Movie Reviews: American Made, The Change-Up

American Made
directed by Doug Liman

When investigative journalists talk about the American government turning a blind eye to or even assisting in criminal activity for reasons of "national security" or pure greed, the public often ignores those people in real time. Mainstream media mouthpieces or military-industrial complex muppets mock such people as loons and conspiracy buffs. It's only after the evidence has become impossible to ignore or many of the major players have passed on that the entertainment industry feels comfortable depicting some of the events.  American Made is a fictionalized retelling of the life and times of Barry Seal (Tom Cruise), who morphed from a shady and bored airlines pilot to a CIA intelligence asset and supplier of the Nicaraguan contras (Iran-Contra affair) to a drug and gun smuggler for the Medellin Cartel to a DEA informant and military asset. There wasn't always a clear delineation among these roles. Seal made a lot of money; he had multiple bosses in different organizations. Unfortunately for Seal he wound up in a position where he had betrayed the cartel , but wasn't considered important enough for the U.S. government to protect. 

So as the saying goes, live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse. That last is important for this film as the slender and seemingly ageless Cruise (his only concession to advancing years appears to be some deepening lines around eyes and mouth) looks absolutely nothing like Barry Seal, who was a porcine good old boy from Louisiana. 

Patient Dumping in Baltimore

"This place is cruel; no where could be much colder /If we don't change the world will soon be over"
Stevie Wonder "Living For The City"

There are things you are allowed to do and things you are not allowed to do. When no one is looking, for many people it's tempting to do the things they aren't allowed to do, particularly if it saves them money. For an auto company engineer this could mean ignoring a defective transmission part and letting a poor design go to market. Why should she jeopardize her bonus and next promotion for something that may not even be discovered for another decade? She can reason that those drivers could have had fatal accidents anyway. Maybe a banker sells a young couple a horrible mortgage with sub-prime interest rates and balloon payments, reasoning that as long as they sign on the dotted line it's not his responsibility to save them from themselves. A restaurant owner might choose to use the moldy jalapenos in the rear of the freezer or fry up the wormy meat that fell on the floor. Margins are tight and state investigators will never know. 

Or maybe a hospital, already dealing with lower reimbursements and higher costs than it can handle, decides to eject the patients who either lack insurance or lack more remunerative private insurance. This is called patient dumping. A psychotherapist good Samaritan named Imamu Baraka, apparently by happenstance, witnessed a woman being dumped outside near the bus stop on a cold winter night. The woman was incoherent. She only had a gown on. 

BALTIMORE (AP) — The man who said he came to the aid of a woman discharged from a Baltimore hospital wearing only a gown and socks on a cold winter's night, says he was left outraged and stunned at how she was treated.

Imamu Baraka, identified in local reports as the person who sought to help the woman, told The Associated Press he was so angry he decided to record Tuesday night's events on cellphone video, fearing no one would believe him if he reported a woman being left at a bus stop like that.

Frozen Alligators

https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/24a81d0c-1417-3586-abfd-be332f1864f6/ss_alligators-use-bizarre-%E2%80%93-and.html

Book Reviews: Killers

Killers
by Howie Carr

If I had realized just who the author was before I picked this book up on a 2 for 1 sale at the local bookstore I probably wouldn't have purchased it. It's always tricky to figure out how much of a book's or fictional characters' worldviews are things that are created by the author separate from his or her own views. Fiction and reality don't necessarily have anything to do with one another. But there are authors with very strong political or personal views that not only bleed into their creative works, they inspire the creativity in the first place. The view points are the reason for the creative work. They give the author a way to purge himself.

Howie Carr is a Boston area conservative racist radio host and Boston Herald columnist who has played footsie with birtherism, claimed that President Obama was given everything because of his race, and mocked Senator Elizabeth Warren with "Indian" war whoops. Boston has always had a certain reputation for xenophobia and bigotry. Although Carr is not a Boston native, he seems to fit well within that framework. Carr is also an expert on New England area organized crime. Famously he attracted the negative attention of Winter Hill gang boss Whitey Bulger, who publicly regretted not murdering Carr when he had the chance.

Now depiction is not endorsement as any creative artist would tell you. But I think that most readers are smart enough to tell the difference between someone who creates racist characters because he's a keen observer of human nature and someone who creates racist characters because he sympathizes with that view point. As a reader there are only so many sentences decrying "a fat female Obama voter yakking on her Obamaphone" or snide asides about jungle areas in Boston (Roxbury) that I can tolerate. Killers was right at my limit.

Prison Abolition: Good Idea??

I can't remember the cartoonist's name but somewhere in my home I have an old newspaper comic cut out that shows a smirking sheriff about to hang a depressed looking criminal. The comic's caption is a quote from the sheriff. It reads something like "Of course I realize that society is partially to blame for your crimes. Unfortunately I only have enough rope for you!"

If you talk to most people about their ideas on individual responsibility, punishment, crime, rehabilitation and the like you will find that many people tend towards one of two differing schools of thought. Many (not all) conservatives will be clustered around the idea of "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime!". Some will (knowingly or not) have a pretty healthy dollop of bigotry mixed in as well. They think the individual is responsible for committing the crime, and must pay the cost. Punishment is important. These folks usually aren't that concerned with rehabilitation or repayment. They are interested in punishment. They are often indifferent to why someone committed a crime. If one group of people commits more crimes or has more run-ins with law enforcement than perhaps those people have some personal problems to fix. People who think like this can be still be persuaded to look beyond punishment as the key purpose of the criminal justice system but only if other important (to them) points are raised like cost. Saying that prison is too harsh usually won't evince too much sympathy from these citizens. They will retort that the criminal should have realized that before they committed a crime. There is an axiom that a liberal is a conservative who just got arrested. With the opioid epidemic in full swing some conservatives have suddenly become open to non-prison alternatives for those who look like them.

Trump vs. Bannon

I have never been fired from a job. I came close once but ultimately avoided it. No one likes being told by their boss or employer that they aren't good enough to do the job they do and need to leave. Now. Right this minute. Steve Bannon is apparently no exception to that rule. The right wing publisher, former investment banker, former Navy officer and previous adviser to President Trump was let go by Trump back in August of 2017. At the time Bannon denied that he'd been fired but said that he hadn't planned on staying with Trump for much more than a year. He said that he could be more effective outside of the Administration. Some sources said that it was Chief of Staff John Kelly who asked Bannon to resign. Other sources said that Bannon and Trump still talked regularly and that any claims of disagreement or dislike between the two men were wildly overblown. Well. It appears that like most other people who got a tap on the shoulder from a supervisor and were ignominiously walked out of the door by security, Bannon is nursing some grudges against his previous employer.

In an upcoming new book by Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Bannon launches several personal and political attacks on Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his daughter Ivanka, and his son Donald Trump Jr.

In his latest book, Wolff quotes former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon calling Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump "dumb as a brick" and denouncing his son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic." The quotes sent the White House scrambling and drew condemnation from Trump, his family and White House officials. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the book "trashy tabloid fiction."LINK

Movie Reviews: Invincible

Invincible
directed by Ericson Cole

This is an older feel good sports drama based on the true story of an everyday man who beat the odds and made the roster of a professional sports team, the Philadelphia Eagles. It ought to go without saying that the writers, studio and director made all sorts of changes to the storyline to make it more of a melodramatic tearjerker. YMMV. A lot of that wasn't necessary in my opinion. But just about all movies based on true stories take some liberties with the facts. It is what it is. These sorts of films aren't designed for deep introspection by the viewer. They are designed to make the viewer feel better about his or her life. If the person in the story can try, fail, keep on trying, find love, and then ultimately succeed then perhaps the person watching can do the same thing. 

Most of us aren't going to make the roster of an NFL team but a big part of the American Dream is that with hard work, determination and love of friends and family a man (or woman) can overcome and do anything that they want. A more cynical negative person might dismiss this sort of stuff as horrible propaganda that prevents people from making the sorts of systemic group changes that need to be made in society. Perhaps. But all the same art is not necessarily bound to political needs. Sometimes art is just art. And people do need dreams.