Month: August 2020

Will Durham Do Anything?

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Less than a month left for Durham to take action on Russiagate before the 60-day election cutoff.  Apparently, there is a rule against an administration interfering in an election (the October surprise strategy) within that period so if Durham doesn’t want to run the risk of sending his report to President Biden, he will have to do it before Labor Day.  Here’s a link to an article that basically says he will release his report and includes a supposed expert opinion that says he’ll hand down indictments.

Well, I gave up on all this months ago but I will admit I’m curious to see what happens between now and Labor Day.  Even my short attention span can concentrate for that long.  But I’d be lying if I said my expectations are very high for something explosive.  I’m expecting a sort of dressing down by the teacher and a slap on the wrist for being sloppy and over eager and maybe someone loses his law license.

If anyone thinks differently, I’d love to hear an opinion and the basis for it.  Because this whole cabal is surely one of the most damning pieces of evidence to prove that the Deep State really does run things behind the scenes and can’t be touched.

Warbound – Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles – by Larry Correia – A Science Fiction-Fantasy Book Review

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Warbound is the third and the (currently) final volume of Larry Correia’s Grimnoir series.  And as such it ties together the threads from the earlier volumes, Hard Magic and Spellbound and provides the resolution of the story lines for the main characters Jake Sullivan and Faye Vierra.  These two are powerful “actives,” possessors of magic abilities in one or several categories working for the Grimnoir Society.  Jake is a Gravity Spiker with the ability to alter gravity at will while Faye is a Traveler, someone who can teleport from one location to another.  Both have been tested during the crises in the earlier books when they faced off first against the Iron Guard actives of the Japanese Imperium and afterward against rogue actives in the US intelligence agencies that were attempting to blame the Grimnoir Society for magical attacks by other forces.

But now the whole planet is threatened by an alien creature that preys on the entity that produces the magic.  The knowledge of what is at stake produces some strange alliances that alter the dynamic that the earlier books portrayed.  And despite the war footing that the book details Correia is able to mix just enough humor and other character driven interest to allow the pleasant juggling of a large number of characters.  One of the features of this historical fantasy world is the introduction of historical figures often possessing magic themselves.  Blackjack Pershing, J. Edgar Hoover, Buckminster Fuller, even FDR make longer or shorter appearances in the books.

I won’t go into a detailed plot summary because I don’t want to spoil the story.  Suffice it to say I’m giving it a very good rating.  And I’ll finish off by saying a few things about Correia’s story writing.  Without a doubt Correia is one of the best sf&f authors around today.  Going beyond that I’ll say he compares well with the older authors back in the heyday of the genres.  He writes good heroes and good villains.  He has a good ear for dialog and he can even inject humor into the story in a natural way.  One of his favorite types is a variant of the competent man but instead of Heinlein’s omnicompetent type Correia’s hero is usually a working- or middle-class guy who is good with his fists and guns and adheres to a code of conventional morality.  And as an added bonus his heroes are actually likable.  Even his villains are interesting.

And there’s one final bonus with Correia that is refreshing to see in today’s social justice infused entertainment industry.  There won’t be a single character thrown in just to earn intersectional social justice brownie points from the pink science fiction crowd.  Just regular people with super powers fighting super villains without having to worry if any of them is being oppressed by the really evil cis-het white man.

So far, I’ve read all Correia’s Monster Hunter books and now the Grimmoir books.  I’ve also enjoyed his comical Tom Stranger audiobooks and I follow his website for his take on the latest outrages by the pink science fiction scolds.  Next, I’ll start his epic fantasy series “Saga of the Forgotten Warrior” without bothering to check reviews because I’m already sure it’ll be excellent.  And in today’s science fiction and fantasy environment that’s pretty rare.

The Ministries of Truth and Love in Corporate America

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In 1984, George Orwell’s overly optimistic vision of what the future totalitarian progressive state would be, he calls the government agency in charge of propaganda, the Ministry of Truth and the Ministry of Love was the agency whose job it was to terrorize and punish the citizens into believing that truth.  In the real world, where things are much worse, instead of just the government, each corporation has now combined those functions into the Human Resources department.  They provide you with the loving truth and you had better pay attention when they do.

Last week on one of my posts someone commented his reply to his employer’s corporate “conversation” about anti-black racism in America. To say he gave them the straight dope would be an understatement.  He gave them both barrels.  And he did this without anonymity.  That’s amazingly brave.  Recently Cisco had a similar townhall meeting to air opinions about the same topic and when some employees said things like “All Lives Matter Not Just Black Lives Matter” they were promptly fired.  LinkedIn had a similar meeting but allowed anonymity and after they received similar answers, they promised to never allow anonymous replies again.  Here’s MSN’s article describing these two events.  Being Microsoft, the article takes the view that the employees got what they deserved.

Now normally I prefer not to quote people I do not respect but for once I think I’ll use Barack Obama’s favorite phrase.  Let’s look at this as a “teachable moment.”

What do we see here?  American corporations pretending to encourage open discussion of a divisive position on race relations that the company has taken and when the employees provide nuanced reasonable opinions that oppose the company’s position, they are declared racists and fired.

What should we learn from this?  First of all, if an American company says they want your opinion, really what they are telling you is what your opinion must be.  Namely, the same opinion as theirs.  Period.  In fact, what they’re expecting you to do is virtue signal just how much more you believe in something than even the company does.  If the company says it’s going to donate a half percent of profits to BLM you should declare that you’re going to donate a full percent or even more of your paycheck to BLM.  If you want to keep working at the company the least you are allowed to do is just stay silent about your true opinion.  And depending on how “woke” the company is, even that may get you fired.

Secondly, corporate America has knuckled under either willingly or unwillingly to the progressive agenda, lock, stock and barrel.  Unless you happen to be a protected class, you are at best a second-class citizen and most likely someone they would rather see leave.

And finally, the way this should get fixed is by a Justice Department investigation that prosecutes one of these companies for civil rights violations at a monetary level that puts the fear of God in every board room in the country.  And the only way that happens is if the President, the DOJ and the Supreme Court are all on our side and want us to be free citizens again.  Whether that is likely to happen sooner or later is hard to say.

But I had a funny idea, call it a thought experiment.  Since the BLM/Antifa model of direct action is apparently perfectly acceptable to the governments of the various states involved would it be equally okay if a mostly peaceful protest showed up in Mountain View, California and burned Google’s headquarters to the ground.  Or maybe CNN or The New York Times or even Harvard University.  Nothing violent or wrong just a mostly peaceful protest where people took direct action to let the country at large know that they were unhappy.  Now, my guess is that the executive office of every big corporation in America would have a very long meeting about that occurrence but I also guess there wouldn’t be any Human Resources townhall about it.  I’ll bet they won’t state their opinion at all.  But they may stop telling Americans what they have to believe in order to work at their company.  Just a thought.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 12 – The Deadly Years

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The setup, such as it is, has Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Chekov and some female red shirt beam down to Gamma Hydra IV to perform routine physicals on a colony of typical victims.  They find all but two of the colonists dead of old age and the two remaining ones already extremely elderly, this despite the fact that chronologically, they were all under thirty years of age.

When they get back to the ship the last two colonists expire and the landing party, except for Chekov begin aging at the rate of thirty years per day.  This is discovered when Kirk feels a back ache and instead of it being a muscle pull McCoy diagnoses advanced arthritis.  Next, we see Scotty walk into the sick bay completely gray haired and covered in wrinkles.  Kirk’s hairline starts receding and McCoy is soon sporting an enormous gray-haired wig that’s obviously plastered on top of his real hair.  At first, they barely give Spock a few gray hairs because Vulcans are more long-lived but by the end Spock gets a good set of facial wrinkles and some decent gray coverage.  And all of this make-up is hilarious but it’s the acting that makes this episode so great.  There is another of a long series of Commodores who is being transported to Star Base blah blah blah and is impatient to get there.  And once he witnesses Kirk forgetting the password for the bridge screen Twitter feed Commodore Busybody convinces Spock that it’s his duty to convene a competency hearing.  Of course, Kirk embarrasses himself and is packed off to assisted living or sick bay anyway.  The Commodore takes command and decides to cut across the Romulan neutral zone in order to get Kirk and the others to medical attention as quickly as possible.  He assumed the Romulans would be impressed with the humanitarian aspects of the mission.  Hah!  Now while the ship is being attacked by a dozen Romulan birds of prey, Kirk is berating Spock and calling him a traitor.  But in order to save the ship they pool their dementia-riddled brains and try to figure out how to reverse the aging disease.  They remember that Chekov was frightened down on the planet and McCoy remembers that adrenaline is present in the bloodstream during an acute fear reaction and that it is effective against certain radiation sicknesses which was the cause of the disease they are suffering from.  Miraculously they formulate a medicine and use it to reverse Kirk’s condition in time for him to boot the Commodore out of the Captain’s Chair and use the corbomite bluff (again!) to escape the Romulans.

I love this episode.  The titanic awfulness of the acting, the cheesy plot devices and the emotional interactions are highly entertaining.  Kirk and McCoy are just so wonderfully bad and they are at the very maximum of Kirkness and McCoyness so that a true fan of Star Trek could not ask for better.  At one point when Spock goes to the Kirk’s cabin to tell him he’s been relieved of duty Kirk calls him a traitor and accuses him of stabbing him in the back the first chance he got.  His whiny geriatric petulance is truly a Star Trek high point.  Shatner embodies in that scene the full limited emotional range that the series affords.  This is his “you broke my heart Fredo” moment.  It’s wondrous to behold.

At another point when Spock goes to McCoy complaining of hypersensitivity to cold and asks for a treatment, McCoy says, “I’m not a magician Spock, I’m just an old country doctor.” And Spock says, “Indeed, as I always suspected.”  This is the essence of the Spock/McCoy relationship.  And finally, when McCoy drags up the word adrenaline from his failing memory, as the name of the sought-after cure, he sounds like he might have expectorated in the face of anyone within range.  At each of these moments you know that this is the most fully realized that Star Trek ever was.

There are other touches.  Chekov gripes to Sulu about all the testing and blood samples they subject him to.  Kirk somehow has an old girlfriend on the ship who by some amazing coincidence is an endocrinologist and still has the hots even for geriatric Kirk.  I will say that even old Kirk looks like he could have done better.  Sulu questions a couple of Kirk’s repeated helm commands which sets Kirk off on a rant about questioning his orders.  And even the cute blonde yeoman (played by Carolyn Nelson) lets Kirk know he is asking to review a report he already signed a few minutes before.  Uhura has a larger than usual part.  She gets to testify against Kirk that he forgot that the Romulans had cracked the Federation Message Encryption Code 2.  And later on, while the Romulans are pummeling the ship with photon torpedoes, and the Commodore questions her why the Romulans aren’t answering his message to them she reminds the Commodore that Romulans are notorious for ignoring explanations.

Ah, it’s a fabulously ripe second season episode.  Kirk’s angry, confused portrayal falls perfectly into Shatner’s wheelhouse.  There isn’t any Shatner physicality but his angry blustering attacks on Spock gives this a very high Shatner mockery score.  Highly recommended for the connoisseur.    9 // 8