Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, But four times he who gets his blow in fust
Henry Wheeler Shaw
Month: November 2020
20NOV2020 – Photo of the Day
Rudy Giuliani Lays Out the Case Against the Crooked Elections
It’s a remarkable testament of election fraud. It sounds very convincing.
19NOV2020 – Status Report on the Election and the Country
Here we are going into the third week after the election and, if anything, things are getting weirder. By all indications the fraud that took place was more organized than any typical urban election shenanigans. The rigged computer software and the manufacturing of bogus election ballots on the order of hundreds of thousands of votes looks to be fraud on a scale that even jaded judges will be hesitant to ignore.
The election certifiers are even getting into the act. The votes for Detroit have been called into question by the two Republican certifiers and I have to assume that we are going to see confidence in the voting process drop to rock bottom levels. Currently 52% of Republican voters surveyed think that the Democrats stole the election and as things become clearer that number will probably rise to 95%.
President Trump is getting legal help from several people who have shown themselves to be unafraid of the media circus and aren’t worried about being blacklisted by the Democrats and the Never Trump Republicans. The big question mark will be the Supreme Court. In my mind what the President needs is to get the information out to the American public and then let public opinion force the Justice Department and the courts to do their jobs and look to see what the facts on the ground are. We’re no longer in the world of the 1960 Election or even the 2000 Election where worry over damaging America’s trust in the institutions of the government is more important than the results of an election. There is no trust in the institutions of government. That has now become the operating principle. If the 72 million people who voted for Donald Trump think they were cheated, which they do, then effectively Joe Biden would be an illegitimate president. And that will have very serious consequences. We saw how debilitating the “resistance” to President Trump’s administration was. I assume that having half the country sure that you are a crook who cheated his way into the White House would render Joe Biden a veritable prisoner in the Oval Office. Wherever he went he would be booed and hooted at. I won’t even speculate beyond that point.
On balance I think if President Trump prevails in the election battle the resistance against him will be even more intense than what we have seen up till now. The only difference is that he has become inured to it and has developed strategies and located personnel who can cope with it. In either case we have now reached the point of complete polarization in the country. The proportion of people who haven’t joined one side or the other is minimal. The relationship between the two sides has reached the point of boiling animosity and open conflict including murder has already occurred along the geographic lines where the most radical partisans on both sides find themselves juxtaposed, like Portland and Kenosha.
I can’t see that things are going to calm down regardless of how the election is decided. From my point of view, it is important to start thinking about living in a country that will become more and more disunited. All the things we’ve been saying about developing our own platforms and institutions is becoming more relevant and crucial. One thing that is clear is that we are living in a treacherous environment. It is important that people are careful about what they say because everything they say can be heard by everybody in the world. Be aware of your surroundings and pay attention to information that can help you avoid trouble. Protect those important to you in every way you can. And most importantly avoid places that you know will be filled with irrational individuals. Physical danger is now not a conspiracy theorist’s paranoid delusion. It’s a living breathing reality.
Peace Talks – A Novel of The Dresden Files – by Jim Butcher – An SF&F Book Review
Back in 2018 I did a review of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files urban fantasy series. In that review I enthusiastically recommended the series but noted that the last installment was released back in 2014. This year Butcher published the sixteenth and seventeenth volumes in the series, “Peace Talks” and “Battle Ground.” Somewhat unusually these two books comprise a single story. So that means that the ending of Peace Talks is a great big “to be continued” notice. Normally that would be extremely annoying but because the two books were released back to back it’s tolerable. Another unusual situation is the fact that I haven’t read a Dresden Files book in several years. For that reason, I’m having trouble deciding if the “voice” of Harry in the book is the same as it used to be. I’m going to say that it isn’t the same. Part of this may have to do with the changes in Harry’s status since his last story. Now he is the “Knight” for Mab the dangerous Winter Queen and also the father of a young girl, Maggie. I’ll have to go back to the previous book but I believe they have tamed down Harry quite a bit.
If you haven’t read the earlier books then you don’t want to jump into the series at volume sixteen. Read my review of the series and decide if you want to start up with this very long but very good urban fantasy series. If you have read the earlier volumes then I’ll report that the series is shaping up to be just as chaotic and crazy as ever. As is Butcher’s way, the story starts out with an existential crisis developing in Harry’s life and then blossoms into the apocalypse. Whenever something really bad happens the scramble to avoid catastrophe leads to a crisis that is orders of magnitude worse. I will say that the pacing of the initial crisis seemed a little slow in spots based on my memory of how Butcher did these things. And maybe that has to do with this being a two-book story. But by the end of the book things were falling apart very nicely and Harry was right in his sweet spot, trying to save the world without any reasonable hope of even saving himself. All his enemies were his only possible allies and all of his friends were alienated and hostile. I won’t throw in any spoilers. All the old characters are back and we see some of the damage done in the last book is still haunting the characters here. Murph is seriously injured in a leg and arm. She is no longer with Chicago PD and is awaiting additional surgeries and rehab to partially recover from her injuries. Molly Carpenter is now the Winter Lady, Mab’s lieutenant and she has used her connections to provide Harry and his daughter with a home. It is an apartment that is contained within a sort of embassy building owned and run by the Svartalves (dark elves) who are very serious about security. This was necessary because in the last book the Red House Vampires finally burned Harry’s crummy home to the ground. And his Volkswagen Bug was also finished off. Now he’s driving a reconditioned and ancient hearse that he calls the Munstermobile.
I will say that the annoyance of having the book end in the middle of the story is acceptable because having Harry back is worth it. I expect really good things from Battle Ground and if you’re a Dresden Files fan you have no choice but to jump in and enjoy the wreckage that Harry drags in his wake. Highly recommended.
19NOV2020 – Quote of the Day
Love is like the measles; we can’t have it bad but once, and the later in life we have it the tougher it goes with us.
Henry Wheeler Shaw
19NOV2020 – Photo of the Day
Howie Carr Has a Remarkable Interview With L. Lin Wood On the Election Battle
Carr is one of the only good guys in New England. Wood is the guy who handled Nicholas Sandmann’s defamation suit. Listen to this and hope that Wood is right. He says the bad guys are going down.
18NOV2020 – American Greatness Post of the Day – NY Sheriffs Save the Holidays
“Saratoga County Sheriff Michael Zurlo also vowed not to enforce the regulations, WRGB Albany reported. “I can’t see how devoting our resources to counting cars in citizens’ driveways or investigating how much turkey and dressing they’ve purchased is for the public good,” the law enforcement authority told the local outlet.”
Sanity from elected officials in in New York, is that allowed? Bravo gentlemen. Hopefully your courage will be emulated elsewhere.
The Petrified Forest (1936) – An OCF Classic Movie Review
Petrified Forest was adapted from a stage play of the same name that had also starred Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart. Howard play Alan Squier a down on his luck writer who has lost faith in his life. He has hitchhiked his way into the Petrified Forest region of Arizona and shows up at a diner where Gabrielle Maple, played by Bette Davis, and her grandfather are running the business while Gabrielle’s father is out with his band of vigilantes trying to track down notorious bank robber Duke Mantee and his gang. The gang has killed six men and is known to be in the general vicinity. Alan takes a liking to Gabrielle because of her artistic bent and she finds him both mysterious and attractive because of his cultured manner and his knowledge of the world.
There are several other characters, a rich couple and their chauffeur, a gas attendant at the diner who is infatuated with Gabrielle and some lawmen looking for Mantee. But the story comes down to the occupants of the diner being held hostage by Mantee and his gang until they are ready to leave. At a certain point Alan decides that he will take advantage of the situation to give Gabrielle the chance to fulfill her dream of going to France and becoming an artist. He writes his $5,000 life insurance policy over to her and gets Mantee to agree to shoot Alan before he leaves the diner.
Eventually the law finds Mantee and Alan forces a reluctant Mantee to shoot him before he departs. Then Alan dies a long talkative death in Gabrielle’s arms. Then she recites some French poetry while still clutching the corpse. Yikes.
There are some scenes in the movie that are amusing. The early part of the movie where Alan is talking about his early life and where he discusses art and life with Gabrielle are pretty good. But the whole world-weary artist tired of living and anxious to die in a noble gesture is absurd and extremely ridiculous to watch. Also, Bogart’s Mantee is a laid on a little bit too thick for my liking. How he got from Brooklyn to Arizona seems odd. Gabrielle’s grandfather is played by Charley Grapewin who was Dorothy’s Uncle Henry in the Wizard of Oz. He is quite entertaining as the grizzled old survivor of the old west.
Some people might be interested in this film as a period piece showing what a stage play was like during the Great Depression and some might be interested to see an early Bogart role. But I can’t recommend it in good faith. It’s just too hokey.