Peter David's Blog, page 21

Gun control discussion will never happen. Sorry.

That’s just a fact that liberals have to accept. Just like we will never get rid of the Electoral College. There will be much flailing of hands and demands for action when things go bad (mass shootings, Democrats winning the popular vote and having to watch their opposition be sworn in) and yet nothing will ever be done to change the problem, and the cause for the consternation will eventually slip away into the news cycle.

The people in Vegas have suffered terribly, just as the parents of the slaughtered school children in Sandy Hook did. And the students and parents of Columbine High School, and all the way back to the victims and relatives of the first lone wolf shooter in New Jersey, in 1949, who shot thirteen people dead and wounded three more. The fact is that between mass shootings, individual shootings, and suicides, more Americans have died than all Americans in every war that we have fought combined.

And it’s not going to change, because politicians are too afraid of the NRA to stand up to them. Either you have to swear that you’re not coming after people’s guns, as Clinton did, or you have to waver or flip flop on your stand, as Trump did. (He used to call for assault rifle bans and praised Obama’s attempts to introduce gun control after Newtown, CT; both positions went away when he ran for president.).

Making life easier for shooters, that they can do, which is why they are currently working to allow silencers. Because they’re so worried about shooters’ hearing. My attitude is simple: let them lose their hearing. They’re deaf to complaints anyway, so what use is hearing to them?

Nancy Pelosi even wasted her time sending a letter to Paul Ryan asking for, at minimum, a bi-partisan committee be formed to investigate what would be done to curb gun violence. Ryan’s response was that there was no need to institute laws about gun control as, say, Australia had done, which caused their mass gun slaughter incidents to drop to zero and cut in half all other gun violence. Instead Ryan insists that we must focus on mental health care…which I would believe actually meant something if he hadn’t been trying to do away with the ACA for seven years so no one could have money for seeing a psychiatrist.

Unfortunately I’ve resigned myself to the fact that gun legislation will never change as long as politicians remain afraid of the NRA. Not ever. Not as long as politicians and conservative news pundits declare that a mass shooting is not the time to discuss it, even though that’s a stipulation never made in association with any other disaster or attempted murder. One guy unsuccessfully tried to sneak a bomb through the TSA in his shoes and immediately we all had to take our shoes off going through the airport. No one said, “This isn’t the time to talk about shoe bombs” without presenting a time it would be. But as long as the NRA is around there will never be a time to discuss guns.

I would love to be wrong about that, but I’m pretty sure I’m not.

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United States votes against UN resolution to condemn executing gays

The United Nations put forward a resolution condemning all countries that want to execute people for the crime of being gays.

Thirteen countries voted against it. Thirteen countries basically said they supported the notion of countries killing people because of who they fall in love with.

What countries voted against that idea? Botswana, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China, India, Iraq, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates…

And us. The United States refused to condemn countries executing gays.

What possible reason could we have for doing that? A U.N. rep stated that it was because they felt the resolution was too broad, sweepingly stating that capital punishment should be eliminated altogether. Heaven forbid we shouldn’t throw gays under the bus in order to cling to the notion that killing prisoners isn’t wrong.

Fortunately the resolution passed anyway. Without our help. Don’t worry: the world is getting accustomed to doing things without our help.

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Freak Out Friday – September 29, 2017

It’s really not working anymore. Trump’s typical strategy of focusing on something outrageous and stupid in order to draw attention from things he has no answer for is utterly failing.

1). What does he not want to talk about? Puerto Rico, obviously. You remember: that island that’s situated in a big, big ocean. That being the case, the obvious first maneuver would be to suspend the Jones Act so ships from other countries could get to it. Which he did, after nearly a week had passed and he was roundly criticized for delaying help to the island. An island that I would very much suspect Trump didn’t know was actually American, despite the fact that they are not allowed to vote for him (which is, let’s face it, the only thing that makes a difference to him.). And yes, he dispatched the hospital ship Comfort to provide aid…after Hillary Clinton called him and strongly suggested he do it.

The obvious problem with the Trump administration is that they initiate nothing on their own. This is how they govern: they do the wrong thing by either taking the wrong stance or no stance, and then when they get sufficient negative public blowback, that guides them into doing what they should have done in the first place. It is painfully obvious that we do not have a leader in the White House. We have a man whose every instinct drives him in the wrong direction, doesn’t listen to anyone who knows better, and only reluctantly does the right thing, sometimes and often in a half-assed manner, after enough public pressure threatens him in the one area that he cares about: being liked. And more often than not, he will blame his problems on the press, as he did this very week (“Wish press would treat fairly!”).

And somewhere George W. Bush is chortling about the fact that Trump’s actions and reactions and lack of actions on Puerto Rico is making his clumsy handling of Katrina look like aces in comparison.

2). What does he want to talk about?. Football players. Trump continues to refuse to understand that no one is disrespecting the flag. If they wanted to disrespect the flag, they would moon it or shout out obscenities. Taking a knee is simply taking a moment to remember all the black people who have died at the hands of out-of-control-police and acknowledge what this country is supposed to stand for and how it’s failing. But Trump, who took an oath to support the First Amendment, wants to throw that out the window by demanding that NFL owners fire all players who are simply expressing frustration with this country’s failures. Yes, the man who repeatedly bent over backwards not to find villains in Charlottesville has no problem with finding villains on the football fields. The problem for Trump is that the majority of Americans surveyed don’t agree with him. They don’t believe that football players should be fired simply for silently expressing their disapproval of what’s happening in this country. And it’s nice to see NFL owners standing alongside their team in showing support. Now if someone would just hire fricking Colin Kaepernick, whose basic stats are higher than over half the back up QBs currently playing in the league, that would display REAL support.

3). Moose and Squirrel.. So we now know why Donald Trump, Jr. decided to toss aside his secret service protection. It wasn’t because he was worried over the fact that his family’s needs are slowly bankrupting the SS. No, it’s because he wanted to sneak up to the Yukon so he could hunt a moose. Yes, that’s right, he wanted privacy to slaughter a harmless animal. I mean, when Zoey Bartlett slipped her secret service protection, it was just to party. Yet she got grabbed and so Aaron Sorkin showed the consequences of that action. My assumption is that if one of Trump’s kids did get grabbed, it would be Pence who would activate the 25th Amendment in order to get Trump out of office, rather than Trump stepping aside as Bartlett did. Of course, one is fictional, although these days it’s hard to determine which one.

Did he do anything right? Yes, but it didn’t matter. In a senate race in Alabama, he lobbied on behalf of sitting senator Luther Strange, who has one of the best comic book names I’ve ever heard. Yet despite that, Strange’s opponent won. His opponent is Roy Moore, a homophobic asshole who feels that gay sex should be made illegal, refused to support Supreme Court dictates that gays should be allowed to marry, and refused to obey the instruction of a Federal judge to remove a 2.6 ton Ten Commandments monument he had installed in a Federal judiciary building. In short, Moore appealed to Trump’s base more than Strange did, which I suspect Trump actually knew but backed Strange because he was convinced it would be politically wise. Once upon a time, a jerk like Moore would have remained strictly the local problem of Alabama; instead this jackass is likely going to wind up in the U.S. Senate. So yes, Trump backed his opponent, but he also mainstreamed Moore’s beliefs enough to enable him to triumph in a primary. So thanks for that.

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RIP Hef

I really began my career in book sales working for Playboy Paperbacks in NYC. Despite the name of the company, we published quite a few high class novels including a novelization of “Elfquest” by Wendy and Richard Pini. One time his daughter, Christie, came by to visit. That was cool. Never had a chance to meet Hef himself, though. But I will always be grateful to Playboy Paperbacks for giving me my start.

RIP Hef.

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Why the hell are people ragging on “Young Sheldon?”

Facebook has erupted with people trashing this perfectly sweet family comedy.

With a style that is 180 degrees away from “The Big Bang Theory,” “Young Sheldon” tells the backstory of Sheldon Cooper (a perfectly cast Iain Armitage) as he starts his first day of high school at the age of, I dunno, eight. Nine. Something like that. He’s in the same class as his mortified older brother and is immediately ratting out kids who aren’t following the dress code. We see the groundwork being laid both for the pain-in-the-ass that is his older self, but the same one who has love deeply buried in him that he was able to become engaged to Amy in the preceding episode of BBT. It is filled with tons of sweet moments, and yet all over Facebook people are slagging in, a number of them doing so without even bothering to watch it.

Is this where we are in Trump’s America, where even a delightful new program that should be unassailably adored is slammed by know-nothings who can’t even take a half an hour to see it and develop an informed opinion?

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Difference between Star Trek: Discovery and The Orville

What it comes down to is this:

With very few changes, “The Orville” could easily be “Star Trek.”

By contrast, with very few changes, “Star Trek: Discovery” could easily not be “Star Trek.”

My full Cowboy Pete review is over on my Patreon page if you want to hear my full thoughts on ST:D, along with “Gotham,” “Kingsman,” and “The Orville.” You can find it here.

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Freak Out Friday – September 22, 2017

He’s going to get us into World War III. The reality of that assessment is becoming more and more certain with every passing week.

1) First off, I actually know what a “dotard” is. I knew the word long before Kim Jong-un labeled Trump as such. And frankly, I hate to say it, but that’s pretty much a fair assessment. If Trump doesn’t have syphilis, then he is definitely skidding into mental degradation attached to age. Indeed, it actually has the merit of being an insult. Nicknaming Kim Jong-un “Rocketman” is not an insult. Derived from an Elton John song, that’s the kind of name one tags to a baseball hitter. “And that’s gone, a bomb into the upper decks off the bat of Rocketman!” “Strike three, an absolute meteor blows right past the batter and it’s game over, a one hitter for the Rocketman!” . While Trump makes Kim sound way cooler than he is, he busily terrifies the world with his rhetoric, such as…

2). Serial Killer.. This was a no brainer speech. Trump just had to get up before the United Nations, speak about efforts to attain world peace, and not get up there and sound like a thumping lunatic. Instead he did the exact opposite. There are approximately 25 million people residing in North Korea, and Trump stood in front of the United Nations and swore that he was going to destroy them all. One assumes that he means he is going to launch nuclear missiles and blow the entire country to hell. Twenty five million people, dead, because Trump is engaged in a dick measuring contest with the country’s leader. Perhaps he believes that his comments are going to convince Kim Jong-un’s own people to execute him and throw him out of power. I very much doubt that’s going to happen. Instead Kim Jong-un is going to use Trump’s speech in front of an organization that’s dedicated to world peace as proof that the only thing which will keep his country safe is having its own nuclear arsenal. I very much doubt Kim Jong-un will launch the first missiles at us because I frankly don’t think he’s that insane. But I totally believe Trump is that insane. I could very easily see him giving Kim Jong-un some sort of deadline to stand down that Kim will fail to meet, assuming that Trump would never take the first strike, and then Trump orders it done. At which point we are then counting on the military to stand up to the president and effectively perform a coup d’etat. Is it possible? Very much so. Because if it isn’t, we’re going to be at war with what’s left of North Korea. So for all you idiots who saw no difference between Hillary and Trump, do a single one of you think that she would have done that? Of course not. No sane person would have.

3). Hail Mary. For some reason that I am still rather fuzzy on, the GOP must pass a health bill before the end of September. It has something to do with only requiring fifty votes; as of October 1, they would need sixty votes, which means that they would actually have to get help from the Democrats. Because they are SO desperate to avoid having to actually reach across the aisle and work with the opposing party, they are slamming forward at top speed the Graham-Cassidy bill, which seems to exist mainly to make all their previous undertakings regarding health care look even better. This one is apparently the worst of all. Various large states such as New York will see cuts in Federal support of tens of billions of dollars. Care for pre-existing conditions would go out the window, particularly in states that voted for Trump. Poor children and non-disabled adults would get hit hardest with massive Medicaid cuts. Every medical organization you can name plus most health insurers have come out against it.

And what did Trump say? He said it was a great bill. Of course he did.

Because he’s a dotard.

Did he do anything right this week? No.

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What would Picard do?

So BBC America was running a selection of popular ST:TOS episodes, and I was watching “Friday’s Child.” That’s the one where a pregnant Julie Newmar is Eleen, the wife of a tribal chieftain who gets overthrown and slain, and by their law they are about to kill her as well. And she is willing to die, accepting of their law.

And Kirk decks the executioners.

Now this is beyond question a violation of the Prime Directive. Starfleet officers cannot interfere with the social development of a planet, period. In this case the social development called for Eleen to be executed. Kirk not only interferes, but he jeopardizes their mission because they are in competition with a Klingon who is standing right there and was perfectly willing to led Eleen be killed. The Klingon obeys their laws while Kirk does whatever the hell he wants.

The point is, Picard was much more faithful to the Prime Directive. He quoted it constantly and it impacted on all his decisions. So if Picard had been standing there and they were about to execute Eleen, would he have allowed it to happen?

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Freak Out Friday – September 15, 2017

Trump hasn’t done much that a president would actually do to help people this week, but he has been running off at the mouth big time.

1). Make a mountain out of a hill. ESPN anchor Jemele Hill stated on her private twitter feed that she believed Trump was a white supremacist. You know, the way millions of people have been saying and which his own repeated actions would tend to make any reasonable observer believe. Certainly his tendency to give white supremacists and Nazis every ounce of consideration and slack, and his knack for being endorsed by David Duke and white supremacists, would make any reasonable observer make that supposition. And as noted, it wasn’t as if Hill said that on the air. Nevertheless the White House is in full attack mode, and Trump tweeted that she should “Apologize for Untruth.”

Really? Seriously? The guy who claimed that Ted Cruz’s father was involved with JFK’s murder is complaining about untruths? The guy who stated for years that Obama wasn’t born in the US, or that Obama had him wire tapped, is complaining about untruths? The guy whose track record of lies is unprecedented among politicians in the modern era is suddenly concerned about truth?

No, Donald. No. You don’t get to lie about everything under the sun and claim that both the white supremacists and their opposition were equally involved and then demand apologizes for speculation that your own actions launched. The fact that ESPN is “distancing” themselves from Hill is saddening and I hope that they allow her to weather out the storm rather than sacrificing her on the altar of adherence to truth that this president consistently refuses to follow.

2). And he did it again. Trump was asked on Air Force One about his meeting with Senator Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the Senate. It was obviously a softball question. All he had to say was that it went fine and they discussed finding ways to…I dunno…solve racial tension or something. Instead out of nowhere he started defending again his idiotic assertions about Charlottesville, claiming that many people said “Trump might have a point.” The obvious response is that yes, people did say that. They were white supremacists and Nazis. Trump is so obsessed with being right even though he’s invariably wrong that he had to come back and say, “See? See? Told you so.” The obvious assertion is to claim that Trump has doubled down. But since he already did that, we’d have to say he…what? Tripled down? Quadrupled down?

Here’s a thought, Mr. President: if you’re so concerned about being called a white supremacist, how about you analyze the behavior that you are employing that is prompting people to speculate about it.

3). Waiting for the facts. Remember how a few weeks ago, Trump was standing there telling the world that he didn’t want to issue condemnations of white supremacists because he wanted to wait for all the facts? Yeah, that lasted just long enough for the explosion in London, about which Trump claimed that the identities of the people who set it were known to London authorities and he claimed simply validated his travel plan. Because let us remember this about the man who, on 9/11, boasted that he now had the tallest building in New York: There is no subject on Earth that Trump cannot make it be about himself.

Did he do anything right? Well, that kind of depends who you talk to and when. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer dined with him on Wednesday and stated that they had come away from it having “agreed to enshrine the protections of DACA into law quickly, and to work out a package of border security, excluding the wall, that’s acceptable to both sides.” Except Paul Ryan quickly claimed there was no deal in place, and Thursday morning Trump likewise asserted that no deal had been made. Pelosi and Schumer later “clarified” their statement that Trump was going to support congressional endeavors to put DACA into law. But even that was enough to infuriate millions of Trump supporters, including Ann Coulter who wrote a “Why I Love Trump” book last year and now hates his guts.

So Trump has now managed to piss off both conservatives (with his alleged support for DACA) and liberals (with his continued apparent sympathy for white supremacists.) Gee. Maybe he really did manage to unite everybody.

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One of the main reasons I liked “The Orville”

I have seen any number of ads for “Star Trek: Discovery” and here’s my problem with it.

I have no idea what any of it looks like.

Every single scene was apparently filmed in a power outage. The sets are dark, the costumes are dark, everything is so damned dark. I mean, yes, people said that the new Enterprise in the Abrams film looked like an Apple store, but at least you could see it. I can’t see crap in ST:D.

Wait.

ST:D? The abbreviation for the new show is STD? I admit I haven’t been active on Trek boards, but has anyone else commented on that? TOS, TNG, that’s fine. But STD? Jesus Christ, was anyone thinking about that?

Okay, anyway: “The Orville” is at least lit like the original series. Everything is bright. Everything is open. The bridge, while having some commonality with the TNG bridge, is sufficiently different. It’s certainly larger. They have a panoramic array of windows rather than just staring at a viewscreen.

The whole place is colorful and cheerful and old-style pleasant. People are crying it’s a rip off of “Star Trek.” Okay, here’s a news flash: I LIKE “Star Trek.” It seems to me that MacFarlane is trying to do something that evokes all the best things about “Trek” and leaving out all the stuff we hate. And I’m fine with that. The same people who are harshly judging it after one episode gave STTNG three freaking YEARS to find its footing.

So I’m aboard for “The Orville.”

I’ve also posted a Cowboy Pete review over on my Patreon account.

PAD