Sunday, November 30, 2008
A new season
It's one day away from December now.  A new season (early winter).  And it's time to haul out the advent calendars and count down to Christmas.  And the election is over and a new administration is soon to take office.  Cold weather, wool clothes, boots, sweatshirts, early darkness, frost on windshields . . .  and tons of new faces on news shows and all over downtown Washington DC. 

For your amusement and edification, I refer you to this article in the L.A. Times.  I admit to bafflement as to why Hillary would take the job since her power base is thereby immediately nullfied and as sec'y of state she's basically Obama's employee, than which I'd have thought nothing would have annoyed her more.

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Permalink | 3 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:45 AM

Perhaps I'm back
After a brief hiatus, I'm going to try and revive my blogging. I've enjoyed it enormously in the past and appreciate the words of blog friends while I've been gone. And let me add just just a brief note by way of explanation.

I had been enjoying the campaign enormously in that it was a rare time of actual choices, not merely one party hack versus another, or at least so it seemed. I began the primary season optimistic about Obama running and possibly winning. As time went on, some of his statements and actions nibbled at the edges of my enthusiasm, however, and I also began to be disturbed by what seemed like endorsement morphing into idolatry in nearly all media coverage. Since most of what we voters know comes from what journalists tell us, we must rely on thorough and in-depth reporting, but electronic and print journalists alike failed to ask questions of or about him, let alone probe as hard as they probed McCain or Clinton or Palin. As a result, I wrote what I intended as questions - about him, his positions and, particularly, the moral center that is so pivotal to his campaign and himself. Quite evidently, however, I did not convey what I thought I thought, nor did I say what I meant to say. I can only blame inelegance and inadequacy as a writer, demonstrating again, I suppose, that many bloggers are not professional writers or, at the least, that Yours Truly is not. In any case, I was literally stunned into silence by the intensity and personal negativity of some reactions to what I wrote. All else aside, I very much hope that Obama is every bit the leader we need and want. And I hope that he galvanizes Americans' hopes and energies, and proves to be one of our smartest, most statesmanlike and courageous presidents.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:37 AM

Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Election day
This country has many millions of people.  At times it seems that each of us has different ideas and different convictions from everyone else. That is the marvel of America.  That somehow we have so many differences and yet have a government that works (sometimes better than others, needless to say) and a social fabric in which most of us proceed through daily life even occasionally successfully and happily is just amazing.  Cheers!

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Permalink | 2 comment(s) | posted by jau at 2:28 PM

Monday, November 3, 2008
Question time
Good column on the puzzles of the McCain campaign here.  Good piece on the probable success of the Obama campaign here.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:20 AM

Sunday, November 2, 2008
"The Last Enemy"

SPOILER ALERT

My friend and I watched the final episode of "The Last Enemy" tonight - a five-part miniseries on PBS. It was entirely absorbing to watch, if much too long and drawn out. It was great to see Robert Carlyle again as he did his usual super job as a menacing (probably rogue) government gun-for-hire but most of the acting was cardboardish if not downright leaden.

The plot has been described as near-future fiction rather than science fiction because it starts from the five million surveillance cameras proliferated on the streets of London and other cities around the U.K. (one for every twelve residents, according to some). That amount of being watched is indeed horrible, unacceptable, beyond Orwellian stuff and if this movie helps to alert people enough to be sure to keep governments from going this far, then good for it. The fact that human inattentiveness and error would almost certainly prevent such eyes from working much of the time does not in any way mitigate the unacceptablenss, it just means that whatever does get done will not work as it is meant to.

My serious problem with the miniseries, however is that some plot lines were left dangling and the overall resolution was altogether lacking, unless my own i.q. points have fallen. Here are my questions for which I would be most grateful if any reader has answers and/or can make me feel less cheated. It's one thing to suspend disbelief because someone can hide, undetected, behind a door, and entirely another when things just do not make sense.

-- Why did they fake blow up Michael?
-- Why would it matter that Yasmin thought he was dead? Faking his death wasn't necessary to test his reaction to the "tag" and it seems like an awful lot of work to have gone through.

-- Why kill all those medical workers when they were supposedly looking for the doctor? Especially when it turned out in the end that he was working with them??!!

-- Why was Carlyle running his operation separately and seemingly in intense opposition and hiding from the government? Apparently he was working for - or with - James, Beasley and Harewood, given that they knew where his warehouse was and that he assisted James in that last scene with the Doctor, so that whole conceit seems utterly pointless.

-- Who was the black haired assassin? Who did he work for? What became of him?

-- At various moments, Stephen was highly aware of all the ways in which he was or could be watched - and yet at other times (as when he ran his assault on the Brompton hospital for blood samples), he was surprised that "they" knew where he was. As a savant who was so aware of what was going on, it seems completely nuts that he'd just forget about the cameras.

-- Why kill Michael? He's no longer any danger to T.I.A. or Project Tab since they can keep him out of England with his new tag. And, conversely, surely they should have killed Stephen since he knows everything and can join or even arouse resistance. It's not as if they were reluctant to knock off pretty much anyone.

-- Most importantly: who is the grand manipulator running James, Beasley and Harewood?

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:49 PM