Month: March 2019

Washington Examiner – Byron York – Five-Things-that-Didn’t-Happen-in-the-Mueller-Investigation

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Hallelujah, the endless Chinese water torture is finally over and Mueller can go off to assume his new role as head of security in Hell.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-five-things-that-didnt-happen-in-the-mueller-investigation

I’ve summarized his points below.

1. Mueller did not indict Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, or other people whose purported legal jeopardy was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.

2. Mueller did not charge anyone in the Trump campaign or circle with conspiring with Russia to fix the 2016 election.

3. Mueller did not subpoena the president.

4. The president did not fire Mueller.

5. The president did not interfere with the Mueller investigation.

So here’s the question I have, when will the rest of the rats be cleared out of the FBI and the rest of the DOJ?  And when will Comey and McCabe be indicted?

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 4 – The Passersby

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The scene opens on a woman sitting on the porch of a southern mansion that has been devastated by the Civil War.  On the road in front of her home a stream of war veterans from both sides is limping along.  A Confederate Sergeant asks the woman if he can have some water from her well and she graciously agrees.  While he drinks the water, they talk about the war and its aftermath.  He was wounded and has a serious leg injury.  She has lost her husband in the war and was herself recently deathly ill with a fever.  To cheer both of them he asks if he can play his guitar and she gladly agrees.

As we see more of the soldiers who are passing on the road it seems obvious that they are unbeknownst to themselves actually the dead.  One Union officer who had helped the Sergeant when he was wounded is revealed to be an animated corpse that shows no meaningful effect when the woman shoots him with a gun.  She does this at a point when being reminded of the pain of losing her husband she vows to take revenge on the Union soldiers.  After this event the Sergeant knows he must reach the end of the road.  But just as he is leaving the woman’s husband is heard approaching the house singing a song.  The husband tells his wife that they are both dead and there is nothing left holding them to this world.  He says he is headed to the end of the road and if she does not come with him now, he’ll wait for her at the end until she makes up her mind to come.  The Sergeant heads off down the road and the woman’s husband soon after that.  She unsuccessfully pleads with her husband to stay and then collapses on the road in front of the house in sorrow.

Just then Abraham Lincoln shows up walking down the road and tries to persuade her to proceed.  He tells her he is the last man on the road because he is the final casualty of the Civil War.  At first, she refuses but then changing her mind she runs down the road to catch up to her husband.

The story has a sort of melancholy grace to it and the characterization of the woman and the Sergeant are very affecting and natural.  Serling uses Lincoln as a touchstone to represent the tragic consequences of war for both sides.  Although I don’t think it describes the complexity of the psychic wounds that still stalk the land, I recognize that he wants to allow grace for both sides in the conflict and that is admirable.  B.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 3 – The Shelter

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This story opens up in the home of Dr. Bill Stockton where his family and neighbors are celebrating his birthday with a cake and some speeches in his honor.  But as they are celebrating, a television announcement tells them to tune into the radio and listen to CONELRAD to hear a bulletin on an emergency situation.  The bulletin tells them that the Distant Early Warning radar has detected incoming objects that may be a missile attack.

The neighbors leave and run home.  Dr. Stockton, and his wife Grace and young son Paul start collecting supplies and fill water bottles before heading into their bomb shelter.  Just before they locked themselves in their neighbor Jerry Harlowe shows up and begs Dr. Stockton to let Jerry and his family share the bomb shelter.  Stockton explains that he can’t because the shelter only has the capacity to provide air for three people.  After a heated exchange Stockton locks the shelter door with Harlowe still outside.

Now the rest of the neighbors who were at the party show up and start panicking and come up with a plan to smash in the shelter door.  But then they start fighting about who gets to be in the shelter.  There are even the obligatory racist and anti-immigrant sentiments from one man against his Hispanic neighbor.

Just as they finish bashing in the door, they hear the CONELRAD announcing that the incoming objects aren’t missiles but a satellite and there is no danger.  The rampaging mob collapses in relief and shame.  They all start apologizing to Stockton and each other for their insane behavior.  When someone says that the bombs didn’t destroy them after all, Dr. Stockton says that maybe they’ve destroyed themselves.

So Serling reveals his liberal bona fides for all to see.  He manages to make a bomb shelter an Un-American abomination and reveals all of our neighbors and families to be racists and hypocrites.  Charming.

I’ll grant that anxiety over impending thermonuclear war might not have us acting like saints but painting us as Nazis is a cheap shot.  F.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 2 – The Arrival

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A DC-3 airliner lands in Buffalo NY and when the runway crew arrives at the plane, they find out there’s no one aboard.  No crew and no passengers.  The FAA sends Grant Sheckly their top investigator to solve the mystery.

Sheckly interrogates the airport staff and management and they can find nothing to explain the mystery plane.  But once they start describing the details of the plane inconsistencies start cropping up.  One man says the plane’s seats are blue another brown.  And even with all of the group standing next to the plane they can’t even agree on what number is painted on the tail of the plane.  But Sheckly thinks he knows what’s going on.

His theory is that there is no plane but that mass hypnosis has them convinced that they’re seeing one.  Sheckly says he can prove his theory by sticking his hand into the running propeller.  Enlisting the help of the group, they start the engines and he indeed walks into the propeller.  And just as he thought he is unharmed and the illusion of the plane disappears.  And after the plane disappears the group of people he has been questioning disappear too.

Now Sheckly goes running into the management offices of the airport and there he finds that the people in charge don’t know anything about an empty landing plane.  In fact, the flight he’s interested Flight 107 landed without incident earlier in the day and there was proof because a movie star was aboard and it made the newspaper.

Bu now the airport manager remembers Sheckly and that fifteen years earlier there was a Flight 107 that disappeared while on route to Buffalo and Sheckly had been the investigator.  It was the only case he was never able to solve.  After hearing this Sheckly leaves and walks out onto the tarmac and starts talking to the air asking what happened to Flight 107.  The end.

This episode sucks.  I guess it’s psychological.  But it’s heavy on the psycho and light on the logical.  You know how I feel about episodes where someone is shouting at no one.  Well here’s another exhibit.  Damn it Serling, come on.  Do some work and write an actual story.  D