooners like Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and Perry Como.Just as crucial to the evolution of Mr. Bland’s sound was his affiliation with the trumpet player and arranger Joe Scott, for years the director of artists and repertory for Duke Records in Houston. Given to writing brass-rich arrangements that built dramatically to a climax, Mr. Scott, who died in 1979, supplied Mr. Bland with intricate musical backdrops that set his supple baritone in vivid emotional relief. The two men accounted for more than 30 Top 20 rhythm-and-blues singles for Duke from 1958 to 1968, including the No. 1 hits “I Pity the Fool” and “That’s the Way Love Is.” Steeped in feelings of vulnerability and regret, many of these performances were particularly enthralling to the female portion of Mr. Bland’s audience.