Yay! A New 'Star Wars' Trailer

thepilot.com:

So everyone’s watching (as of this writing) to see if Joe Biden’s in, out, or still dithering. The Donald and JEB! are exchanging nasty remarks because Trump pointed out, quite correctly, that JEB!’s bro was president on 9/11, something that was once considered treason when a Democrat dared to say it (which few did). It’s all very wearisome.

So of course, what I want to talk about is: YAY YAY YAY, THERE’S A NEW “STAR WARS” TRAILER OUT!

I can’t help it. I’m a huge “Star Wars” geek, and have been ever since the day back in 1977 when I sat with my best buds in the Town and Country Cinema in Aberdeen and watched that enormous white Star Destroyer slide ominously into view, seemingly from overhead and behind us, blasting away at the plucky little Rebel ship.

Even the tremendous disappointments that were the last three movies (the “prequels”) haven’t diminished my affection for what I’ll always think of as the real “Star Wars”: the tale of Luke and Leia, Han and Chewbacca, Obi-Wan and that bad, bad Darth Vader.

Sure, they were hokey. Sure, some of the dialogue was laughable. But those movies drew me in to a fascinating, complex universe full of heroes and villains and great stories, and they haven’t let me go yet.

All that said, after the aforementioned prequels (about which the less said the better), it’s hard for a fan not to feel some amount of trepidation over the idea of a new trilogy. Especially since they’re being directed by J.J. Abrams, whose “Star Trek” reboots were so ludicrous and full of logic holes that I can only get through them by regarding them as comedies.

So, like hundreds of thousands of others, I went to one of the numerous sites running the new trailer for “Star Wars Episode VII-The Force Awakens”, which releases December 18th . I crossed my fingers, took a deep breath, then played the trailer. Actually, I played it several times. Not too many. Twenty, thirty tops.

So far, I have to say, I’m encouraged. It looks like the Millennium Falcon’s back, along with Harrison Ford as the wisecracking, reluctant hero Han Solo. So is his friend, the giant hairy Wookiee Chewbacca.

I’m pleased to say that after the somewhat ridiculous baddies of the prequels (not even the great Christopher Lee could make a character named Count Dooku less than ridiculous), this villain looks truly villainous, in the Vader mold.

In fact, he seems to have a bit of a thing for ol’ Wheezy, since the trailer shows him looking down at a smashed and battered Vader mask and vowing “I will finish what you started.” It looks like the improvements in visual effects are put to good use in what appear to be epic TIE-fighter vs. X-wing battles.

Obviously, a mere rehash of the old movies wouldn’t be satisfying, so the trailer gives us a glimpse of some new characters: a plucky young woman with a staff on her back and a cute little rolling droid that looks like a soccer ball with a soup bowl on top; a tormented-looking black dude who appears to be a former stormtrooper-turned-Jedi; and a mysterious X-wing pilot played by Guatemalan actor Oscar Isaac.

Of course, no “Star Wars” movie release would be complete without some ridiculous controversy. Remember the fuss that erupted back in 1999 over whether the character Jar Jar Binks was a racist caricature, instead of just incredibly annoying? Well, this time, it seems to be white people complaining.

The casting of a woman, a black Englishman, and a Latino in the lead roles led to an eruption on the Internet using the hashtag “#BoycottStarWarsVII” and claiming the movie “is anti-white propaganda promoting #whitegenocide.”

Seriously. “White genocide.” At first I thought it had to be a joke, and there’s some evidence that that’s how it started out. But then it got picked up by actual racists decrying the “race mixing” in the film and referring to director Abrams as “Jew Jew Abrams.” #SMH, as the kids say on the Interwebs (it means “Shaking My Head”).

No matter. I’m not going to let a bunch of racist trolls ruin my enjoyment of Star Wars. There’s only one person who can do that, and his name is George Lucas. When the time comes, I’ll be there in the theater with my heart full of hope and my bag full of popcorn, ready to feel that sense of wonder and to be swept again into a galaxy far far away.

Don’t mess this one up, Mr. Abrams.

HATERS ARE GONNA HATE: The comments in today's Pilot show that, no matter how lighthearted or innocuous the topic, so-called "conservatives" are going to be dicks about it. Like this one from Mark/Francis: 

"Under the guise of a satirical article and sharing with all as you reminisce those days of your childhood, eating popcorn and stuffing yourself with concession stand goodies, once again you have cleverly stirred the pot in an attempt to create racially motivated comments, it seems to be the subject you get most enjoy and one that gives the most return to feed that ego. Try using a bigger spoon."

Get that? I'm not really a fan, I'm just "cleverly" disguising my real intent: to get "racially motivated" comments to feed my ego...comments which Mark/Francis can't keep himself from making. 

What must it be like to live inside a mind so profoundly fucked up? 

Hush Up, GOP, The Grownups Are Talking

thepilot.com:

So now the first Democratic presidential debate has come and gone. It was certainly a relief to watch grownups at work for a change.

We saw informed people with actual governing experience talking about their very real differences on issues, rather than amateurs insulting one another, mouthing bumper-sticker slogans, and throwing red meat to the so-called “base.”

In fact, the most memorable moment of the evening was when Sen. Bernie Sanders explicitly passed up the opportunity to slam front-runner Hillary Clinton over the latest in the long series of phony scandals ginned up by the Republicans.

“Let me say something that may not be great politics,” Sanders said, “but I think the secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!”

Sanders then proceeded to try to re-direct the egregiously shallow celebrity “journalist” Anderson Cooper back to what he called the “real problems facing America”: a collapsing middle class; 27 million Americans living in poverty; and job-killing trade policies. You know, like the ones Secretary Clinton was for before she was against.

Acting decently toward an opponent and trying to shame one of the cable news talking heads into focusing on real issues. Now do you see why I love this guy?

Sanders, unfortunately, exposed a couple of his own vulnerabilities. The left is going to go after him for being “soft” on gun control and voting against the Brady Bill. The right, and Hillary Clinton, are going to go after him for suggesting we should be more like Denmark, even though survey after survey, year after year, finds that the Danes are the happiest people on Earth. But hey, this is America. Who needs happiness?

As for the other candidates, none of them really moved the needle in their direction. Former Sen. Jim Webb stood there looking grumpy and alternating his “Democrats should vote for me because I’m most like the Republicans” theme with complaining that no one was paying him enough attention.

Look, I give Sen. Webb full marks for his service, both in the military and in government. I respect his dedication to veterans’ causes. He’s also a heck of a novelist. But his perpetual scowl and his pomposity make Bernie Sanders look downright jolly. He makes himself hard to like, and I’ve given up trying.

Former Rhode Island Gov. (and former Republican) Lincoln Chafee had a couple of real cringe-worthy moments.

One was when he confidently proclaimed himself a “block of granite,” which someone should tell him is not a real dynamic image. The other was when he blamed his vote in favor of repealing the tattered remnants that remained of the Glass-Steagall banking regulation bill (a move which contributed to the rise of banks that were “too big to fail”) by explaining he’d “just gotten to the Senate” where he’d been appointed after his father’s death.

That response was just a slow softball over the plate, practically begging for opponents to hit it out of the park: “So, not ready on Day One?” However, by the time he stumbled into that one, Chafee had made himself so inconsequential that no one cared to even try and swing at the pitch.

When Clinton was asked later if she wanted to respond to a Chafee attack on her “credibility,” she just smiled and said “no,” which was the worst burn she could have delivered.

As for Martin O’Malley — well, when by the end of the debate, I’m still asking “wait, which one is he again?” then his status as an also-ran is pretty much set in cement.

At the end, however, it was Hillary Clinton who was, as she put it, “still standing.” Actually, that should probably be her campaign slogan. After all, she has been since 1992 the target of one bogus, politically motivated investigation/ smear campaign after another.

Vince Foster’s death, Travelgate, Cattlegate, Chinagate, Filegate, Whitewater, BenghaziBenghaziBenghazi — the list goes on and on. Every single time, her opponents have rubbed their little hands together, cackling with glee and promising everyone that this time, Hillary Clinton’s going to jail, just you wait and see. And in the end, they come away with … nothing.

Every time, investigation has ended up with the investigators slinking away, muttering that they’ve found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing after spending years and millions of taxpayer dollars. As I pointed out last week, I’m a Sanders guy, but even I have to give Clinton points for her tenacity and resilience. She was the clear winner of Tuesday night’s debate, but it’s still early days yet.

Stay tuned.

Sanders: Right On the First Try

Thepilot.com:

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is definitely from the left. He’s a self-described Scandinavian-style “Democratic Socialist.” He’s adamantly pro-union. He’s for single-payer health care.

But here’s the thing. This guy from the left has been consistently right. He’s been right a lot.

He was right on the Iraq War. When Democrats such as Hillary Clinton were eagerly swallowing the Bushista WMD story, spun up as it was out of wishful thinking, dodgy reports from questionable informants, and outright fraud, Bernie Sanders was one of the few people going, “Whoa. Hold on there a minute.”

Explaining his reasons for voting against an authorization of military force, Sanders, then a congressman, asked, among other things:

“Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed, and what role will the U.S. play in an ensuing civil war that could develop in that country? Will moderate governments in the region who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists? Will the bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority be exacerbated?”

So what happened? There was a civil war in Iraq that still goes on, and moderate governments are battling for their lives against Islamic extremists across the region.

Oh, and while the Bushistas were assuring us that the Iraq War would pay for itself and that we probably would be there no longer than six months, Bernie Sanders was pointing out in the same speech that “we should be clear that a war and a long-term American occupation of Iraq could be extremely expensive.” And he was right.

Hillary Clinton now says her vote to authorize military action in Iraq was a “mistake.” And on that, she is also right. But Bernie Sanders didn’t make the mistake in the first place.

He was right about the Patriot Act. While both Republicans and Democrats raced each other to give more and more of our privacy rights away to prove which one could be more committed to the war on terror than the others, Bernie Sanders voted against the Patriot Act and against the numerous bills extending it.

And, like most of us who have been calling attention to the dangers of increasing government surveillance powers since 2001, he has been pilloried by the right as a wacko at best and a terrorist sympathizer at worst, while the Democratic establishment has barely bothered to notice him at all.

Then Edward Snowden came along and revealed just a little bit of what the government’s been doing with the power we so blithely gave them, and suddenly we’re all Bernie Sanders.

As he says today: “Do we really want to live in a country where the NSA gathers data on virtually every single phone call in the United States — including as many as 5 billion cellphone records per day? I don’t.

“Do we really want our government to collect our emails, see our text messages, know everyone’s Internet browsing history, monitor bank and credit card transactions, keep tabs on people’s social networks? I don’t.”

And he’s right.

He was not only right, but eerily prescient on the Wall Street financial collapse that has been dragging this country down since 2008. As far back as 1998, in a blistering confrontation with Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, said that “Americans should be worried about the gambling practices of Wall Street elites.”

He warned that, given the sums of money being recklessly gambled by unregulated banks, the actions of even one man could “cause economic disruption and catastrophe throughout the entire world.”

In fact, over the years, Sanders spent a lot of time confronting Greenspan for being out of touch with the economic realities of working people.

All that time, the Very Serious People in the government (including Bill and Hillary Clinton) and the “liberal” media (including NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, aka Mrs. Greenspan) were treating Greenspan like some kind of oracle and Sanders like a wild-eyed street preacher standing on a soapbox in the park.

But it was Greenspan, after the 2008 crash, who had to go before Congress and admit that he had “found a flaw in his ideology.” This is like the designer of the Hindenburg admitting that he’d “found a flaw” with the idea of using highly explosive hydrogen to lift his airship.

If, as seems likely, Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, I’ll vote for her, because (1) I agree with her stances on more issues than I do with any of the Republicans, and (2) on the issues we disagreed on, there’s at least the possibility that she’s learned or can learn better (something that I can’t see anyone from the Republican Clown Car ever doing).

Until and unless that happens, however, I’m putting my support behind the guy who was right the first time.

Orange Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye (With the Usual Idiotic Poo Flinging by the Right Wing Monkeys)

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

On Friday, Sept. 25, Speaker of the House John Boehner stunned everyone (including, it seems, members of his own staff) when he announced that he was resigning not only his speakership, but also his seat in Congress, effective at the end of October.

Perhaps the most revealing thing about Boehner’s resignation was the way he approached the podium to announce it. The man best known for bursting into tears at the slightest provocation strode jauntily to the podium, nearly skipping, smiling as he literally sang, “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah.”

“I used to sing that on my way to work every morning,” he added.

From the way he said it, it’s clear he hadn’t done so in a long time. And who can blame him? I’ve frequently slammed Boehner for being the most ineffective speaker of the House in that body’s long history. But I’m not sure that there is any way to actually lead a caucus that’s contained such egregious looney tunes as Michele Bachmann and that still plays host to paranoid whack jobs like Louie Gohmert and Steve King. Not, at least, without a tranquilizer dart gun and a 55-gallon oil drumfull of antipsychotic medication, both of which I’m pretty sure are against the House rules.

I mean, how do you realistically lead people who sincerely tell themselves and each other that “even though it’s never worked before, if we shut the government down this time, the Senate will go along, Obama will cave in and allow Planned Parenthood to be defunded, and everyone will love us. And after that, we’ll hold yet another vote to repeal Obamacare”? If insanity is defined as doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then this Congress is indeed the country’s best-dressed lunatic asylum.

Then again, maybe I’ve been exactly as hard on Orange John as he deserves. Compare his leadership, for example, with that of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She has had some wild-eyed, die-hard fanatics in her caucus. Dennis Kucinich and Bart Stupak come immediately to mind. And yet, when the crucial vote for the Affordable Care Act came up, Pelosi could get her people lined up and deliver the votes for a bill some of them had previously said they hated and wouldn’t vote for.

Whether you like Pelosi or loathe her, that’s what an effective speaker does. In fact, I strongly believe her effectiveness is exactly why the right-wing howler monkeys start screeching and flinging poo at the mere mention of her name. Boehner, in contrast, can’t get his people to stop grandstanding and posturing long enough to vote for things as simple as keeping the government open and paying the debts the country has already incurred.

So what happens now? Well, as the old song goes, “freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” Since Mr. Boehner will soon shake the dust of the place off his feet and put the crazies in his rearview mirror, it looks like he’s going to dare to work with both Democrats and the few sane Republicans in the meantime to pass a “clean” funding bill that keeps the government running for a little while longer. You know, do some actual governing.

After that, however, things might just get ugly. There don’t seem to be any candidates for the speakership, at least as of this writing, who have the gumption to sit their people down and go, “Look, we’re not going to do another show vote to repeal Obamacare, we’re not going to shut down the government again because that just makes us look stupid, and let’s face it, if the longest special committee investigation in congressional history hasn’t hung the Benghazi murders around Hillary Clinton’s neck by now, it’s not going to happen. So can we actually try to get some stuff done, even if it means trying to get some Democratic votes?”

No, I fear that the Republican-“led” House of Representatives is going to sink further into delusion and anarchy. There’ll most likely be another threat of a government shutdown and maybe even default when the next funding bill runs out, just in time for Christmas. They may actually figure out a way to drive Congress’s approval rating into negative numbers.Yeah, that’ll show that rascal Obama.

THE HOWLER MONKEYS SHRIEK AND PROVE MY POINT: The idiot who calls himself "Lenny Bo" once again weighs in to tell an uncaring world how much he hates the column he faithfully reads every week:

Dusty,
I am one of millions that loathes the mindless Nancy Pelosi. If she is your model of a good leader, then we are all in trouble.

As usual, the howler monkeys prove my point with every comment.

Obamacare was cited as an example where she got all the dems in line for a vote. How exactly did she do that? Well, she herself said that the bill had to be passed before they read it! Some leadership skills - keep the sheep in the dark and feed them BS.

And get ready Dusty - when the committee busts the lid off of 'ol Hellery's antics, I expect you to write a similar column on her leadership skills.

You know, the wingnuts have predicted Hillary Clinton's downfall since 1992. She's been investigated and investigated and investigated again, over "Travelgate," Vince Foster, Whitewater, Benghazi etc, etc, and...nothing. But with the conviction of the truly obsessed, they tell us THIS one, by God, will get her.  As I said above, they're "doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting a different result." And that's why I call them wingnuts. 

Frequent fuckwit "fugitiveguy" weighs in: 

DR doesn't seem inclined to write about Hillary. If I remember correctly he supported her over BHO in the early going in 2007.

What utter bullshit. I supported Obama from the beginning, and I've written a lot about Hillary, not a lot of it complimentary. Once again, it seems that "conservatism" is a form of brain damage wherein they lose the ability to remember anything. 

Ben Carson: Gump Republican

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Dr. Ben Carson is not a stupid man.

 He’s a world-class pediatric brain surgeon. He’s a graduate of Yale University, the University of Michigan Medical School, and the residency program of Johns Hopkins Medical School. He’s been elected into the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. The list of his honors goes on and on.

No, Dr. Ben Carson is not a stupid man. So why is he talking like one?

For instance, although he’s obviously had rigorous scientific training at some of this country’s finest institutions of higher learning, Carson continues to publicly embrace what’s called “young Earth creationism,” a theory which asserts that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, despite the fossil records and the fact that there are observable objects in the universe (such as long-period comets), all of which are clearly much older. He’s described the Big Bang Theory as “part of a fairy tale.”

I’m reasonably sure the good doctor is talking about the generally accepted explanation of the origin of our observable universe, not the TV show. The TV show, which tells the story of brilliant but socially awkward nerds who end up having smoking-hot women fall in love with them, is definitely a fairy tale. But I digress.

Dr. Carson has also described the Affordable Care Act as the “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”

Now, we know that Dr. Carson is far too intelligent a man to really believe that a law that keeps insurance companies from denying you coverage based on pre-existing conditions is exactly like being forced to pick cotton from sunup to sundown under the threat of brutal flogging if you don’t do enough, having your wives and daughters subject to constant rape, and living under the pervasive fear of having your family broken up and sold to someone hundreds of miles away. Only a stupid person would believe those things are even remotely comparable, and we know Dr. Carson’s not stupid.

Just lately, Dr. Carson told NBC’s Chuck Todd he didn’t think a Muslim should ever be president. “I absolutely would not agree with that,” he said. Later, he told the online magazine The Hill that a president should be “sworn in on a stack of Bibles, not a Quran.”

Now, I’m sure that Dr. Carson, a highly intelligent man who claims to revere the U.S. Constitution, is aware of Article VI of that precious document, which states explicitly that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” I mean, he has to have read the Constitution, right? And understood it?

So why is Ben Carson saying all of these silly things? Well, he’s not simple-minded, but the rise of Donald Trump shows us that a substantial number of the GOP primary voters apparently are. They’re what I call the “Forrest Gump” Republicans. Remember that movie? It was another in a long line of stories that have fed and bolstered the uniquely American mythology of the naïve half-wit who’s yet somehow more “wise” than the clever but wicked people all around them. (You can probably tell I’m not a fan of the movie.)

Rick Santorum, who you may be surprised to know is also running for president this year, served up that trope with an extra side order of resentment back in 2012 when he told the Values Summit, “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”

At one point, it seemed that the GOP was trying to shed that image. It was Bobby Jindal — who, you also may or may not remember, is himself a presidential candidate — who said that the GOP needed to stop being “the stupid party.” We all see where that attitude’s gotten him. He’s polling slightly lower than toenail fungus. So the upper tier of Republican candidates has apparently given up and decided to go full-out Gump.Ben Carson is not stupid. But he needs stupid people to vote for him. And that’s why he says the things he does.

Ready To Do What It Takes? Not Hardly

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Folks, I am going to tell y’all a secret, something that will shock and amaze you. It’ll rock your world and possibly cause you to question everything you thought you knew. In fact, if you’re not sitting down while reading this, maybe you should.

Sometimes I actually agree with Robert M. Levy.

I know, I know, it surprises me too when I look across the page at my staunchly Republican fellow Pilot columnist, read the piece next to mine, and go, “Hmmm, he may have something there.”

Oh, it doesn’t happen all the time — in fact, probably not most of the time. But I agree, for example, that we shouldn’t be undercutting the president’s nuclear deal with Iran, even as we disagree on how bad it is. Bob seems to think it’s terrible; I find it merely mediocre. But we both agree that the alternative of no deal at all is worse.

I also agree, to a point, with his assertion in last week’s column that there’s a power vacuum in the Middle East that’s making it easier for ISIS to commit atrocity after atrocity, and creating a refugee crisis of a size and urgency not seen since World War II.

The question I’d like to address in response however, is why. Bob seems to blame President Obama. I don’t think that tells the whole story. And no, I’m not blaming George Dubbya Bush, either — at least not entirely. I think the problem is bigger and wider than any one president or party.

Bob’s column recalls the spectacle of “American and Allied forces liberating Paris” and of the days when “America became the liberator of the free world as kisses were exchanged in Times Square.”

So far, so good. But remember what it took for us to do all that. The attack on Pearl Harbor shocked America almost overnight onto a war footing. As civilians lined up to sign up, our homeland standard of living changed drastically. Auto plants switched from making cars to making tanks and other war machines. New tires became nearly impossible to get. Kids collected scrap metal. Gas and foodstuffs were rationed. Buying war bonds became a patriotic duty.

And then, when the last German and Japanese soldiers had laid down their arms, we poured hundreds of billions of dollars into rebuilding their countries, because we knew that impoverished and broken countries were ripe pickings for the Soviets.

Can you imagine something like that happening now, in response to ISIS? Dear Lord, when the president endorsed a voluntary national public service program, he was accused of trying to create a new SS. His wife endorsed healthy eating and exercise, and suddenly right-wing pundits were screaming about “tyranny” and declaring it a sacred American right to raise a generation of roly-poly little couch potatoes.

We can’t even conduct a military training exercise in the Southwest without a pack of loonies — some of them in the U.S. Congress — taking to the airwaves and Internet to declare that it’s an invasion of the U.S. by its own Army. Oh, and support for “foreign aid”? Fuhgeddaboutit.

You want a World War II level response to ISIS butchery? You’re going to need a World War II level of citizen participation, sacrifice, and yes, money. And We the People haven’t been ready to do that for a long, long time.

It didn’t begin with the Obama administration. It didn’t even really begin with the George Dubbya Bush reign of error, although we did see quite a bit of the same unwillingness to even ask the people for sacrifice. Even after 9/11, Dubbya suggested we should just go about our lives, go shopping even. In the run-up to Dubbya’s Wacky Iraqi Adventure, we were assured, falsely, that “Iraq will pay for its own reconstruction” (Paul Wolfowitz), and that it was doubtful that the war would last six months (Donald Rumsfeld).

But, no, it didn’t start with them. It took years of short, easy-to-win conflicts against laughably weak opponents like Panama and Grenada to lull us into the feeling that the projection of American power and leadership is something that can be done on the cheap, something we could watch from our La-Z-Boy recliners before flipping over to watch “Jeopardy.”So the next time someone compares ISIS to the Nazis and demands that “American leadership” be used to defeat it, take a moment to think about what it took last time and ask them: Will you, personally, make the kind of sacrifices Americans had to make to defeat that enemy? Are you willing to pull together, even under a president you didn’t vote for, to make that happen? If not, then maybe in the words of the old saying, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”