Racism and Ted Nugent: Then and Now

Asa Carter Then:




Ted Nugent Now:

Any Questions?
The enemy is the same as it's always been. I'd like to know where are the Republicans who constantly bleat that the base of their party is not in large part animated by racism. Where are the politicians and media types who hounded President Obama to denounce, disassociate, and differentiate himself from people like Jesse Jackson, Reverend Wright, Cornell West, or any other bête noire of the day? Where are Nugent's high profile friends or media enablers like Mitch Albom or Nick Cannon? Will they denounce such language?
Probably not. I'd like to think that people would reject and shame white right-wingers who say things like this but it very rarely seems to work that way. We'll see.
At the time of this writing the only high profile Republican political operative to openly criticize Nugent's hateful speech is Senator Rand Paul. So far no one else has the stones. Either that or as is more likely they agree with him regarding President Barack Obama. Just as Klansman Asa Carter ultimately lost the fight to keep segregation and ban rock-n-roll, the Republican party is doomed to keep losing national elections unless they separate themselves from the extreme right-wing fringe. There just aren't enough angry white men with fecal matter for brains to keep voting Republican. Nationwide, that is. Texas is apparently a different story.

Movie Reviews: Ender's Game

Ender's Game
directed by Gavin Hood

Ender's Game was based upon the book of the same name by the author Orson Scott Card. I had not read the book so I watched the movie with no preconceptions. There were some people who said they would avoid the movie because of Card's political and religious views but as a fan of H.P. Lovecraft it takes a whole lot to get me to boycott art, as has been discussed before. Although I can't say for sure I think that there was a lot left out from the book. There are a lot of dead ends and things left unexplained in the movie that I imagine might have been clear to me had I read the book. In some very real ways Ender's Game is a morally didactic movie. It definitely has a message of tolerance and understanding. All the same the message is muddled and bent. Perhaps it's the problem of translation from one medium to another. Perhaps it's the danger inherent in having child actors, although I doubt it. The young man playing Ender is pretty accomplished in his field, despite his youth. I also doubt it's the director as he has won Oscars for some of his previous work. Maybe it's just the sadness and a little ugliness in the source material. I'm not sure. I am sure that this was not a must-see film despite its A-list cast and impressive special effects.

In the not too distant future Earth has been attacked by a race of interstellar insectoids known as the Formics. Millions of people die. The Formic invasion is only halted by the self-sacrifice of pilot Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley), who just like Randy Quaid in Independence Day, rams his aircraft and its payload into the unprotected belly of the Formic mothership, destroying it and causing other Formic ships to either crash or flee.


Since that time Earth has been obsessed with the possibility of a new Formic attack. It appears that the military has taken political control from civilians and silly little things like nation states have dropped by the wayside. And parents need permission from the state to make whoopie or at least make the kind of whoopie that results in another human being joining this world. I don't know if this is from the book or not but that was my impression from the film.  A new way of war is being propagated. I thought it barely made sense when you think about who spends time playing video games. The new style of warfare requires massively integrated intellectual capacities combined with fearlessness and intuition. These are characteristics which are disproportionately found among children. These children will be trained as if they are actual warriors but their "fighting" is done via computer screens from which they control drones, fire systems and ships with actual adult men and women in them.

So the Armed Forces are always on the lookout for a few good boys and girls. One such boy is Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield). Ender combines a sharp intelligence with an appealing amorality, especially when he's placed in bad positions. He intends to win and will do what he has to do. As a young cadet he comes to the attention of Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) and Major Anderson (Viola Davis) who place Ender in difficult circumstances to see how he responds. Something which appeals to Anderson but irritates/intrigues Graff is that although he can be extremely ruthless and pragmatic, Ender nonetheless has a well developed (and equally well hidden) conscience and just as strong of a dislike of any illegitimate authority. This kicks off a series of set action/drama pieces which sees Ender promoted to greater level of responsibility, have more intense training and have deadlier confrontations with bullies. Ender does not like bullies and does not like being manipulated. However the higher he rises in the Armed Forces the more he runs into both. Interestingly enough, perhaps because Ender is supposed to be even younger than he looks, there is no love interest of any kind. Ender's interest is primarily in ensuring the safety of his older/protective sister Valentine (Abigail Breslin) though he does make good friends with another girl who initially outranks him, Petra (Hailee Steinfeld).

This movie features the slight Ender dealing some serious pain to bullies but at the same time I'm not sure you would root for the character in part because it looks like Ender also has some coldness/darkness within him that he struggles to keep on a chain.  Ender could just as easily be the hero or the precocious kid that uses a graduate level knowledge of physics and chemistry to murder the entire school. Davis and Ford don't have a whole lot to do. Their characters are pretty much defined in the beginning of the film and don't change a whole lot. Davis' character worries about Ender's emotional wellbeing while Ford's role requires that he constantly snarl "I don't give a damn what he feels like. I need him trained!!" Sergeant Dap (Nonzo Anozie: Xaro Xhoan Daxos from A Game of Thrones) has a small role as the drill sergeant who must beat these kids into shape. There is room for a sequel to this film but I doubt there will be one. The big surprise is telegraphed too early. And as mentioned earlier it was difficult for me to empathize with anyone in this film. This kinda bothered me a little but it is what it is.
TRAILER

Self-Defense In Detroit Home Invasion

A Detroit mother opened fire Monday night when three suspects broke into her home. Surveillance cameras caught it all.The mother tells 7 Action News she "didn't have time to get scared." When she heard the door to her home on Woodrow Wilson being kicked in, she immediately warned the three teenage intruders and then opened fire. One of the teens dropped a handgun on his way out the door. He then tried to get back inside the house a second time, but was again met with gunfire. Once again, he took off and all three were arrested shortly after the incident by Detroit Police.  These young criminals were indeed fortunate that they were not killed as they tried to break into this woman's home. Although incidents like this may indeed be statistically rare if you are the person confronted with this behavior that's small comfort indeed. Notice that the woman defended herself and her children with a scary looking "assault rifle". Unfortunately there are people in this world who are "bad", "warped", "bent", "evil" or whatever other pejorative word you wish to use. Ultimately I suppose you could pity such people but in my view such pity can only be doled out once they're safely behind bars or six feet under the ground. If one happens to be unfortunate enough to run into such miscreants bent on taking something that is yours, immediate and massive counter force is the only thing which they will respect. Incidents like this are why I am unsympathetic to people who tell us we don't "need" guns to protect ourselves or that no one "needs" a magazine capacity with more than an arbitrary number of rounds. As far as I am concerned the only bad thing about this incident was that the mother didn't light up all of the home invaders. Please note that although the police arrived quickly after the fact and arrested the criminals it was impossible for the police to be there at the moment that the thugs decided to break down the door. We are ultimately responsible for protecting ourselves and those we love. Watch video here.

Obama Administration: DHS Proposal for National License Plate Tracking

If you're like millions of other people, you probably woke up this morning, had breakfast, and performed the usual toiletries that clean, psychologically normal and healthy people perform. You then bustled yourself off to yet another exciting day of work, school, raising your children, enjoying your retirement or any other number of productive or leisurely activities. One thing you probably didn't do is stop by your local police station or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office and provide those kind men and women a detailed, hour by hour itinerary of your plans for the day, how long you thought these things would take, who you'd be seeing and where you'd be for most of the day. I know that you're probably pretty busy. Perhaps the critical importance of letting the government and its running dog corporate lackeys know where you were slipped your mind. Never fear. DHS has got you covered.

In a sad reminder of just how far government has sunken and how contemptuous many governmental bureaucratic or law-enforcement types are of a citizen's right to privacy and to be left alone, the DHS confirmed that it is seeking a private agency to assist it in building a database of every US license plate and its real time location.

The Department of Homeland Security wants a private company to provide a national license-plate tracking system that would give the agency access to vast amounts of information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers, according to a government proposal that does not specify what privacy safeguards would be put in place.The national license-plate recognition database, which would draw data from readers that scan the tags of every vehicle crossing their paths, would help catch fugitive illegal immigrants, according to a DHS solicitation. But the database could easily contain more than 1 billion records and could be shared with other law enforcement agencies, raising concerns that the movements of ordinary citizens who are under no criminal suspicion could be scrutinized.

The agency said the length of time the data is retained would be up to the winning vendor. Vigilant Solutions, for instance, one of the leading providers of tag-reader data, keeps its records indefinitely. Nationwide, local police as well as commercial companies are gathering license-plate data using various means. One common method involves drivers for repossession companies methodically driving up and down streets with cameras mounted on their cars snapping photos of vehicles. Some police forces have cameras mounted on patrol cars. Other images may be retrieved from border crossings, interstate highway on-ramps and toll plazas.

Customs and Border Protection, another DHS agency, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, which is part of the Justice Department, also have deployed cameras along the country’s borders. But DHS’s effort appears to be the first time a federal law enforcement agency is seeking such extensive access to a broad repository of data capturing the movements and images of American motorists from metropolitan ­areas...

Read the full article here. It's even worse than it sounds. 

DHS Solicitation of bids

If you've read this blog for more than a month or so you know where I stand on civil liberties and privacy. So you can probably guess what I think of this idea. Very simply this is bovine excrement. Wet stinky greasy foul bovine excrement. This is precisely the sort of thing that we read about states like Communist China or the former East Germany doing. A government that tries to know what its citizens are reading, with whom the citizens are communicating via phone, email, letter, and where the citizens are traveling and why is not a government that I have any respect for. It's a government that needs a radical haircut in its powers and so-called authority. If someone from the government wants to know what I did today they could ask me. And I could tell them to go  attempt airborne copulation with a rapidly revolving pastry. Unless I am under formal government control via imprisonment, parole or probation, who I talk to, why I talk to them, who I sleep with, where and why I travel, who my friends are and so forth and so on are none of the government's business. If the government REALLY needs to know, get a warrant. This is most definitely not a partisan issue. The great problem as I see it is that these increasing attacks on civil liberties and stepped up surveillance of citizen movements are sort of a Nixon to China moment. It took a right wing politician to attempt to woo China into the capitalist marketplace and make diplomatic concessions to the Chinese. This neutralized and isolated the rabid right-wing base that would have otherwise fiercely opposed such an action by a centrist or left leaning politician. Similarly if it had been widely reported under a Republican Administration that the FBI/DHS etc were seeking to maintain records of individual travel by all Americans, I suspect that many more left leaning activist groups and politicians might have slightly more than a few mild concerns to express. But because Obama is behind it you won't hear more than a few mumbles from most progressive people. This is wrong. Everyone should oppose these steps.

There are some fair minded people of goodwill who nevertheless still wonder why civil libertarians were so angered by warrantless wiretapping, metadata gathering, email and social network monitoring. They claim that as long as the government keeps us safe what's the big deal. To those people I would say that the big deal is exactly that giving the government a pass on the above activities, as we have largely done, just emboldens the government to take other bites out of our freedom. This really is a slippery slope.  People who come up with these sorts of ideas never ever have enough information. There's always someone out there who may have some fig leaf of privacy left. That bothers control freaks. There are many people who were alleged to have said this but it really is true that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.  If you're still not convinced that this expansion is problematic I'm not sure what to say to you. The opportunities for abuse are endless in such a system. We know that the government already targets people with political views that it doesn't like. Is it such a leap to believe that armed with a real time database of people's travels that further abuses would proliferate?  Let's imagine for a moment that there is that is a pugnaciously righteous attorney general or governor of a large east coast state. This man has numerous bitter rivals and enemies among the political and financial establishment. So his detractors monitor his movements until they realize this pompous populist gadfly is spending quality time at a brothel or house of a woman not his wife. So the politician's rivals then try to blackmail this man into softening his stances or failing that charge him with a crime thus destroying his ability to seek higher office or threaten established financial power. Of course nothing like that would ever happen would it? I'm just being paranoid...

Game of Thrones Complete Season Three Offer

Greetings!
We have four copies of HBO's Game of Thrones Complete Season Three. There are two Blu Ray/DVD copies and two DVD copies. Some special features include deleted/extended scenes, introductions to new characters, backgrounds on Westeros/Essos groups, cast/crew reactions to The Red Wedding and interviews with and commentaries by actors, producers, directors and Martin. We'd prefer to give these discs away to regular contributors to thank them for reading our blog. You must have commented on this blog at least twice during the past 120 days. These items will be given away to the first four people (non blog moderators) to send the correct answers to the below questions, along with their blog id, mailing address/name*, and their preferred version (DVD or Blu-Ray) to our email address.  Please use subject line "GAME OF THRONES GIVEAWAY". Answers must be received today before 5 PM EST. Answers should be as specific as possible. Proper names are preferred. A correct answer is "X is so-and-so's brother", not "His brother is that guy with the big nose who dresses in black". Ties will be resolved by blog management. 

If no one is interested or can answer the questions correctly then perhaps we'll just keep these items for ourselves. Otherwise winners will receive their copy within seven to ten business days. Comments are/will be disabled for this post so please don't place your answers here, the contact page or anywhere else on the blog. Doing so may lead to executions bannings. I'm sure as an upright honest person you'd be fine with the Stark honor system. But it might be a tragic mistake to remain honorable and spend precious time searching your fading memory while your more pragmatic Littlefinger type competitors search Google (or posts on this blog) and thus win "your" prize. Well winning isn't everything. It's the only thing. You saw what happened to Ned when he tried to be righteous. Good luck, whichever road you choose. Snicker.
*If you really prefer not to use your government name because the Mob is looking for you that's perfectly ok as long as you can provide us a valid mailing address. PO Boxes are fine.

QUIZ QUESTIONS

1. Including Jon Snow, match each Stark child (living or deceased) to his or her direwolf (living or deceased).
2. Which character is derisively called "halfman" by his allies and routinely threatened with having his manhood chopped off and fed to the goats?
3. Which house uses the song "The Rains of Castamere" as a warning to its enemies?
4. Who was Renly Barratheon's lover (not his betrothed)?
5. Who constantly says "You know nothing, Jon Snow!"
6. Who is the Hound's big brother? Nickname or partial name is acceptable.
7. Which house has the words "We do not sow".
8. Bonus Question: If you get this correct you can get some other questions wrong and still win (if you are among the first four respondents). What is Littlefinger's sigil?

HBO Game of Thrones Season Four Trailer: Vengeance

Payback is a mother...... or so some people say. Other people say that you set out for revenge you had better dig two graves. Still others were known to say that when winter comes and the cold winds blow the lone wolf dies but the pack, the pack survives. Robb and Catelyn Stark are dead and gone but the Stark wolfpack, while scattered and young, is a long way from destroyed. Is this the season of their vengeance? Time will tell. And what's Danerys up to? Is she going to get back to Westeros and take what is hers with fire and blood? We shall see. 
Enjoy clip below but as usual if you know what some of these scenes entail or book derived answers to the above questions, please keep them to yourself. Thanks! 

Season 4 Trailer 2

Tom Perkins: Return to Aristocracy

There has been a lot written of late about inequality. Unsurprisingly people on the Right tend to defend inequality in general and the massively increased inequality of the past 40-50 years as a good thing. People on the Left tend to consider increased inequality a bad thing while some go so far as to consider virtually any inequality as problematic. The Right, or at least corporations and the monied class have been winning this argument for a very long time. To the extent there is increased energy on the Left about this it's a last ditch stand or cynical media posturing by politicians who'd like to change the subject from their own complicity in the workings of the machine while keeping those campaign contributions rolling in. But there are some people of the Right who are not content with being wealthy, not content with paying relatively low taxes by historical American standards or by the standards of other First World industrialized nations, and not content with having money treated as speech and having political bribery virtually legalized. Some people, aristocrats in all but name, are starting to wonder why those damned peasants have the right to vote at all.

I mean if you're so awesome and so intelligent that you've built or expanded multinational corporations, discovered new medicines, increased the limits of knowledge about the universe, or at the very least made yourself and your family more money than could be spent in one lifetime, is it really fair that some sap who hasn't even made a million dollars gets the same vote as you do? Some rich people think that they should have more say in society while more of us peasants should have no say. Venture capitalist Tom Perkins, last heard from comparing the wealthiest 1% Americans to Jews hunted and exterminated during the Holocaust, is such a man.

"The Tom Perkins system is: You don't get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes," Perkins said. "But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How's that?" 

The audience at the Commonwealth Club reacted with laughter. But Perkins offered no immediate indication that he was joking. Asked offstage if the proposal was serious, Perkins said: "I intended to be outrageous, and it was."

It is hard to overestimate how profoundly undemocratic and unAmerican this proposal is. There is always a tension between the private sector in which the boss can more or less operate as he sees fit (especially without unions) and the public sphere of democracy and a republican form of government in which everyone has a say and both private power and public power are limited by constitution and law. Evidently Perkins doesn't like our system any more. Perhaps he should consider leaving the country and resettling in a place like Afghanistan or Somalia where whatever the local Big Man says, goes. He might be much happier. The entire swath of American political history has tended towards expanding the franchise, not limiting it.

Perkins offers no reason as to why it would be a better thing if only rich people voted or had even more of an outsize impact on elections than they already do. I guess to him it's self-evident. But I think he's going to have to come up with a better argument than "I'm rich and dislike the current President."

An aristocratic system tends not to last if you have other elements like an educated middle class, social safety nets, unions and other non-government support groups, etc. Because sooner or later people without the vote or with limited political say realize that they greatly outnumber the rich and have no need to bow and scrape before them. But to be an American is not to bow and scrape before anyone NOR to want anyone to do that before you. Perkins should learn how to be an American. I think he was apparently born in the wrong country and wrong century. If nothing else, Perkins should realize that a society that moves too far towards plutocracy and autocracy eventually gets balanced out by a Robespierre...