HBO Game of Thrones: Comic-Con Cast Interviews and Discussion

In case you hadn't seen this already here are George R.R. Martin and selected cast members from HBO's Game of Thrones at Comic-Con 2012 in San Diego discussing season 2 and possibly a few teasers from season 3. It is always interesting to listen to actors to learn how they interpret their characters. It's fun to see the delight on Martin's face as he talks to and listens to the people who brought his creations to life.
This is in three parts. Each is between 15-17 minutes long.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Preglimony: A Really Bad Idea??

If a child is born and its parents do not live together the state may intervene to determine which parent should get custody (usually this is the woman) and which parent must pay child support (usually this is the man). There is a lot of bias in the above two determinations. Additionally if a child is born and the man and woman are married, but the husband later discovers his wife was letting another mule kick in her stall, so to speak, and the child is not his it doesn't really matter. Generally speaking a child born within marriage is presumed to be the husband's child and he is responsible for the child's support. So the man pays. Again this seems really unfair and certainly isn't how I would have designed our society's culture and laws but hey I just got here. The overriding rule seems to be that the man pays.


Until relatively recently one could at least say that a man would be paying to support an actual child-that is a human being that was born and had actually exited his mother's body. Because it was only then that science could safely perform the paternity tests and the mother and any number of men could go on The Maury Povich Show and make fools of themselves.

But science is always expanding the realm of what is possible and has advanced to the point that we can learn quite a lot of things, including paternity, about the child before it is born.


For people who do things the right way, i.e. are married and/or committed to each other before children are created, this is no big deal. But for people that aren't married, aren't committed to each other or are in situations in which the man has very good reason to doubt the woman's fidelity, this could be a very big deal. However gender politics being what they are, one law professor thinks that the new science should be used to shake men down for child support money before the child is born. How will "preglimony" make a difference in the child's life while the "child" is still in the womb?

Rather than focusing on the relationship between the man and a hypothetical child, the new technology invites us to change the way we think about the relationship between unmarried lovers who conceive. Both partners had a role in the conception; it’s only fair that they should both take responsibility for its economic consequences.

Former spouses are often required to pay alimony; former cohabiting partners may have to pay palimony; why not ask men who conceive with a woman to whom they are not married to pay “preglimony”? Alternatively, we might simply encourage preglimony through the tax code, by allowing pregnancy-support payments to be deductible (which is how alimony is treated).

The most frequent objection I hear to this idea is that it will give men a say over abortion.  A woman’s right to choose is sometimes eclipsed by an abusive partner who pressures her into terminating or continuing a pregnancy against her will, and preglimony could exacerbate this dynamic. 

And how workable would this be? If there is a miscarriage does the father get his money back? And how would the proper level of support be determined? If a negligent father does not pay child support and his ex and children lack decent housing, food or clothing that is an easy metric for a court to use. But in pregnancy the child is inside the woman's body and literally has all of its needs provided for by its mother. The father could be a millionaire or lack two nickels to rub together. That child will still have the same gestation period. The court can't measure the well being of the unborn child whose mother is not getting preglimony vs. one whose mother is. So giving money for "preglimony" seems a tad on the greedy side to me. The unborn child will never see that money, not one penny. 

And then of course there's the elephant in the room. Abortion. 
If the woman chooses to have an abortion, as is her right, does the father get the money back? Can he sue the mother for breach of contract? Theoretically if a custodial parent is not spending the money on the child or has placed the child in an unsafe environment then the non custodial parent can try to get the child removed and take custody away. This is impossible during pregnancy. More importantly does preglimony mean that the fetus is actually a human being that is deserving of rights and protection? I mean it appears to be logically inconsistent to argue on one hand that the unborn child is not legally protected. The argument is that the mother's right to bodily integrity trumps other considerations and thus the child may be killed by the mother for any reason at all. Yet in the very next breath the professor turns around and claims that the unborn child deserves protection and support because after all the mother didn't create it by herself and women children deserve the financial support of men.
I am, to say the least, not a feminist, and arguments like this are why. Again the only consistent theme seems to be that the woman chooses and the man pays.


Modern women have for whatever reason increasingly decided to have children outside of marriage. More than half of children born to women under 30 are born out of wedlock. Yet many women appear to still want marriage's financial protections. Well the solution is simple. Get married before you have children. Because if you're going to tell me that a fetus is a child and needs financial support from its father I'm going to agree that the fetus is a child and whatever financial support it needs before birth is dwarfed by the need it has for its mother not to kill it. 

What's your take?

Does preglimony make sense in a changing world?

Should we think of pregnancy as something that the woman should be compensated for?

Should married men ever have to pay for children that aren't biologically theirs?

Movie Reviews-2 Days In New York, Flypaper, Conspiracy

2 Days in New York
written and directed by Julie Delpy

This film is a sequel to 2 Days In Paris which was also directed by Delpy. I hadn't seen the previous film but it didn't really matter. This is also a romantic comedy but instead of being about the travails of two crazy kids and whether or not they can wind up together this is about the travails of two very grown people and whether or not they can or should stay together.


Marion (Delpy) is a French artist who has dumped her previous love interest Jack and moved in with the quite bohemian Mingus, (Rock) a writer for the Village Voice and radio show host. In flashback it's revealed that Mingus was the friend on whose shoulder Marion went to cry when her previous relationship started going south. Mingus made a move and evidently successfully jumped ladders. Marion and Jack each have children by prior relationships but do not have a child together as of yet. Both Marion and Rock love each other but it's not necessarily true that they're in love with one another. Their relationship will be suddenly put to the test.


Marion's father, Jeannott (Delpy's real life father Albert Delpy), her sister Rose (Alexia Landeau) and Rose's boyfriend Manu (Alex Nahon), who is also Marion's ex, all come to visit Mingus and Marion rather unexpectedly.
This sets off some static as Mingus is not crazy about the fact that suddenly his girlfriend is speaking to her friends and family in a language he doesn't understand. He really takes a dislike to Manu, who appears to be something of a hipster racist. Have you ever dealt with someone who out of the blue says something racist but claims no malice?  You're black right? So you must have voted for Obama. Do you know him? Do you know where I can get some good weed? That is Manu.

Marion has an art exhibit that's she trying to get ready for and she doesn't like Rose making goo-goo eyes at Mingus or refusing to adhere to American standards of female propriety. Rose has some sort of weird sibling rivalry dynamic with her sister. Jeannot is blissfully chaotic. He speaks no English. He has a lot of misunderstandings with Rock and other Americans. He is happy to see his grandchild and wants to give Mingus' daughter some wine. The arrival of Marion's family ultimately makes Mingus and Marion look at each other and at themselves a little differently. There is also a theme about the fleeting nature of life and how family is both people we choose to include in our life and people we didn't choose. Delpy recently lost her mother as did her character Marion and the movie touches on that a bit.


This was a fun movie, not a great one but definitely enjoyable. Anyone who has ever had to bite their tongue in front of their significant other's family to keep the peace or for that matter has lost their temper with their significant other's family or friends may get a few chuckles out of this film. It's obviously set in NY and if you're familiar with that environment there might be a few more treats for you. Vincent Gallo has a cameo.
TRAILER


Flypaper
directed by Rob Minkoff

This had the star power to be a better film than it was. I'm not really quite sure what went wrong. It had the comic relief, the double cross, the misdirection, a little violence, a little romance, a little sex appeal. But it just didn't quite do it for me. But you may feel differently. I dunno. Perhaps the writing was trying a little too hard to be cute. I'm not sure.


Anyway a slightly autistic man with OCD named Tripp (Patrick Dempsey) enters a bank just before closing time to get a large sum of money exchanged into a very particular number of coins. He chooses the lane operated by new teller Kaitlyn (Ashley Judd) in part so he can look down her top while she busies herself with his request. I've heard men do things like that on occasion. They exchange banter. However before Tripp can find out if the engaged Kaitlyn has any play in her he notices that the bank is about to be robbed by not one but two different gangs.


The first duo of bank robbers is somewhat low class and definitely low intelligence. They are heterosexual life partners Peanut Butter (Tim Blake Nelson in the movie's funniest role) and Jelly (Pruitt Vince). They are after the cash in the ATM's and appear to be stereotypical rednecks. The second trio of bank robbers are Darrien (Mekhi Phifer), the leader, his buddy Weinstein (John Ventimiglia aka "Artie Bucco" from The Sopranos) and psycho for hire Gates (Matt Ryan). They are more professional and have a plan that requires split second timing to disable outside communications, alarms, get into the vault and leave before anyone on the outside even knows what is happening. Gates has a constantly expressed desire to kill a hostage just to show who the boss is.

Anyway, after a brief standoff after which Tripp suggests that as the two group's goals do not actually conflict, each group tries to work on its plan but things keep going wrong. Also people keep dying though each group swears it's not the one doing the killing. Tripp notices some oddities and along with Kaitlyn tries to figure out what is actually going on. Apparently there might be some commonalities between both sets of bank robbers and all of the eccentric hostages.


Oscar winner Octavia Spencer's role veers uncomfortably close to Mammy histrionics but perhaps I am just being too sensitive. This is a broad comedy and only a few people come off looking competent or clever. Peanut Butter and Jelly are for example, certainly not the sort of dimwits that anyone would trust with explosives and are very touchy about their unacceptably low ranking on the FBI's most wanted list. All the top criminals know their ranking and those of their rivals. Everyone wants to make sure that their ranking stays high. Jeffrey Tambor, Curtis Armstrong, Adrian Martinez, and Natalia Safran also have roles.
TRAILER


Conspiracy
directed by Frank Pierson

Where you work do you spend a lot of time in meetings? I do. And often the higher you go, the more time you spend in meetings and the more you have to work with people outside of your immediate department or direct line of command. And when THAT happens there is always friction and either subtle or direct challenges to authority, bureaucratic infighting, threats to escalate disputes to bigger and more powerful bosses, fights over budgets, passive aggressive ignoring of commands, favors owed and paid, and occasional harsh collar pops to remind certain people just who works for whom.


I will never forget that one time my direct supervisor told our group that we weren't going to be doing what the department business account manager wanted. In a department meeting with that woman (who was quietly intimidating-she controlled the budget and had links to VERY important people) he started to lay out the reasons why his plan was better than what she had earlier requested. Not two minutes into his speech, she looked up from what she was doodling and said " I thought I told you before that we weren't doing that. It's senseless. Move on. Do you have anything else??". Old dude was never the same after that. It was a source of humor in that department for years.


In Conspiracy the same elements are at play though obviously the stakes are much higher than some accounting middleware projects. It's 1942 and Hitler has decided that the killing of the Jews of Europe is not proceeding as fast or as neatly as desired. So through SS chief Himmler he directs that this be changed. The Jews are to be gotten rid of. Period. But given the sensitivity of this no written orders are to be given. The project, and make no mistake, that is what it is, is turned over to ambitious SS/Gestapo general Reinhard Heydrich (Kenneth Branagh) and his mouselike subordinate Adolf Eichmann (Stanley Tucci).

Heydrich sees in this not only an opportunity to rid the world of Jews for once and for all but just as importantly a chance but also to gain power for himself, his superior (Himmler) and the SS in general. To this end he chairs the Wannasee Conference to which he invites numerous leading Nazi officials and bureaucrats.
Heydrich lays out the plan of what is to happen. Some of these people are bootlickers who are only too happy to follow who is strong. And Heydrich is strong. Other people resent the fact that the SS is taking the lead and turning their various departments into virtual SS appendages. Others don't like Jews but worry that they need to do things legally in accordance with laws already passed. Some other people think that extermination is a bridge too far and expulsion or unpleasant living conditions are what is required for Jews. Others want to know who is going to pay for it all or get bogged down in details like mixed marriages or what is to be done with half-Jews or quarter-Jews.


With some of these people Heydrich cajoles, with others he bribes or uses reason and logic. With others he takes them outside for a brief chat and tells them straight up that as protected or as important as they think they are, it might take the SS a while to get to them, but get to them they would. So get with the program and don't give him any more s***. This is an older film but very worthwhile. It's the best of those listed here today I think.
TRAILER

The Supreme Court, ObamaCare and Moral Claims of Freedom

The Supreme Court has spoken. The constitutional battle over ObamaCare is over. The President and his much derided solicitor general won on most of the legal merits and the policy implementation. Even as the Supreme Court (rightly in my view) rejected the Administration's argument that the Commerce Clause allowed a mandate to purchase health care coverage, it (wrongly in my view) allowed the individual mandate to stand by wrongly characterizing it as a tax. Very few people besides Lauryn Hill, Wesley Snipes or Irwin Schiff question the government's ability to tax and spend so the Supreme Court called the mandate a tax and allowed it to stand.


So that is that. Short of a (currently unlikely) Romney victory and (quite unlikely) total Republican November sweep of the House and Senate, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a settled issue. There are some Republican governors who are threatening, as is their right, to refuse to set up exchanges or expand Medicaid while for the 33rd time the House voted to repeal the law but those are die-hard responses that won't "pull up ObamaCare by its roots" as some desired.


One thing that I've noticed is that partisans on either side make the mistake of personalizing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (hence the name ObamaCare). This explains the insane "I will break him" attitude of many Republicans and the joy of some PPACA supporters who didn't really look at the fine print.

Too many PPACA supporters make the mistake of assuming that all opposition must, by definition, be based in dislike for the President. This is not the case. There are two major objections to the PPACA, which are shared in different ways by principled dissidents on both the left and right as well as some libertarians across the board.
First, there has been a reduction in freedom. This is the critical issue to people who tend libertarian and/or are opposed to the mandate. 


Unfortunately many people on the left and/or supporters of PPACA miss this entirely. They assume that anyone who invokes this concern is either a useful idiot (if they're leftist) or a liar (if they're on the right). Well maybe. But remember we talked recently about how many people on the left place equality and compassion as the highest and in some cases only moral values. This is an excellent example of that. In order to supposedly move towards equality and compassion the people who support the mandate are perfectly willing to reduce your freedom to make choices about what sort of health care you want. Now think about some of the other power-mad people that are in executive office around the nation. Can you imagine what a President Bloomberg might do with such powers? What sort of nation do you want? Do you want an activist relatively unrestrained centralized government?

I live in Michigan which has a higher than normal amount of truly obese people of all races. It's especially bad for Hispanics and Blacks. All else equal, obese people cost the public and private sector more in medical coverage. They clog the health care system with their (preventable) diseases and conditions. The slender, underweight, normal sized or moderately overweight workers pay money into a system that transfers much of that money to obese care. Why should I pay money to subsidize some free-loading fattie? So OBVIOUSLY we need a mandate that obese people (BMI of 31 or greater, or body fat pct of 32% or higher) join a health club and maintain that membership until their BMI falls to 28 or lower. To make it nice and constitutional we'll just levy a tax on porcine people who refuse the new mandate or can't lose the weight. Sound good?? Well if I happened to own a health club I would love this idea. 
People that drive trucks use more gasoline, contribute more to global warming and damage roads more quickly. And those doggone people won't stop buying trucks even as gasoline stays above $3/gallon. So OBVIOUSLY we need a mandate that everyone purchase either a Volt, a Focus, a Leaf, or a Nano. So those of you who like your Rams or F-150s sorry pal. You're hurting the economy. But why stop there?

There's a doctor shortage, This affects health care. And that's commerce. Too many smart people are going into law or finance. This is an OBVIOUS resource misallocation. Don't these people know that they owe it to us all to make the right choice? We'll just mandate that certain people become doctors. After all chances are that they're receiving some form of government tuition assistance. And should they disagree well that's no problem, we'll just refuse them student loans and make them pay added penalties on any income earned outside of the medical field. We'll soon have more doctors to treat the expanded patient base.
Now that we've accepted that anything (including inactivity) that impacts commerce can be taxed and mandated why not just go for broke. Business hiring decisions have a much larger immediate economic impact than health care provision health care. Corporations are sitting on trillions in cash and refusing to hire people. This hurts the economy. In fact it's economic treason. So let's just mandate that corporations hire people until the unemployment rate is at 5% or lower. Those companies that refuse will have to pay a penalty tax. The Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of Treasury will oversee this program.

And so on. You may think I am being ridiculous. Maybe I am. You may think there are political, legal or constitutional barriers. You may even think some of those are good ideas. But I don't think any of them are good ideas. And I think they are slightly more likely than they were a month ago. The government has unparalleled coercive powers. I don't think it's a coincidence that after the PPACA was upheld we see NYT editorials endorsing the idea of using eminent domain to seize homes that are underwater and give them to other investors for resale or using the power to draft to create a national service cadre of lower paid/unpaid young workers that would undercut unionized labor.


Secondly, the law doesn't solve the problem it was meant to solve. It does not bend the cost curve. How could it? Big pharma maintains protection from cheaper generic drugs. Hospitals have greater incentives to merge. There is no legal mechanism to limit or prevent premium increases. All else equal there will be greater demand for roughly the same supply of services. That means, premiums will increase, as mine already have. It makes it more difficult, if not impossible to push for a single payer program in the US and may increase medical costs abroad.

Who are the people who lack health insurance. Well some are the long-term unemployed. Others are illegal immigrants, who will still be uncovered under this plan and will still be seeking assistance in the ER. Others are people with conditions that are simply so expensive to treat that their insurer has kicked them off their plan and/or other insurers have refused to cover them. Others are employed people who either can't afford coverage or who work somewhere where coverage isn't offered. And finally there are people who, affordability aside, have made a rational choice they they don't currently need health care insurance. 
This last group (the smallest) has received much scorn and opprobrium for supposedly driving up insurance premiums. People speak of them with contempt. They tend to be younger and/or in better health so they are much desired as customers by insurers because they will tend to pay premiums but cost very little in coverage. I don't understand why it is okay to speak with disdain of people standing on their own two feet but if someone has an unkind word to say about a welfare recipient, who is taking from the system, then that's a bad thing. At the very least it's safe to say that this law will have some unintended consequences.


Obviously some people are not fans of the 9th amendment, the 10th amendment or of a Federal Government with limited enumerated powers. That's fine. Evidently portions of the Constitution don't mean what I thought they meant. Cool. Hey I'm no constitutional scholar. I'm just an IT guy.


But, if we did decide that we really really really wanted a Federal Government with limited and enumerated powers and that the 9th and 10th amendments were actually meaningful amendments rather than the redheaded ugly stepchildren of the Bill of Rights, what changes would we need to make to the Constitution since evidently some parts just aren't clear??? This is not a rhetorical question. My concept is that government should stick to its limited roles but otherwise leave me alone.

Now that the issue has been settled, at least in the courts:

What are your thoughts?

Do you at least understand the opposing side (whatever side that is)?

Do you think this will be an issue in the November election?

Do you want a limited federal government or a large unlimited federal government?

Chris Rock, Melissa Harris-Perry, Conservatives, Racism and Patriotism

You may have missed it but Chris Rock had a tweet on the Fourth of July that sent some easily and perpetually outraged conservatives off the deep end.

Happy white peoples Independence Day the slaves weren’t free but I’m sure they enjoyed fireworks.

Additionally Professor Melissa Harris-Perry had a piece about what the Fourth of July meant to her. 

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This also sent many of the same (mostly white) conservatives into fits of rage. Actually the points made by Chris Rock and Professor Melissa Harris-Perry weren't really all that different from the points made by our very own Janitor in his Independence Day post.

One thing which is important to remember is that the people who define themselves as Black and/or are defined by others as Black in the American context generally have ancestors that arrived on these shores before 1820 and in many cases as early as the 1700's or before. And even if they don't have those particular ancestors, as long as they LOOK like they do, they will be treated as if they do. So even if you're a recent Somalian or Malian immigrant who just got off the boat or plane, even if you lack certain cultural heritages shared by other Black Americans you're gonna get the same treatment.

Now I just want you to imagine something. Let's say that Black people had deliberately and despite everyone begging them not to do so, started the bloodiest and most destructive war this country had ever seen, one that divided families and pitted fathers against their sons, brothers against brothers. Let's say that Black people specifically and proudly rejected the United States government and said they wanted a nation based on the age old principles of Black supremacy, which should be obvious to anyone who is intelligent, by which they primarily meant other Black people. Now imagine that even after Black people badly lost this war, they never really admitted to themselves that they lost or that their cause was wrong. Instead they worked overtime to alter the historical record so that the cause of the war was not actually their ownership of a despised minority and their eagerness to split the nation, but instead the war was all a tragic misunderstanding caused by among other things big government racial egalitarians.  And let's say that over time this attitude seeped into the Black media, which did all it could to portray the fighters as noble though tragically outnumbered warriors. And finally let's stipulate that far from reaching some sort of understanding that the revolt was wrong, Black people put up statues and monuments to those who led the revolt, spoke fondly of the revolt and every chance they could waved revolt battle flags. Do you think that if Black people had done and were doing this, that they would be accepted as patriots by conservatives or shunned as single minded bigots with dangerous revanchist fantasies?

Well we know the answers to that don't we?  Conservatism has many strains but since the sixties or so, conservatism has increasingly worn a Southern racist face. Think about this. The same people who are attempting to chastise Chris Rock or Professor Perry as insufficiently patriotic or horribly ungrateful never ever ever have an unkind word to say about Confederate memorials, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Daughters of the Confederacy, Southern Partisan, Secession Memorial balls and parties, and any other host of mainstream organizations, events, literature, parties, books and other media designed to remember and celebrate the people who started the ugliest and bloodiest war in American history, primarily because they believed in white supremacy and wanted to ensure their right to hold slaves and expand slavery. No that's all ok.

But let a Black person point out that prior to 1865 most Black people were slaves and those that weren't were often at a very real risk of becoming a slave and suddenly that's the crime of the century. No, apparently Black people, alone among humans, should have a memory that eliminates all the bad things. In fact some conservatives, such as Michael Medved, think that slavery wasn't that bad and Black Americans are better off for it  while others, such as Mark Krikorian argue that Haiti would have been better off with more, not less, colonialism and slavery.

Again, let's try this argument out in some different historical contexts. The modern state of Israel would probably not have come to exist without Hitler. His genocide of six million Jews and weakening of the British Empire gave the Jewish groups in Palestine both moral suasion over the Western powers as well an opportunity to create facts on the ground. Does anyone in their right mind really think that Israelis should weigh the lives of their ancestors against their modern state and say, "Yes, too bad about them but what the heck it was worth it?". Uh no.

Similarly does anyone go to the Lakota Sioux and say "Why don't you stop talking about Wounded Knee. After all some of you people got casinos out of it?" Probably not.

Finally if you went to Germany and everywhere you looked you saw Nazi flags, Iron Crosses, streets and monuments named after prominent Nazis and local "Nazi Veterans Day celebrations" wouldn't you think that some Germans had some issues on which they needed help?

People remember. They remember the good and the bad. And it is pointless to try to make them do otherwise. And frankly it is somewhat insulting. Many people on this planet organize their lives on what some people consider to be completely mythical events that happened 2000-4000 years ago. So it is rather silly to suggest that people forget about things that happened just a mere 200-300 years ago or in some cases in living memory.  America is a great country. But it also has committed multiple sins. America is the freedom to live as you want AND it is also the rubbing of salt into a slave's wounds after whipping for purely sadistic reasons.

Jackson begins his narrative with several instances of harsh treatment he received and witnessed during his time as a slave, including the role of women in the horrors of slavery.  He says of the slave owner’s wife, “The sight which most delighted her eyes was to see a slave whipped,” and one of her daughters grew up to murder Jackson’s sister by having her whipped to death.

If we intend to tell the truth and be honest we have to remember both sides. We should remember for example that some Black people fought for the British in the American Revolutionary War. Why? Because the British offered freedom and some of the would be Americans did not. Were they bad people? No they weren't. They were doing what it took to secure their freedom.

We have got to stop whitewashing things. Tell the truth and let people make up their own minds. The controversy over statements by Professor Perry and Rock show that history is not really about happened. It's more about how we intend to shape the story of what happened for current day political reasons. It's often propaganda.
h/t Harvey's Global Politics

Thoughts?
Should black people just forget the uglier parts of history?
Do conservatives secretly feel guilty about the American history of slavery? After all it wasn't conservatives who were agitating for abolition.

Why do conservatives freak out anytime someone mentions the bad parts of American history?

Book Reviews-For the Sins of My Father, Powernomics, The Warlord Chronicles, Battles that Changed History

For the Sins of My Father
by Albert DeMeo

I had a pretty idyllic childhood. I hope you did as well. Most children go through a growth stage in which they are convinced that their parent (and I can only speak of sons and fathers here) is the greatest, smartest, toughest, coolest most wonderful person that ever did exist. It is part of the bittersweet maturation process when children become older and start to substitute their own judgment for that of their parents that the child's perception shifts. 

Eventually the child will get more knowledge and learn some things that their parent did that might not have been completely kosher. Maybe there are some aspects to the parent's life with which the child can't agree. Perhaps the child decides that the parent did everything wrong and gets trapped in bitterness. Maybe he spends the next two decades feuding with the parent. Maybe. For most of us who grew up with, at the very least non-abusive parents, if you are fortunate enough to have an adult relationship with your parent(s), you will probably judge them lightly and just enjoy the time you have left with them. 

After all no one's perfect, they did the best they could and guess what there's no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny either. Get over your issues. Albert DeMeo didn't get to have an adult relationship with his father. His father was the feared Mafia soldier Roy DeMeo, top dog of the Gemini Crew and primary executioner and torturer for the Gambino Crime Family.  The elder DeMeo was murdered just around the time of Albert's seventeenth birthday. Albert had to identify his father's body, (Roy had been shot seven times, three in the head) make all the funeral arrangements and deal with arrogant suspicious law enforcement agents (The NYPD made fun of his father's death while the FBI tried to put microphones and camera in the casket) as well as the deadly members of his father's crew who had murdered Roy and were ominously watching to see if they needed to kill Albert as well. That's a lot for a teen to deal with but we all have crosses to bear. As an adult Albert DeMeo looks back to tell the story.

This book points out the banality of evil. People that are evil and Roy DeMeo was, don't all walk around kicking dogs and rubbing their hands together with glee. No, whatever evil DeMeo did he generally did as part of business and did not, from the story his son tells, bring it home. Of course, like blind men describing an elephant, we must remember that Albert DeMeo tells this story from the vantage point of a doting son and one who is far removed from those times. His mother's or sister's stories may have been different. We don't know. We do know that Roy DeMeo, while he didn't necessarily bring brutality or meanness home with him, certainly did not go out of his way to hide what he was from his son either.

At first Roy is showing a six year old how to clean and dismantle guns. Later it's taking an eight year old to social clubs where the elder DeMeo loans money and receives payments. Then, while teaching a fourteen year old how to lay tile and frame concrete, Roy takes the opportunity to teach him how to make homemade silencers. It's the small things that count. If Roy DeMeo had survived would he have overseen his son's official entry into the world of crime? It's hard to say. What I can say is that Roy's murder and events afterwards pushed Albert DeMeo away from the Mafia. Albert made the critical mistake of calling his father's previous boss to ask for help and telling him he thought he knew who killed his father. Albert was then beaten very badly. He knew then beyond a doubt who had killed his father. Can you imagine looking into the eyes of your parent's murderers as they ask you if there is anything that you need? This is a book with a limited but focused perspective. It's gripping reading. Roy DeMeo knew his time was approaching and one of the last things he told his son was forget about me, do not try to take revenge. Yes in some respects it's an apology for Roy DeMeo but as Albert DeMeo says some things he didn't know about his Dad sickened him. But he can only speak to the man he knew.




PowerNomics
by Dr. Claud Anderson

The subtitle for this book is "The National Plan to Empower Black America". And that is Anderson's burning passion. Anderson is an economic nationalist from the old school pro-black perspective. He is most definitely not a conservative and does not concede the pro-business language that conservatives have seized on. If there is one point that he beats the reader over the head with over and over again it is that the three primary reasons for black people's well known economic disadvantages are that black people (1) do not own businesses, (2) do not work together as a group and (3) tend to be over consumers instead of investors.
Much like Harold Cruse and his theory of "non-economic liberalism", Anderson points out that integration and desegregation while perhaps important as a floor, simply do not provide for equal opportunity or equality. If other groups own everything then blacks are constantly in a "begging mode". For Anderson, power comes from ownership. We live in a capitalistic society and full rights only accrue to those with capital. Reactionary integration, which is where our remaining "civil rights leaders" and indeed black people in general tend to remain,does simply not address economic issues.

Black conservatives who discuss these issues tend to elide racism. Anderson does not. He explains in his book exactly how wealth is built, maintained and transferred from generation to generation. As generally speaking black Americans weren't even full citizens until sometime in the mid to late sixties, opportunities to build wealth were limited.

This is a good book and should be read and understood. He's rough and does not pull any punches. His solutions are that Black people must understand what slavery, segregation and exclusion did to them and work together to reject the dominant post-slavery narrative that still sees whites disproportionately as owners and blacks as workers. As you might expect he is not a huge fan of alliances with other so-called minority groups, unless those can clearly be shown to help black interests. As he points out over and over again, many businesses which cater to black customers are owned by white citizens or new immigrants but it's exceedingly rare to find a black business that caters to a non-black clientele or is set up in a non-black community. Quiet as it's kept many of the points that Anderson makes were made by Malcolm and believe it or not MLK. Anderson overstates his case of course, not every non-black American is a business owner and not every black American is working for someone else. This is actually a shot across the bow of the black professional class. This is a book you should have.  Speech  Speech 2




Enemy of God and Excalibur
by Bernard Cornwell

These are books two and three in The Warlord Chronicles trilogy. To a degree each book stands alone I suppose but I read one immediately after the other. The story does not make radical changes in style or characterization from each book.
I wrote in the previous review of the Bernard Cornwell book, The Winter King, that to an extent the relation between King Arthur and Merlin is akin to what I thought the relationship  between Tecumseh and his brother would have been. This analogy to foreign invaders (Europeans to America, Saxons to Britain) holds up and goes even further in these books. I am also reminded of the scene in Steve Barnes' alternate history novel  Lion's Blood, in which an Irish boy is heartened and excited to see his father come to defend him from Viking slavers, because his father is incredibly skilled with his weapon (spear), only to watch in shock, horror and disbelief as his father is casually killed by the Vikings' unknown weapon (a rifle). This conflict between the reality of one's existence and the fleeting "reality" of what used to be in terms of your religion or how you saw the world is a bit more stark in Enemy of God and Excalibur than it was in The Winter King. When there is a difference between reality and your religion what do you do? If you can't count on your God(s) any more you might go insane or convert to a new god. Think about it. How many people on the Middle Passage or in Auschwitz could have belief in their God?

Arthur doesn't put much stock in gods or magic; at one point he angrily stabs his "magic" sword Excalibur into the ground and calls for help from the Otherworld. At this a God and his Army are supposed to come to Arthur's aid. As Arthur bitterly points out, no army arrives.
But others, to a certain extent Merlin and to a much greater and ultimately tragic extent, Nimue, do believe in the Gods and are sickened, threatened and angered not only by the increasing Saxon encroachment but more by the amazing and threatening Christian numerical increase. Some Christians are live and let live type of people but many of them, especially the recent converts like Arthur's sister Morgan, do their best to stamp out paganism. Merlin and Nimue believe that something big is needed to bring back the Old Gods, something akin to a Celtic Ghost Dance. This will have similar tragic results, just as it did for the Sioux.

Arthur and the Britons seem doomed to lose. There are simply too many Saxons. They are the illegal immigrants of the day. Their invasion is relentless. A few of them have even taken to calling themselves Kings of Britain. The peace between the warring British tribes that Arthur has enforced through blood, loyalty, bribery, marriage and appeals to the common good is falling apart through greed on the outside and the ugliest treachery on the inside. Arthur is VERY similar to Ned Stark. He simply can not understand treachery or that people might actually want power. Arthur is an excellent example of the D&D alignment lawful good (though he's a bit more lawful than good) and of the limitations inherent in that alignment. Although often Arthur has the might to do as he pleases he generally insists on doing the right thing and living by the law. This makes some people, including his wife Guinevere, assume that he's a weakling or a dunce. By the time it dawns on Arthur that he probably should have eliminated a few enemies earlier and not worried about whether it was morally good, it's almost too late. Once aroused though Arthur can be an implacable enemy. When he captures one of his traitorous sons (who has helped murder children) he calmly asks the son why he was fighting for Arthur's enemies. The son lies and says that he thought Arthur was already dead. Arthur then quietly asks that if the son thought his father was dead why didn't he seek vengeance upon his killers instead of allying with them. The son angrily says Arthur was no father to him. Arthur forces the son to put his right hand (that he raised against Arthur) on a oath stone and then tells him that a son who raises his hand against his father is no son of his and that Arthur renounces both the son and the hand. He then chops off his son's hand.

Cornwell did his research and it shows. He gives excellent descriptions of shield wall fighting. You almost think you were there. You can't be a bada$$ war leader without coming up with some bada$$ insults and Derfel has quite a few. The author is pretty hard on religion. The self-righteousness and hypocrisy of the Christian converts is matched by some of the more repulsive practices of the pagans (a barren woman smearing newborn baby feces on her clothes to guarantee fertility, killing a newborn calf to ensure a healthy flock, and in certain circumstances, human sacrifice) The narrator, Derfel Cadarn, is revealed to be the son of a Saxon king, one of Arthur's enemies. Despite this Derfel remains, along with the Numidian Sagramor, one of Arthur's champions and a building block in Arthur's attempt to bring peace. But Arthur's story is a tragedy. Arthur's works fall, as much from treason and intransigence within as any Saxon threat from without. The trilogy is very good in total. These two books are worthwhile reading.



Battles That Changed History
Amber Books

If you are a history junkie and/or a military history buff or weapons guru you probably want to get this book. Although there are a few horrible exclusions (where is the Battle of Vertieres or the Battle of Isandlwana or the Battle of Bannockburn) it does list 47 battles from 1457 BC at Megiddo all the way up to operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 (which was really more of a campaign) Each battle is lavishly illustrated with prints and portraits of the typical soldiers and their commanders, as well as detailed maps showing each side's plans, weapons, tactics and what went wrong for one side or the other. There are some surprises here. For example the Battle of Agincourt is famous for supposedly showing the superiority of the English (Welsh) longbow. 5700 Englishmen defeated 25,000 French soldiers and Italian mercenaries. In point of fact though the longbow probably didn't easily get through the heavy plate armor of the French knights. But what it did do, with the aid of an aborted French charge through mud, was to kill the French men at arms without armor and break up the French charge enough to allow the English to run forward and finish them off with mauls and maces. Other battles described still rankled losers centuries afterward. For example the 1410 Prussian defeat at Tannenburg, Poland so bothered the Germans that in 1914, when the German general Paul Von Hindenburg, a Prussian, defeated a Russian army in the same region he named the battle Tannenburg.

Don't Mess With Texas: Prisons and Air Conditioning

If through an unfortunate series of events, I was unlucky enough to be convicted of a crime and sent to prison, I would have many concerns that I would want to address. Things like avoiding becoming someone's sexual surrogate, learning all the correct rituals around which tables to sit at, exactly when you should curse out the guards just to make people know you're not soft, how to make dangerous weaponry from plastic utensils, when it is permissible to talk to or befriend a prisoner of a different race, which territory belongs to which prison gang, staying alive, and above all getting OUT as soon as possible would be foremost on my mind.


Something that probably wouldn't be on the immediate concern list would be air conditioning. Of course I am not in prison and (knock on wood) not in a Texas prison so the issue lacks a little, shall we say, urgency for me.

But there are some people for whom this is not just an academic exercise. In fact they claim it is a matter of life and death. They are quite serious about this. It's not a joke to them. Not at all.

Inmates and their families have complained for years about the heat and lack of air-conditioning in the summertime, but the issue has taken on a new urgency. An appeal is pending in a lawsuit initially filed in 2008 by a former inmate claiming that 54 prisoners were exposed to Death Valley-like conditions at a South Texas prison where the heat index exceeded 126 degrees for 10 days indoors. And several inmates at other prisons died of heat-related causes last summer; a lawsuit was filed Tuesday in one of those deaths.A Texas law requires county jails to maintain temperature levels between 65 and 85 degrees, but the law does not apply to state prisons. The American Correctional Association recommends that temperature and humidity be mechanically raised or lowered to acceptable levels.

“The Constitution doesn’t require a comfortable prison, but it requires a safe and humane prison,” said Scott Medlock, director of the prisoners’ rights program at the Texas Civil Rights Project, which is representing the former South Texas inmate who sued prison officials. “Housing prisoners in these temperatures is brutal.”A prison agency spokesman, Jason Clark, said that many prison units were built before air-conditioning was commonly installed, and that many others built later in the 1980s and 1990s did not include air-conditioning because of the additional construction, maintenance and utility costs. Retrofitting prisons with air-conditioning would be extremely expensive, he said.

State Senator John Whitmire, a Democrat from Houston and chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said he was concerned about the inmate deaths but wanted to examine the circumstances of each. He said he was not sympathetic to complaints about a lack of air-conditioning, partly out of concern about the costs, but also out of principle.“Texans are not motivated to air-condition inmates,” he said. “These people are sex offenders, rapists, murderers. And we’re going to pay for their air-conditioning when I can’t go down the street and provide air-conditioning to hard-working, taxpaying citizens?”

LINK

Basically Whitmire hits upon something that I initially agreed with upon reading this story. If you're convicted of a felony and if you're in prison then you must have been, your comfort is not really going to be high on the state's priority list. There are special circumstances with aged or invalid prisoners where I think the state does have a special duty to ensure some level of cooling but that aside it's called prison for a reason. It's not supposed to be a comfortable pleasant environment!!! If you murdered or raped someone then really you should be thankful that you're still alive and being fed by the state instead of having a quicker and permanent solution imposed. But on the other hand the state does have a duty to ensure to the best of its ability that while you're under its control you don't do anything so final as die from heatstroke. And if you make conditions too unpleasant there's always the possibility of prison riots. And those cost money. So there's that. I would want to know more about the death stats in Texas prisons before air conditioning became widely available. Certainly in the 1920s-1940s no prisoner would have thought to sue over lack of air conditioning, would they? There are plenty of people today who lack air conditioning in their home. I don't think that someone in prison should have more comfort than someone out of prison. That messes up incentives fairly dramatically.

What's your take on this? 
Should air conditioning be made widely available in prison? 
Is it cruel and unusual punishment to live without air conditioning?