Fanfare for the Common Man

Last Friday Cindy Borgne said:

There was someone who said the democrats come across as the party of the foreign man and the republicans are now coming across as the party of the common man. I forget where I read that, but it really sounds true. 

Just think, for the next 4 years this guy is POTUS

This irritates me because there is almost nothing in the Republican platform that benefits "the common man." Economically, they prefer cutting taxes for the rich with the excuse of "trickle-down economics" that has been proven time and again not to be effective.

Famous economist Paul Krugman reviewed Trump's "infrastructure plan" that's also being called a "jobs plan."  Guess what?  Yeah, it doesn't provide any real money for infrastructure or provide any "shovel-ready jobs" people bitched about with Obama's economic stimulus.  What does it actually do?  It gives tax breaks to private investors.  Again, trickle-down bullshit that if we give money to rich people they'll use it to help out us po' folks.  It sure as hell ain't the New Deal.  More like the Raw Deal if you're in the 99%.

The other day I was reading in Mother Jones about Pencecare in Indiana, something which could soon replace Obamacare.  It cut costs slightly, though not as much as just going straight-up Medicare did for poor people.  The only way it saved money was by being so costly and confusing that people dropped off it.  Hooray!

Republicans hate unions.  In states like Wisconsin as soon as a Republican governor takes over, he tries to dispose of public unions.  Why?  Because without unions it's easy to push teachers and other public workers around because they have no leverage.  So you can cut their wages and benefits to almost nothing and there ain't shit they can do about it.  Trump claimed credit for a Ford plant not moving to Mexico, but in reality it was because of union contracts.  I worked for a union for 13 years and while I hated much of the job, people, and city the perks were top-notch, especially compared to a non-union job like I have now.  Sure I'm glad just to have a job, but it was sure nice when I got Black Friday off, had an employer-contributed 401K, health/dental/vision insurance all paid entirely by the employer, and more vacation/sick days than I could use.  Yes there's corruption in unions and not all unions are that effective, but on the whole it's better than being on your own against management.  Unfortunately Republicans have been successful demonizing unions, especially in the south while membership even in Michigan is waning.

Recently Obama's executive order that made millions of people eligible for overtime was overruled.  An executive order was needed because of course the Republican Congress wouldn't support giving people overtime pay; that would be bad for Big Business!

Also in red states like Wisconsin they've passed ridiculous restrictions on welfare money.  They ruled out things welfare recipients can't use their money on.  Some like fast food make a little sense but then it gets into this whole long list of things as basic as ketchup.  Ketchup!  If you watched The Martian you know how essential ketchup is for some foods.  And remember this is the party that claims it wants "small government."  Ha ha ha.

About the only benefit for "the common man" is that Republicans hate brown people, any religion except Christianity (or non-religions like atheism), and any foreigner not worth a couple million.  But at least they aren't coming for your guns, right?  That'll be handy when you're broke and need to rob a liquor store to pay the rent.

Honestly, the problem here is that people just don't think.  If they actually considered any of the stuff I just said, they'd realized Republicans are not the party for them.

The Monetary Economy is Doomed

Before the election I talked about how all those good factory jobs from the 50s-70s aren't likely to come back.  But that's only one threat to the working class.  In the next 20-50 years even low-class jobs are going to be hard to come by thanks to the seeds of destruction already planted and rooted in modern technology.

Back when I was a kid, when we went to the grocery store, all the cash registers were manned by people.  When you wanted to return cans and bottles for the dime deposit, you had to have an employee count them and give you a receipt.

That started changing in the 90s when U-Scan lines began being installed and recycling machines replaced the human at the counter.

The scanning technology is spreading to restaurants now.  At Chili's there's a computer on tables so you don't need to order from a waitress.  At some Panera Breads there are kiosks you can order from and get your food delivered to your table or left on a counter for you to grab.  I think some McDonald's restaurants have also been experimenting with this.  Which means that not even low-income jobs like fast food will be safe before long.

Amazon and pizza places are testing drone delivery, which threatens parcel and pizza delivery jobs.  In Nevada they have tested self-driving semi-trucks.  That could eventually replace truck drivers.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with advancements in robotics and AI.  So really not only are those blue-collar factory jobs not coming back, the subsistence jobs many people have taken to replace them are going to disappear as well.  To make it worse, the population is growing and people are living and working longer.

That means that our whole economy is facing an inevitable collapse.  Short of euthanizing hundreds of millions of people or shooting off an EMP that sends technology back to the Middle Ages, what can we do?

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are good reminders that what drives most of our economy is conspicuous consumption.  It's buying those TVs, video game systems, toys, and so forth that keeps manufacturers in business and employing people.  Yet as we've already started to see when manufacturers move overseas, then less of that money is going to help American people.  Eventually you get an imbalance when the people supposed to buy the products no longer can afford to.

Adding to this is the greedy 1% and their new government (the kleptocracy as Offutt and others have called it) stuffing their pockets with cash.  They give us that crap about trickle-down economics, but the problem is the 1% already have so much cash just sitting around not doing anything and yet we're going to give them even more to just sit around in investment accounts or private hoards.  They don't seem to know or care that the more they squeeze the 99%, the quicker the monetary economy reaches the breaking point.  The irony is most of their "wealth" will then be worthless because most of it isn't backed by anything tangible.

Already there are signs of trouble on the horizon.  Chains like Ruby Tuesday have reported decreased earnings in recent years.  Why?  Because people can't afford to eat there very often, if ever.  One department store chain after another is either shuttering its doors or on the brink; Sears and its KMart subsidiary will be in bankruptcy before much longer after more than a century of business.  Why?  Because people don't have money to throw away at Sears; it's cheaper and easier to buy from Wal-Mart and Amazon.

To solve the problem, Americans are finally going to have to stop seeing socialism as something evil and embrace it.  Eventually we're going to reach the point where there simply aren't enough jobs thanks to advancements in technology and global competition.  Either we can embrace socialism or just devolve into a class war.

A few years ago I read one of those old sci-fi books that got turned into a movie in the 70s like Make Room, Make Room (ie, Soylent Green) and in it the government basically had to give people a stipend to sit around and watch TV and stuff because there was nothing else for them to do.  That's what we will inevitably have to do.  Maybe after experimenting with backwards authoritarianism we'll finally have the wake-up call that the old ways simply aren't going to work going forward.

If you want to think it's all bad, just think about Star Trek.  When people are freed from the monetary economy, they're free to pursue their real interests.  All my writer friends, how great would it be to not have to worry about going to a job and just write books?  When I was unemployed for most of 18 months, I didn't really miss the commute and grind of going to work; I just missed the money to pay for stuff.  Imagine if we didn't have to worry about that anymore?  And I could stop writing gender swap stories (mostly) and maybe try to find something more literary to write about.

The problem though is most people if they have no job to go to will simply sit around watching TV or something useless like that.  So obviously it wouldn't be all sunshine and roses like Gene Roddenberry envisioned.  Still, even now I think we have to believe in people and that given the chance people would eventually turn off the boob tube and find something more enlightening to do.

One thing is certain:  it's going to get worse before it gets better for most of us.

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Hillary Rodham Clinton

Happy Black Friday!  I have to work so I care even less than usual about Black Friday.  Plus all the cool shit is online anyway, right?

I figure no one will read this anyway, so I'll just amuse myself.

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret was a British series starring Arrested Development's David Cross as a dumb American who goes to England to launch an energy drink called "Thunder Muscle."  As the title suggests, he makes one bad decision after another until the point of unleashing Armageddon.  (The less said about the IFC reboot the better.)

When you look back, you can likewise think of all the poor decisions Hillary Clinton made that led to her defeat at the hands of the electoral college a few weeks ago.

You could begin a lot of places.  Like trying to lead the push to reform healthcare in 1993 that wound up freaking people out and costing Democrats the midterms in 1994.  That in turn unleashed Newt Gingrich and company on the Clintons, culminating in impeachment hearings.

Or you could start with staying with Bill Clinton after the whole Monica Lewinsky thing came out.  That certainly came back to grab her by the pussy after Trump's lewd comments came out.  Had she divorced Bill, she could have taken the high ground of saying she wouldn't tolerate such behavior.  By "standing by her man" it left things kind of muddled even for liberals.  I mean, all we could fall back on to justify Bill's behavior vs. Trump's is that Bill wasn't running for president.

Running for Senate in 2000 while still being First Lady never struck a good chord with me.  Especially since she hardly had any tie to New York state at the time.  It seemed like using her star power to grab continued power for herself.

Those are debatable to some extent.  Probably the first big mistake was voting for the Iraq War.  That bit her in the ass when it came to the primaries this year.  People like me who didn't support the war would rather vote for someone like Obama or Sanders who likewise did not support Bush's war.  And falling back on "I was duped by the bad intelligence" just made her seem like a gullible fool.

The mistake she made in 2008 was repeated in 2016.  I talked about it after the election:  she never really gave people a vision of what she wanted to accomplish.  As we saw with Trump voters, Americans have a "What are you gonna do for me?" mentality about voting.  You have to promise them something, even if you have no intention of actually doing it.  Obama was all about Hope and Change and making America great again, whereas Hillary was about...what?*

*(Part of it isn't her fault in that Obama embodied the idea of a fresh start being young and half-black.  Hillary, because of her history, would always represent the past, the former status quo.  Trump's people used that against her, casting her as "the insider" and him as "the outsider")

Her worst decision?  Becoming Secretary of State.  Think about it:  the emails and Benghazi all stemmed from her taking that job.  If she remains a humble senator from New York, Republicans would have had to reach back to the 90s to dust off all that Whitewater and Vince Foster stuff--which they did anyway, but not as prevalently.

If you set that aside, obviously using the email server was a bad idea.  Even if Powell and Rice did that before her.    From what happened in the 90s, she should have realized she needed everything above-board and crystal clear.  The same with the Clinton Foundation.  She and Bill needed to keep all that squeaky clean instead of acting shady.

Speaking of, she was just doing her job, but criticizing Julian Assange for the first Wikileaks releases really bit her in the ass this year.  I forget if it was 60 Minutes or one of the HBO shows talking about how the one-sided release of emails from Wikileaks was a result of Assange wanting revenge for the Obama administration's reaction to that first batch of leaked information around 2010.

I'm not counting Benghazi.  I think most of that was just a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking.

Like voting for Iraq, those Wall Street speeches really hurt her with Bernie Sanders in the primaries and again with Trump.  I mean, how could she say she was going to reform Wall Street when she'd been taking their money?  Then thanks to Wikileaks (see above) the text of the speeches came out and that line about "open borders" even though taken out of context didn't help with paranoid dopes worried about all those "bad hombres" coming across the border.

A mistake last year about this time was not being more forthcoming about those emails.  Instead she tried to laugh it off.  "I'm an old lady who doesn't know much about technology. lol"  It was disingenuous and let that non-issue fester into an issue.  Since there was really not much in the emails, she should have just come clean straight away.  "You want my emails?  Here's my emails!"  Deleting 30,000+ made her look guiltier than she probably was.

Speaking of the emails, hiring Anthony Weiner's ex-wife as her assistant really backfired on her.  Sure there was no connection between Hillary and Weiner, but just putting "Anthony Weiner," "sexting," "Hillary Clinton," and "emails" together, it let people THINK there was something to it.  It's not fair to the ex-wife but political scandals paint people with a pretty broad brush.  It was guilt by association.

The "basket of deplorables" comment was shades of Mitt Romney's 47% comment.  Something she should probably have realized is that in 2016 anywhere you speak it's essentially a hot mic; there will always be someone with a phone to record the thing.  She should have thought of that for those Wall Street speeches too.  It's a lot harder to keep stuff like that secret in 2016 than it was in 1996 when the Web was in its infancy and we just had message boards and email.

A lot of things that all added up in the end.  If any time travelers stumble upon this and want to stop Trump, here are some places where you could help Hillary get elected.  That and actually getting people to fucking vote!

Stuff I Watched 11/23/16

Happy Thanksgiving!  And Black Friday, though they're pretty much the same thing now, eh?  Incidentally I have 3 books for Thanksgiving and one now for Black Friday.  Shameless plugs:

For nearly twenty years, Shiloh always gets stuck doing all the cooking, cleaning, and decorating for Thanksgiving while her husband Mac sits around watching football and drinking beer. Then she makes a wish on the turkey wishbone for a more sensitive spouse. The next thing she knows, she's sharing a New York apartment with a sweet young vegan named Mac. Now Shiloh is the one wearing the pants, but will her new power go to her head?

Lydia has gotten tired of her husband's poor manners, especially at Thanksgiving. This year things are going to be different. Using a magic potion, she changes her husband into a woman. Every time he swears, farts, burps, or does something else naughty, he gets cuter and younger. If he can make it to midnight, he might just become a man again.

A lot of guys say their mother-in-law is a witch, but Daryl's mother-in-law actually is one. When she pops in on Thanksgiving morning and Daryl tries to assert his authority as man of the house, she changes him into a four-year-old girl. Now instead of carving the turkey, he's sitting at the kiddie table with his daughter and nasty nephews. But that's only the beginning of his trouble.

Parker and his girlfriend Katarina go to the Treetop Mall to cash in on Black Friday deals.  When they get pulled out of line for a special shopping spree, they have no idea what's in store for them.  Parker is turned into a young woman who has to spend $10,000 in less than an hour if he ever wants his manhood back.  Meanwhile, Katarina finds herself getting younger and younger unless she too spends $10,000 in less than an hour.  Another couple who try to get into the mall early are put to work in the food court as teenage girls.  Will any of them survive the mayhem of Black Friday?

They're all $2.99 or FREE with Kindle Unlimited/Amazon Prime

Enough with the shameless plugs, time for movie reviews!

Independence Day: Resurgence:  It's not as embarrassing as Godfather III, but like Dumb & Dumber To it's like, "It's OK, but did we really need this after 20 years?"  No, not really.  The plot is easy to summarize:  the aliens are back 20 years later to kill us all by snuffing out our core.  Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, and Will Smith Liam Hemsworth have to take them out.  The idea of killing the queen isn't all that original, but whatever.  Stuff blows up, though fewer landmarks this time because I suppose they blew up most of them last time.  In a way this seems like the closest to a Robotech movie we're going to get as they use that premise of humans using alien technology to upgrade their arsenal, though sadly not into transforming space fighters.  It's not nearly as epic as 1996 and what feels like a long runtime and some lame green screen effects make it not essential viewing. (2.5/5) (Fun Fact:  Did you know Brent Spiner's scientist character not only survived the first movie but that he was gay?  Yeah, so there.  Bonus Fact:  Prior to this Vivica A Fox and Judd Hirsch both appeared in Sharknado 2:  The Second One.)

By the Sea:  This movie is a cure for insomnia.  In the 60s--or something--Brad Pitt and Anjelina Jolie Pitt (ha ha ha) go to an island in the south of France for...reasons.  Brad Pitt spends most of his time getting drunk in the bar and Anjelina Jolie Pitt seems to be trying to channel Liz Taylor and spends most of her time staring through a peep hole at the young couple in the next room.  I twice tried to watch this and fell asleep both times.  It's just so pretentious and dull.  No wonder it destroyed their marriage. (1/5)

American Loser:  Seann William Scott is a former alcoholic trying to reform his life.  He has learning disabilities and phobias that also make things difficult.  In the end he becomes a comedian though it's kind of depressing that his book hadn't been published yet and the girl he hooked up with was not still with him; those items were relayed in text at the end of the movie.  It was OK but not essential viewing either. (2.5/5)

Torque:  This is pretty much what you'd expect from the trailers:  lots of motorcycles driving and jumping and stuff with very little in the way of plot.  This came out about 10 years or five Fast & Furious movies ago.  The idea is that it's supposed to be like Fast & Furious with motorcycles.  The good guys have Ninja-type motorcycles and the bad guys Harleys.  It's all extremely dumb with lame special effects and mostly no-name actors. (2/5)

2001:  A Space Travesty:  The title pretty much sums it up:  it's the year 2001, it's in space, and it's a travesty.  I guess the idea was Naked Gun in space since it stars Leslie Nielsen but it's extremely lame.  The gags are terrible and the effects are worse.  It makes The Adventures of Pluto Nash look like the real 2001. (1/5)

Another System to Improve Your Blogging

For some reason my Facebook feed came up with an ad for a webinar by author Jeff Goins about how to make a blog with 1,000 followers and make $100,000 a year!  I decided to watch it and encouraged my brother to also watch it though I figured it was probably worthless.  Because what the hell, right?

Typical of these things, the first third is largely vamping to I guess pad the run time.  You know, he just keeps saying, "you'll learn this..."  So just tell me and I'll learn it already!

When he finally gets to the point, a lot of it wasn't too different from that Reader Magnets book I've blogged about in terms of build an email newsletter and offer a freebie to get followers.  Goins is actually a lot less specific because mostly this webinar is just a preview for the more involved class that you can take for the low, low one-time only price of $197!

Here are some of the other highlights:

There are five types of bloggers according to him:

1. Reporters (writing factual accounts like interviews)
2. Prophets (Grumpy Bulldogs who are dissatisfied with things)
3. Artists (you know, people who create stuff)
4. Professor (someone who focuses on data)
5. Star (someone with charisma)

So you should focus on which one of those you want to be.  For instance, my brother is a huge Transformers fan, so let's say he decides to write a Transformers blog.

1.  Reporter:  Would be writing factual articles about what's going on with Transformers currently or in the past or interviewing those involved with the toys, games, movies, shows, etc.
2.  Prophet:  Would be expressing dissatisfaction with the state of toys, games, movies, shows, etc.
3.  Artist:  Would be stories, illustrations, poems, or whatever about Transformers
4.  Professor:  Would be a more in-depth analysis of Transformers sales or rating or whatever
5.  Star:  Probably not applicable

Besides the email newsletter, you should do guest posts on blogs that are more popular than yours.  One "secret" is after you sign up for another blogger's newsletter and they send an automated message, send them a thank you note and hope that way to connect with them and then suggest down the road that you have an article to guest post.

Something Andrew Leon would not agree with:  doing favors for other bloggers.  Part of this could be interviewing other bloggers because everyone likes their ego stroked.  But don't go to people asking, "Hey, what can I do?" because that puts them on the spot.  Just say, "Hey, can I do this for you?"  That's more helpful I guess.

So after my brother sets up his Transformers blog, he can create an email newsletter with some kind of article, illustration, story, or whatever to give people.  As well, he could search for the top 5-10 Transformers blogs and eventually offer to do a guest post for those sites.

And on his blog he could interview people from those other sites.  Even if his blog doesn't have many followers (yet) they might agree to be interviewed just for the ego boost.

And then...profit.  That part seemed a little fuzzy.  For someone like me I guess it could be book sales, but if you're just normal blogging, I'm not sure why anyone would pay you for articles.  But maybe you can expand those articles into a book or something.  Of course you can also put ads on your blog with Google AdSense or something.  I put that on this blog recently and I've made a whopping nine cents. Hahaha

At the end of the webinar you get a link to a free book that's 99 cents on Amazon or free with Kindle Unlimited/Amazon Prime.

There you go, I saved you about an hour.  I really have no idea how to apply this to my blog here or my Eric Filler one.  The Eric Filler one has an email newsletter but I don't know what content I'd post there besides news on new releases.  I should go find some other similar author blogs to write guest posts for.

I did look on Amazon at some of the authors who write books like I do and went to those that had a blog.  Pretty much all of them just use their blog to announce new books like I do.  There was one that had some interviews and reviews of related movies, books, comics, etc.  I suppose I could post clips of stories or write new content.

Grumpy Bulldog vs. the National Football League

It's been a heavy week so let's end on a light note!  Also I haven't watched new stuff so I'm not doing a "Stuff I Watched" this week.  Mostly I've been watching stuff already watched but got on DVD recently including both Ghost Rider movies for $6 at a KMart Going Out of Business Sale.  Did I get ripped off?  I don't know, I consider them in that middling part of the superhero movie pack along with Green Lantern, Daredevil, and most of the X-Men movies.

Anyway...the NFL (or National Football League as idiot announcers like to remind us 40 times a game) has seen ratings decline.  Is it because of the election?  Because of players protesting the national anthem?  Me, I think in part it's because the game has gotten to be so shitty to watch.  People complain that baseball is slow but every football game is 3-4 hours between commercials, injuries, and plays being reviewed and the stuff between all that often isn't great.  So here are some suggestions to fix things:

1. This comes from the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column that used to be on ESPN:  eliminate DirecTV's monopoly on Sunday Ticket.  That's the satellite package where you can see most every NFL game instead of the ones on your local airwaves.  That would allow cable subscribers to get the package and watch more games.
2. Along with that, give more people access to the "Redzone Channel" where you can see scoring plays.  That's a big thing for fantasy football so the more people who have that the better
3. Thursday football should be reserved for Thanksgiving only.  The Thursday Night Football games are usually a dumpster fire with bad matchups and crappy "Color Rush" uniforms.  (BTW, attention Packers, white is not a "color" really.)
4. Just have 1 London game if you must.  Having one football game on at 9:30am is neat but when you do it 3 or 4 weeks in a row it starts to get lame. And why has it always been London?  Why not some of the other former NFL Europe cities?  Though Amsterdam might have too many players failing drug tests. Zing!
5. End tippy-tappy penalties.  Stop killing scoring drives with "holding" penalties that cost 10 yards and 90% of the time stop a drive dead.  Either dial it down to 5 yards or say fuck it and let them hold all they want.  As well, end "block in the back" penalties on kickoffs that take away great returns.
6. Simplify Catches.  Use the college rule that only one foot has to be down and enough of this "process of the catch" bullshit where a receiver has to catch the ball, fall down, get up, and do a fucking tap dance without juggling the ball.  No one likes sitting around debating what is or isn't a catch for five minutes.
7. Speed up reviews!  This crap of waiting 5 minutes to review the spot of the ball is so ridiculous.  Lower the number of challengeable plays and get those replays in there faster so we don't have to wait forever.
8. Go full college OT.  A few years ago the National Football League changed overtime from sudden death to a half-baked system where if the first team who gets the ball gets a touchdown they win, but otherwise the other team gets the ball.  Just use the more exciting college system where each team gets the ball on the 20 and try to outscore each other.
9. For NBC only:  stop with the stupid player introductions.  We got bored of this on Monday Night Football years ago and there was no need to transfer it to Sunday Night except maybe Al Michaels is too lazy to read names.  Sorry, players, but we've heard every variation of your jokey introductions:  using high schools, junior highs, elementary schools, or made-up schools like "The school of hard knocks" and we're sick of hearing THE Ohio State and THE U.  It's especially sad for 30-something players to brag about where they went to college.  You got a stupid college ring to show while you're at it?
10. Let some fun in, but not too much.  I was as sick of Terrell Owens and Randy Moss, etc.'s inane touchdown celebrations in the 2000s as everyone else, but as usual the NFL took things too far by fining players for wearing different-colored socks or refusing to let Antonio Bryant wear shoes with Muhammad Ali on them.  Hidden Sharpies and mooning crowds are bad but no one cares what socks the players wear.
11. Speaking of, stop letting Commissioner Roger Goodell be judge, jury, and executioner.  The punishment system of the NFL is a joke.  A kicker gets suspended 1 game for beating his wife but smoking a joint gets you a 4-game ban?  2014 was a dumpster fire of a season for NFL punishment as Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson were suspended for abusing a girlfriend and child respectively only AFTER the word of the crimes got out to the press.  Goodell should have lost all power then, but for some reason he's still calling the shots and the system is as inconsistent as ever.
12. This is cruel but:  get injured players off the goddamned field!  I know it sounds mean and it risks legal action to do but look the NFL is in part like NASCAR:  people come to watch the wrecks as much as the race.  Let's not pretend like we really give a shit when some poor guy goes down on the field.  Sure we all gasp and applaud when he's carried away, but then guess what?  We applaud the next bone-crushing hit.  Football is a gladiator sport only the bodies are weapons.  Let's stop pretending we're worried about their collected health and just keep the game going.  Are you not entertained!?  And especially if the dude just has a fucking cramp or something wimpy, push him to the sideline and keep going!
13. Stop "freezing" kickers.  One of the lamest things coaches started doing in the 2000s is calling a timeout right before a kicker would kick a field goal at the end of the game or half.  Much of the time they would wait until just before the ball was snapped so the kicker would get a practice kick.  To me it's as lame as the dude who goes on The Price is Right, sees the highest bid is $900 and bids $901 just to be a dick.  Make it so you have to call the time out by the time players are set instead of when the ball is hiked so we have less fake kicks.  And it would eliminate those ironic moments when a coach "freezes" a kicker who misses the first time and nails the second attempt.

Those are just some ideas, some good and some maybe less good.  The idea is speed things up and eliminate some of the bullshit that makes watching a football game such a chore.

Working for the Man: 99 Homes & 99 Problems

Recently I watched 99 Homes, which stars former Spider-Man Andrew Garfield as a construction worker in Florida in 2010 who loses his family home to eviction.  In order to make money, he goes to work for the guy who evicted him, a sleazy real estate agent played by former General Zod Michael Shannon.  Soon Andrew Garfield is evicting people himself, along with stealing air conditioners and pool pumps from abandoned homes so his boss can file claims for them to Fannie Mae, who then pays him to essentially reinstall the stolen property.  Things start to escalate as his boss prepares to make a deal worth millions in foreclosed homes, but when his family finds out what he's been doing, Andrew Garfield starts to get cold feet.  It all culminates in a standoff at a former neighbor's house.

I found this movie really relevant for a few reasons.  First off, it displays the massive corruption between the banks, real estate brokers, courts, and cops.  At one point Andrew Garfield has to deliver forged papers to the city clerk in order to prevent a guy from keeping his home and spoiling the big deal.  The sheriff's department is pretty much on the real estate agent's payroll and act like they're doing evicted families a big favor by giving them a couple of minutes to gather things to take with them.  The deck is completely stacked against homeowners trying to keep their homes:  besides dirty tricks by the banks and real estate brokers, the judge barely glances at the files before ruling in favor of the bank.  And of course being in foreclosure, these people can't afford decent lawyers to fight back.

What was more relevant to me is the idea of working for an industry that is not really in a good business.  After almost 18 months of unemployment I finally found a job in a legal office processing debt payments.  The legal office I work for specializes in what's often called "zombie debt" because it's often old debts that people think are gone before coming back to haunt them.  There was a story on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver that actually mentioned one of the big debt debt firms my office collects for.

Most of my job is processing the payments of people in debt.  It's kind of a bummer, especially the people who owe tens of thousands of dollars.  Sometimes people send in nasty letter or write snarky things on their checks or payment coupons.  Which always is kind of annoying because I'm just a part-time employee who has nothing to do with their situation.  Don't shoot the messenger--or the accounts receivable clerk in this case.  But saying that makes me feel like one of those Nazis at Nuremburg saying "I was just following orders."

My dilemma is the same for Andrew Garfield in this movie:  sometimes you get so desperate that you have to do things you're not proud of.  Not just writing erotica books, but also working for an industry that isn't exactly doing the public good.  Because let's face it, the world revolves around money and to make money you need a job.  And hey I applied to jobs all over the place and that's the only place that would hire me.  Which is actually a difference between me and the guy in the movie:  he pretty much the next day starting (literally) shoveling shit for Michael Shannon while it took me a lot longer to reach that point.  But then I don't have a kid and mom to support.  Though if I'd been offered that job from the start I'd have still taken it.  Money is money.

Something to remember when a debt collector or telemarketer calls:  these people are just doing a job.  There's a 99.9% chance that they didn't really choose this work and they sure as hell never dreamed of doing it for a living any more than 99.9% of clerks at Wal-Mart or McDonald's or baristas at Starbucks.  We like to talk about "careers" but for so many of us it's simply a J-O-B to pay the bills.  It's a sad fact of life.

You can say you wouldn't do something like that but when your bank account balance is near 0 and you're losing your home, you'll probably start singing a different tune.

Now of course the movie being a movie Andrew Garfield's family moves out on him when they find out what he does and tries to buy a new house for them.  And then he pretty much confesses to a crime to probably end up in jail, though it's never said for sure.  I don't think many families would be quite that melodramatic about it.  Though they might be sentimentally attached to their old home, I don't think they'd run off to Tampa just because the dude works for the guy who evicted them.  Because I'm sure that like Andrew Garfield, they'd do what they had to to survive and thrive.  That's what people do, which is how we've managed to make a go of it for so long, even in places like burning deserts where no sane human should live.  It ain't always fun or pretty, but it's what we do because what other choice is there?

It's Time to Kill the Trump Narrative

Since Trump's surprise win on Election Night, the most popular narrative is that rural America (ie, rednecks) rose up and swept Trump into office.  This fails to take a couple of things into account.

First:  Trump didn't win the popular vote.  He eked out wins in a few "swing states" like my state of Michigan, where he won by less than 12,000 votes.

Two calls for a little statistical analysis.  The simple way to say it is that Trump got pretty much as many votes as every other Republican over the last 16 years, while Clinton got far fewer votes than Obama.  In fact, when you look at the numbers, Clinton got pretty much the same number of votes as John Kerry in 2004 while Trump actually got FEWER votes than Mitt Romney in 2012.

I don't want to try importing the chart and graph from Excel so here's a screen capture:

So you see what I'm talking about?  Trump's vote count is pretty much in line with every other presidential election since 2000.  So there was no popular uprising.  Sure a lot of redneck dipshits showed up at his rallies but do you think those people were turning out for Obama?  Fuck no.  The more obvious but less sexy narrative is that just like 2014 the Republican base turned out more than the Democratic base.  And thanks to the Electoral College system it worked out to Trump's benefit.

The more fun narrative should be how the guy whining about a "rigged system" ended up benefiting from this system.  I don't think we should get rid of the electoral college, but when two elections in sixteen years end with the popular vote losing the election it's probably time to tweak it.  I like having proportional delegates for every state, which may require a change from the 270 delegates needed to win.  That way liberals in Texas or conservatives in California might be more encouraged to go vote, knowing their vote might actually matter.

Something that should be obvious to the "liberal media" is that since 2014 Democratic votes have been down, which so happens to come after the idiotic Supreme Court decision that repealed the Voting Rights Act because racism was dead.  And, hmmm, wouldn't you know that a lot of those "swing states" won by Trump put in voter ID laws after that?  A judge in North Carolina had to actually stop them from purging voters even.

The problem is the media is so fucking stupid, corrupt, and lazy anymore that they can't be bothered to report things like that.  Instead they just go with the narrative that's the easiest and keep hammering it.  That's part of how we ended up with Trump in the first place; the media kept hammering the email "scandal" to feed the narrative that they're the same or just as bad.

Remember a few months ago when I talked about journalism being dead and we should just go be our own reporters?  Here's a case in point!  Actually someone on Facebook posted these stats but I went and checked them myself.  All any "real" journalist had to do was go to fucking Wikipedia and pull out the numbers from the election pages and they'd see what I did:  it's not that Trump won so much as Clinton lost.  Had she gotten the same support as Obama in 2012 and especially 2008, she'd be back in the White House now.

Hey maybe I should go start a site like 538 now; I'm apparently as good at this as Nate Silver.

Stuff I Watched This Week 11/11/16

This is the stuff I watched in the last week:

The Purge:  Election Year:  I think by now we'd all like to purge many of our elected officials, or those who tried to be.  Sadly this isn't about that.  The Purge is one day a year when for 12 hours every crime--including murder--is legal throughout the United States.  Prior years bigshot government officials were exempted but this year that exemption is lifted because a senator running for president wants to eliminate the Purge, thus the "new Founding Fathers" want to eliminate her.  From there it's kind of like Olympus Has Fallen/White House Down/Air Force One as her head security guard (Frank Grillo, aka Crossbones) tires to keep her alive.  It's a little too long at 109 minutes considering it's all pretty simple.  Have to say one girl really, really wanted a candy bar, enough that she brings a posse of gun-toting friends to avenge herself on the shopkeeper who wouldn't let her shoplift a Nestle Crunch bar. (2/5)

Frankenhooker:  It's probably what you'd think it is.  A guy's bimbo girlfriend is killed by his remote control lawnmower, so he (eventually) decides to rebuild her by using parts of dead hookers.  First he spends half the movie rambling to himself it seemed like.  To kill the hookers he poisons them with some supercharged crack he invents.  Really it would have made more sense to just kill one girl and put the girlfriend's head on her body instead of taking bits and pieces and stitching them together.  The resulting patchwork of hooker parts goes out to sleep with men for money--except any men who have sex with her explode.  It's campy fun but the "special" effects were anything but.  You could tell the exploding hookers and hooker parts were just mannequins.  It was pretty corny.  The end would actually be a good beginning for one of my stories. (2/5)

The Omega Man:  This is a very loose adaptation of the classic novel I Am Legend by Richard Matheson.  A plague ravages the American population, leaving some as scarred mutants who can only go out at night.  Charlton Heston is an Army scientist who is the last uninfected man--or so he thinks.  Every night he battles to keep out the mutants while trying to stay sane.  But then he finds some other people and tries to cure them.  It's pretty cheesy, especially the music. (2/5) (Fun Fact:  Ironically the Will Smith movie I Am Legend bears more resemblance to this than the actual novel, sort of like how Bram Stoker's Dracula isn't all that close to the actual Bram Stoker's Dracula.)

Abraxus Guardian of the Universe:  This was the Rifftrax version where some of the former MST3K crew make funny comments during the movie.  This poorly-lit, poorly-acted, and poorly-plotted movie was ripe for commentary.  The penultimate character is some kind of lame space cop played by Jesse "The Body" Ventura before he became a governor.  He tracks some Ahh-nold wannabe to Earth, where he knocks up a girl by putting a hand to her belly.  She gives birth within minutes and five years later the Ahh-nold wannabe tries to kidnap the kid because he has the "anti-life equation" inside him which gives him psychic powers and stuff.  Jesse Ventura goes to a small town to save the kid.  Hilariously bad mayhem ensues. (1/5) (Fun Facts:  In DC Comics, the evil Darkseid is also after the anti-life equation. Jim Belushi has a cameo as a school principal for some reason.  As a favor?  Blackmailed?  Or is he a fan of Jesse Ventura?  It was 1990 so I don't think he needed work in some terrible movie like this; he was making plenty of other terrible movies.)

Mascots:  This latest Christopher Guest mockumentary is exclusive to Netflix.  It's sadly not about cute bulldog mascots like Butler Blue II.  Instead it's about people who dress up in costumes for sports teams.  It's pretty much a one-note joke spread over an hour and a half.  The people in the costumes are all losers of varying degrees.  One couple is married, one is a son taking over the mascot mantle from his dad, one is shared by two female friends, and so on.  The actual mascot performances was the most interesting part of the movie.  One mascot is a plumber whose routine is he tries to unclog a giant toilet, out of which pops a little person in a turd costume that he chases around.  Otherwise I nearly fell asleep. (2/5)

Written Off:  I'm not sure if this is a pilot or not.  It's a single 30-minute episode about two guys (one gay, one straight) who lose their job as fashion writers at a Chicago paper.  They then respond to an ad from Craigslist to write a quincienera speech for a drug lord's daughter.  There were a few good bits but like a lot of first episodes it was kind of rough. (2.5/5)

Drillbit Taylor:  Three nerdy freshmen in high school are picked on by a sadistic bully and his henchman.  They try to hire a bodyguard but end up with the eponymous bum/army deserter.  He teaches them to hide and gives them some self-confidence and stuff while putting his life back together a bit.  It's mostly lighthearted fun that maybe goes on a little too long. (2.5/5)  (Fun Fact:  This was pretty much the last work of John Hughes before he died.  He went under the name Edmond Dantes from the Count of Monte Cristo.  Hughes worked on the script with Seth Rogen, so it kind of crossed generations there.  Adding to that multi-generational nature, Frank Whaley of Hughes's Career Opportunities appears for a cameo while Judd Apatow's wife plays Drillbit's love interest)

A Democratic Post-Mortem: An Open Letter to Democrats

Election Day venting continues!

Hey Democrats, I know you’re going to spend a lot of money on fancy consultants to figure out what went wrong in 2016 but let me tell you for free. It’s one word: vision. That’s what you never had, except from Bernie and technically he isn’t really a Democrat even.

Most of the Democrats who win have a vision: FDR, Kennedy, and Obama are the prime examples. They gave people a vision of what they wanted to do and made people believe in it. Bill Clinton to a lesser extent gave people a vision of a change from the stodgy old Reagan-Bush machine.

All through this lengthy election cycle Hillary had no vision. Just look at her slogans: Ready For Her basically meant, “Vote for me, I Have a Vagina.” The later “Stronger Together” basically meant, “I’m not Trump.” Neither really excited the masses.

The writing was on the wall in the primaries. People like me flocked to Bernie not because we’re misogynists (most of us anyway) but because Hillary was just running as an extension of Obama and Bill Clinton. She probably didn’t think she would even need a platform and then came Bernie with his democratic socialism, exposing her utter blandness.

Thanks to superdelegates and shady practices rigging it (as Trump would say) she squeaked past Bernie. That only disgruntled a lot of Bernie supporters instead of bringing them to her side. Even by borrowing a couple of his ideas, she couldn’t swing a lot of them over to her. They either voted 3rd party or stayed home.

As terrible as it might be, Trump gave people a vision. Yes a horrible, apocalyptic vision for many of us, but for desperate people in the Rust Belt yearning for the “good ol’ days” it was enough to swing them his way no matter the horrible things he said and did.

By comparison, what was Hillary going to do? Tweak Obamacare maybe but otherwise keep things the same. I doubt a lot of Bernie supporters really bought into the idea she would tame Wall Street or go through with her college plan. The former was especially unbelievable with the speeches she made to Wall Street firms.

Which is another point: you should have known better. You knew she was damaged goods. Benghazi and the email thing had come up more than a year ago. You had plenty of time to find a better candidate. It didn’t have to be Bernie, but someone who could articulate a vision and didn’t carry the baggage of twenty-five years of phony scandals. But you thought you could slip her through since Obama had favorable ratings and she had name recognition. You tried to ram her down our throats in the primaries, which only added to that “less of two evils” argument. And since the convention running with the empty message, “I’m not as bad as him” only helped to sell the false equivalency argument.

In 2018 and 2020, you have to give people something to latch on to. Instead of focusing entirely on minorities and city dwellers, try to throw the Trump supporters a bone. Promise to revive the unions and the good paying, high benefit, low education jobs they provide. If you can find a way to do more than promise that’s always good. Trump largely won with the illusion that he’s the man of the people, despite that it makes no sense for a billionaire trust fund kid to give half a shit about blue collar folks. He was able to make people think he spoke for them and represented them. That’s what you must do in the next election cycles. Instead of “elites” find people who can be relatable. Hillary is a capable, experience politician but she has little charisma or charm and is not a great speaker, all of which undoubtedly hurt her.

Whatever you do, don’t just write it off as “it was because she was a woman.” I remain hopeful that the right woman will be able to go the distance. Michelle Obama should be at the top of your list for 2020 because she’s all the things Hillary isn’t.

In the meantime, do everything you can to obstruct the process; that seemed to work really well for Republicans since 2008.

It’s Not You, the Sky Really is Falling: An Open Letter to America

It's time to vent about the terrible election last night.  I find that writing about it deflates my rage like air from a balloon.  It's better than keeping it bottled up.

 

Let me just say it: you fucked up, America. You’ve just screwed not only yourselves, but your children and your children’s children and maybe their children—provided the world is around that long. There was no love lost between me and Hillary Clinton, but you just elected a racist, misogynistic, moronic con man and would-be tinpot dictator. And to cap it off, you now have Republicans controlling all phases of the government—or you will once Trump installs someone worse than Scalia to take the open spot on the Supreme Court. Do you know what that means? It means:

·                     More trickle-down economics that doesn’t work

·                     No more financial regulations, ineffective as they already were

·                     No more Obamacare that benefits the poor

·                     No more environmental regulations

·                     No more investment in alternative energy

·                     No more gay marriage

·                     No more Roe v Wade

·                     More bullshit like “corporations are people”

·                     More gerrymandering, voter ID laws to maintain the Repubican hold on power

·                     The distinct possibility of national “stop and frisk” that won’t be unconstitutional now

·                     Less gun control than ever

·                     Less education than ever

Is the depth of your failure starting to sink in yet? At a time when we’re reaping the consequences of climate change (like the hottest summers ever in recorded history) we’ve elected someone who believes climate change is a myth and will probably disband the EPA. Someone who supports coal and fracking and has no interest in solar, wind, or other alternative sources. Sure gas is around $2 now, but the surplus of oil from fracking and such is only short-term; we are still going to run out eventually and without other viable options we’ll end up in a Fury Road situation. Have you seen pictures of the smog in India and China? That’s what happens when you don’t have environmental regulations. The water in Flint? That’s what happens when you cut costs, disregard the poor, and roll back regulations. So yeah, at a time when we badly need to try to fix the damage we’ve done to the planet, we’re going to go backwards and make things irreparably worse.

After all the symbolic votes they held on Obamacare, you can be sure January 21 or so they’ll repeal that. Since people have already signed up you’d think that would have to wait until 2018 but still it means going back to the “good old days” of “free enterprise.” You know, the system no one liked before. That leaves 22 million people uninsured. I haven’t mentioned this before, but I have a sister undergoing treatment for cervical cancer and it terrifies me to think she could end up as one of those 22 million because her chemotherapy is charged through Medicare. There’s no way she could pay for that therapy on her own, nor could I or anyone in my family, so if the plug gets pulled on her Medicare, she is up Shit Creek with no paddle.

Compounding that my mom is on Social Security and we know how much Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz and their Tea Party (or whatever they call it now) buddies want to cut Social Security. My mom can barely pay the bills now and if her Social Security gets cut, she is also up Shit Creek with no paddle.

And the money from those cuts will be used for what: a stupid wall that won’t keep anyone out? Deporting most every gardener, construction worker, and motel maid in the country? Giving more tax cuts to the billionaire class in the hope that some of their crumbs will trickle down to our plates?

You blew it, America. You elected a mentally unstable candidate with a lot of crazy promises he has no chance in hell of keeping. Why? Because the rational, competent candidate had a vagina? And emails! Emails you never bothered reading and that not even the Trump-loving FBI could find a smoking gun.

I kept hearing that this was a repudiation of “insider politics” and representative of all this angst going around. Angst despite that gas is $2/gallon, unemployment is 4.9%, the economy grew nearly 3% in the third quarter, and the stock market WAS at near-record highs. So, I’m sorry, what the fuck are you so angry about? Oh, right, because that black guy was in the WHITE House and a “nasty woman” could replace him.

I said it before: Trump can’t fix the real problem. He can’t reopen the factories and bring back those $30/hour blue-collar jobs that required no education or barely any skill. Like I said, it would cost billions and take years to repatriate all the “American” company factories in China, Mexico, and so on. Most of the jobs Trump creates are like those you already have now: low-paying if not minimum wage (or less) and no benefit jobs at hotels, golf courses, and casinos. He’s never owned factories and most of the construction for his buildings is contracted out. As much as he claimed to love my state of Michigan, how many properties does he have here? Hmmm, none? Because Michiganders aren’t fancy enough for his hotels or golf courses. And yet you stupidly think he’s going to fix your problems? That would be adorable if the reality weren’t so fucking terrifying.

Maybe some of the things aren’t going to happen. Maybe he actually will hire “really smart people” and they’ll actually make things better. Maybe he won’t start a trade war with China, let Russia continue its aggressive expansion, ruin NATO by demanding protection money, destroy the environment (more so), create another “bubble” economy that will burst, or start a nuclear war that kills us all. Maybe he won’t turn America into a fascist state like Man in the High Castle. But I really don’t like the odds on it. Hillary was not charismatic and not making big dumb promises and wasn’t going to take it to Wall Street, but at least we weren’t playing Russian roulette.

One of the sadly hilarious parts of this is when Trump gets his rude awakening about how hard it is to actually be the president. The first mass shooting or natural disaster where he has to go comfort the victims or the first battle where he has to send soldiers to die in battle and he’s going to realize that it’s not like being a figurehead CEO at all. There are life-and-death stakes with the presidency. It’s not like a “reality” TV show where you can do another take or edit the footage if you fuck things up. It is actual reality, where everything happens live, especially now. And unlike Trump Airlines, Trump Steaks, Trump casinos, and so on, he can’t just quit when it’s not working out or it’s not as much fun as he thought. I mean, he could, but it would be so humiliating that I doubt he would be able to go through with it.

On top of that, there’s the issue of the “blind trust” where he can’t manage his companies anymore—which is probably for the best. And like the last week of his campaign, they’ll probably try to keep him from Tweeting so he doesn’t ignite a war with Mexico at 3am by calling its leader’s wife a “fat pig” or something. He’ll be taking a huge pay cut if you believe his claims about his wealth—you know, the wealth he’d never back up with tax returns—and have to leave his precious Trump Tower for the White House, which I’m sure will require millions of our tax dollars to redecorate with a lot of garish gold trim. I guess for us liberals the silver lining is that he is going to be miserable for the next four years—almost as miserable as he’ll make the rest of us. Unfortunately the more miserable he gets it’s likely the crazier and more paranoid he’ll get.

Oh hey, did I mention there’s still the Trump University trial and a rape trial coming up? You know, actual crimes, unlike Hillary’s emails and “Benghazi.” He might not even make it to the inauguration before Mike Pence has to take over, which in some ways would be worse. But for some strange reason people never really dwelled on that while they obsessed over the bogus email “scandal.”

Another silver lining: the Republican Party finally has to put up or shut up. You’ve got both houses of Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court after six years of obstructionism. So two years from now if things aren’t better, you aren’t going to be able to blame Obama. Maybe people will finally wise up and stop giving them more and more power to do absolutely nothing with. And let’s face it, Ryan and McConnell trying to work with Trump on anything would be more fun to watch than any season of The Apprentice, especially since neither of those guys had the fortitude to stand with Trump during his campaign and you know how he is about holding grudges.

The problem for us is the Republican Party doesn’t have any ideas for Making America Great Again. They’re the party that just cuts things: taxes, social programs, and regulations and hopes that Corporate America will work things out for the better. But as we’ve seen time and again with the Great Depression, the post-Reagan recession, and the Great Recession of 2008 it’s only a matter of time before greedy corporations go too far and everything collapses. It’s sort of ironic they’re banking on the corporations that are exporting jobs overseas to create jobs and make things better here. Which of course they’ll do out of the goodness of their hearts, right? Again, it’s not going to happen, people. It’s all a stupid pipe dream, as you’ll find out by 2020.

One thing I forgot to mention is that our already terrible education system is likely to get worse. Along with the EPA, the department of Education is another that could take serious cuts or be phased out entirely. And you know Republicans aren’t going to offer people free college either. Trump loves the uneducated, remember? Which will only put us farther behind foreign competitors for the good jobs we crave. Why are most of your doctors Indian or Middle Eastern? Why do companies often have to look overseas for engineers and programmers? Because our education system is shit. Those who can afford it spend tens or hundreds of thousands on a college education that is mostly worthless. And then they spend the next ten years trying to pay off loans while trying to get work in their field. Those who can’t pay end up with only a substandard high school education that qualifies them to work as a Wal-Mart greeter or Taco Bell manager. Cutting education instead of funding it—or creating bullshit like “No Child Left Behind” and “common core”—is only going to make the problem worse and those same people voting for Trump are going to be looking for answers.

Another sadly hilarious thing will be in four years when there’s no wall, no mass deportations, continued acts of terrorism (including the domestic kind like mass shootings), and an even bigger income gap that Trump will have to go stumping for votes while trying to explain why he didn’t Make America Great Again while having complete control over the government. He’s good at finding scapegoats so I’m sure he’ll come up with some BS conspiracy to exonerate himself. Watching him squirm would almost make all this worth it. But not really.

So you fucked us, America. You fucked our country and probably the world because of your ignorance and petty hatreds. Nice job. And if you think, “Oh, well, he’s only here for four years” just think that we haven’t had a one-term president in 25 years; it’s really hard to get an incumbent out of power. That provides that any of us are still alive or not living in some Mad Max/Walking Dead/Hunger Games world. In which case, not even going to New Zealand will save those wanting to flee a Trump presidency.

Thanks for nothing, America.