SciFi Weekend: Star Trek Beyond & Star Trek Discovery; Sherlock & Doctor Who News; Adrianne Palacki Cast On Seth MacFarlane SF Show; Gilmore Girls Trailer; Sense8

Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek Beyond is the third installment since J.J. Abrams took over Star Trek. Like the first two movies, it is fun to watch, and in this one there is more of an effort (only partially successful) to make this movie actually be Star Trek. There will be some spoilers here, but not to the point of giving away anything which isn’t becoming obvious in the first half of the movie.

The movie has a lot of action, but also makes an effort to get a feel for the characters early in the movie. The Enterprise is now on the third year of its mission in deep space which began at the end of Star Trek Into Darkness. This work mean that, although James Kirk took over the Enterprise at an earlier point in his life, that they have been in deep space for approximately as long as the crew on the original show. (The original series ended in its third season, but they had already been on their five year mission for some time when the show began). In this universe, we also know that they have encountered Tribbles and Khan earlier.

Whatever they have experienced, Kirk now feels that “things have started to feel episodic” and is contemplating a desk job. It should be no spoiler to say that he doesn’t go through with it. There was a reference to the original when he complained that his shirt got torn on an away mission. There was also time for Kirk and the rest of the crew to take  break when they traveled to a space station. Again, it should be no spoiler that something happened there which pulled the Enterprise into an adventure.

Before going off to fight another villain, and meet another memorable character, Spock also had to deal with both romantic problems with Uhura and learning of the death of Ambassador Spock, his future self from the origianl Star Trek universe. That is obviously an homage to the death of Leonard Nimoy. The ending of the movie also had a tribute to the death of Anton Yelchin, who plays Chekov. While a fourth movie has already been approved, a decision has been made to not replace Yelchin. Chris Hemsworth will reprise his role as Kirk’s father in the fourth movie, despite having died in the first movie. No word whether that will involve time travel, a revelation that he somehow survived, or some other means.

Spock contemplated leaving Star Fleet to continue Ambassador Spock’s work and his people following the destruction of Vulcan. This provided no more drama than Kirk contemplating taking a desk job. While at this star base we also learned that a ship even bigger and more powerful than the Enterprise was being built. Do I need to label it a spoiler to say that this guaranteed the repeat of what didn’t occur to the Enterprise in the prime universe until its third movie?

While no longer directed by J.J. Abrams, his influence was seen. I have some of the same nit picks as I did with Star Trek Into Darkness. Everything must be bigger, including getting yet a bigger and better version of the Enterprise and the incredible size of the space station out in deep space (which seemed partially modeled on Epcot). Once again, distance did not seem to matter. The Enterprise has gone where no one has gone before, but is not far from a station of this magnitude, and right around the corner from an almost unexplored nebula.

The most important thing about the Star Trek movies is that they have kept Star Trek around in some form. Star Trek has always worked better as a television show than movie series, and it will return to television early in 2017. Bryan Fuller announced at Comic Con that the next series will be named Star Trek Discovery, (referred to as DSC rather than the initials STD). The series will premiere on CBS television but subsequently be shown on CBS All Access, a paid streaming service. Episodes will also be available internationally on Netflix within twenty-hours making me wonder if it will be accessible in the US if using a VPN. With such limited availability, I bet it will also be heavily pirated.

Star Trek Discovery will tell a single story in thirteen chapters, with episodes released weekly. The series will take place in the prime timeline, but it has not been announced when. There has been speculation that the registry number of NCC-1031 for the Starship Discovery suggests it could take place before the original show, but that is far from definitive.

The above trailer for Sherlock season 4 was presented at San Diego Comic Con.

That naturally leads to recent news related to that other show run by Steven Moffat. Moffat predicts that Peter Capaldi will be remaining with the show after he leaves as show runner in 2017.

Karen Gillan has been cast as the female lead in All Creatures Here Below, an indie drama written by and starring David Dastmalchian. (I just thought of Amy Pond earlier today when I was walking by a house with a small angel on its lawn. I did not blink).

Jenna Coleman will be playing Queen Victoria for ITV. She has not ruled out returning to Doctor Who some day, but told Collider she will probably not return “for a good while”  if she ever does.

Adrianne-Palicki

Adrianne Palacki has been cast in Seth MacFarlane’s upcoming show for Fox:

Set 300 years in the future, the untitled show — MacFarlane’s first live-action TV series — follows the adventures of the Orville, a not-so-top-of-the-line exploratory ship in Earth’s interstellar fleet. Facing cosmic challenges from without and within, this motley crew of space explorers will boldly go where no comedic drama has gone before.

MacFarlane plays Ed, captain of Orville. Palicki plays Kelly Grayson, Ed’s ex-wife and the newly appointed First Officer of the Orville. Grimes plays Gordon, Ed’s best friend whom he hires to pilot the Orville.

This should answer the question as to whether Palacki will return to Agents of SHIELD after ABC decided against picking up the proposed spin-0ff which she was to star in. While she was written out of SHIELD, the manner in which it was done did not make it too difficult to have her return.

The Last Ship has been renewed by TNT for a fourth season. It has taken a different approach for the third season, reminding me of previous post-apocalyptic shows such as Jericho and Revolution. It is like rebuilding society in Revolution, with a recent plague being far more plausible than the loss of electricity on Revolution.

There is no question I will be binging on Gilmore Girls Thanksgiving weekend until I hear the four final words which Amy Sherman-Palladino has always planned to end the series with. She had hoped to have the show released in individual episodes to avoid spoiling the ending, but Netflix insisted on releasing all four episodes on November 25. I can’t think of any better place than Stars Hollow to spend Thanksgiving weekend. Trailer above. John Oliver did respond to Lorelei’s question while appearing on Stephen Colbert’s show:

Then on Christmas we can get more of Sense8 as opposed to watching it for the eighth time. ONTD has these items from the J. Michael Straczynsk’s panel at Comic Con:

– He confirms they’re filming in more cities because the Sense8 will be meeting more Sensates and some of them might be evil.
– There’s a lot more action than in Season 1.
– They’re gonna dig a lot deeper into the company searching for Sensates.
– Kala/Wolfgang storyline evolves a lot from S1.
– He confirms Sun gets out of jail ‘but not in the way you’d expect’.
– They’re working more like a group and having more scenes together.
– Netflix revealed that most Netflix shows are re-watched once at most. Sense8’s rewatchability index is off the charts. People rewatch Sense8 up to 7 times in average (end to end).
– Season2 is more ‘hopeful’ about LGTB people, privacy and relationships
– Riley’s gonna be the one leading the agenda to meet more sensates and she uses her DJ concerts to do so.
– Christmas movie airs on Christmas Day and the rest of the season shortly after in 2017.

Presidential Campaign Raises Questions Of Détente With Russia And McCarthyism From Clinton Supporters

HillCarthy-640x400

It is a shame that Donald Trump is rather incoherent on policy as he actually has two ideas which a more intelligent candidate might pursue further–improving relations with Russia (as opposed to Clinton and the neocons taking us into a new Cold War), and questioning whether we can afford to be the world’s policeman. Hillary Clinton has a long history of both belligerence towards Russia, including trying to taper in their own politics against Putin, and it has been a neocon goal to bring regime change to Russia as they did in Iraq.

AP has reported on how Trump’s comments on Russia have disturbed many in the establishment. Buried in the article there is even an alternate viewpoint:

But Steven Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton and New York University, credits Trump for focusing on issues ripe for discussion. He said that while Trump talks “elliptically” and “just can’t wonk,” the GOP nominee “in his own way seems to be advocating detente,” which Cohen sees as an admirable goal.

Cohen said it’s time for critics to stop using “McCarthyite” language to demonize Trump and have a serious discussion about the issues he’s raising.

“It’s called a debate,” said Cohen. “You’re supposed to have them in a presidential campaign.”

Cohen has also criticized the McCarthyite tactics of  some Clinton supporters in The Nation:

Many liberals (and their publications) have recently branded Donald Trump as Putin’s “puppet” (Franklin Foer), “de facto agent” (Jeffrey Goldberg), “Kremlin client” (Timothy Snyder), and would-be “man in the White House.” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman spells out the implication that Trump “would, in office, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy, at the expense of America’s allies and her own self-interest.” These disgraceful allegations are based on little more, Cohen argues, than a mistranslation of a casual Putin remark about Trump, Trump’s elliptical suggestions that he may favor détente with Moscow and tacit endorsement of Obama’s refusal to escalate the military conflict in Ukraine, and Russian business relations of Trump’s “associates” of the kind eagerly sought since the late 1980s by many American corporations, including Exxon Mobil and MacDonald’s

This is, of course, an ominous recapitulation of McCarthy’s accusations, which seriously damaged American democracy and ruined many lives. Still worse, this Putin-baiting of Trump is coming from the Clinton campaign, which most of the liberals involved evidently support, as reflected in a page-one New York Times story headlined “A Trump-Putin Alliance.” Clinton, it seems, intends to run against Trump-Putin. If so, the new Cold War can only become more dangerous, especially if she wins and if this McCarthyite tactic reflects her hawkish views on Russia, and the wildly demonized Putin in particular.

Nathan Robinson made the same argument in Current Affairs which warns that Democrats Are Redbaiting Like It’s 1956:

The suspect list was quickly reduced to one: the Russian government. The evidence for that was murky to begin with but has grown more solid over time. (“Anything’s possible” replied Barack Obama, when asked about possible Russian involvement.) Harvard law professor and cybersecurity expert Jack Goldsmith has cautioned that “there is no public evidence whatsoever tying Russia to the hack,” and that “attribution for cyberoperations of this sort is very tricky and tends to take some time.”

But even before the precise origins and motives for the hack have been sorted out, media figures have been conjuring progressively larger and larger conspiracy theories. U.S. intelligence officials are uncertain whether the hack “was intended as fairly routine cyberespionage… or as part of an effort to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.” Yet the hack is being treated by many as a Russian plot to elect Donald Trump, as part of a Trump-Putin alliance serving Vladimir Putin’s “plan for destroying the West.”

The theory is not confined to a small, deranged political fringe. It is being voiced by respected members of the media establishment. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has said there is “a substantial amount of evidence suggesting Putin-backed financial support for Trump or a non-tacit alliance between the two men.” Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman has enthusiastically embraced the theories and has even implied that Trump may be a Manchurian Candidate. Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post has seconded the idea…

It should be noted, first, that all of these figures are supporters of the Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Clinton, and that the hack of the DNC emails proved deeply embarrassing for the Clinton campaign. The shift from discussing the emails themselves to discussing who leaked them is tremendously helpful in taking negative attention away from the DNC and Clinton. As one BuzzFeed writer put it, “Now Russia is the story.” Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, declared: “Wasserman Schultz resigned. So now maybe we can focus on who was behind the leak.” By attempting to turn the email hack into a bigger scandal than Watergate, Democrats serve the twin goals of (1) not having to talk about internal problems with the DNC and (2) further pushing the unsubstantiated Trump-Putin alliance theory. (In fact, we know this was an explicit strategy and not just a stroke of good fortune. When the hacks occurred, Bloomberg reported that “If the Democrats can show the hidden hand of Russian intelligence agencies, they believe that voter outrage will probably outweigh any embarrassing revelations.”)

But liberals in the press have gone beyond simply questioning the source of the email leak. Firmly convinced that Trump’s candidacy is being advanced by the Kremlin, they have also turned against leftists, claiming that they are doing Putin’s bidding. A fellow at the Center for American Progress, for example, accusedIntercept journalist Glenn Greenwald of being a “Russia troll.” Josh Marshall pondered how many online “Sanders supporters” and “Trump supporters” were actually being run out of a Russian operation, while a writer at The Atlantic confronted a Bernie fan on Twitter about their suspicious interest in Ukraine. And the Democratic Blue Nation Review, run by longtime Clinton operative David Brock, warned that online “Bernie or Bust” supporters could instead be “sophisticated agitators” in the pay of the Russian government.

Jonathan Chait, a liberal writer for New York magazine, suggested that leftists are reflexive defenders and enablers of the Russian state…

Just as the movement against the Vietnam War was once accused of being run out of Moscow, and just as the Civil Rights movement was supposedly filled with Communist agitators, liberals have once again revived one of the nastiest traditions in the history of American political smear tactics: the McCarthyist innuendo…

This kind of thinking is disturbing, because of where it leads. First, it takes you further and further away from the land of sober-minded assessment and careful reasoning. Most of the Trump-Putin theories follow the precise same patterns of logic deployed by JFK conspirators and the 9/11 Truth movement. They don’t prove their assertions with direct evidence, but offer all sorts of “suspicious” facts that supposedly imply the conclusion. So we get a lot of “isn’t it interesting that Trump has business interests in Russia?” and “isn’t it convenient that the leaks helped Trump and Trump likes Putin?” Of course, the former is (slightly) interesting and the latter is convenient. But building theories this way turns you into a madman. Look at Foer’s own conclusion:

In the end, we only have circumstantial evidence about the Russian efforts to shape this election—a series of disparate data points and a history of past interference in similar contests. But the pattern is troubling, and so is the premise.

Troubling patterns and premises, rather than troubling facts, are what substantiate stories about black helicopters and chemtrails. When disparate data points will do, one becomes paranoid. But some of the conspiracy-minded liberals seem to embrace that. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you,” a BuzzFeed writer reminds us. Of course, it doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. But it does mean your judgment on the question is going to be irreparably compromised.

At this point, the accusations of a Trump/Putin alliance against Clinton sounds disturbingly like what we heard during the run up to the Iraq war, including Hillary Clinton’s false claims of ties between Saddam and al Qaeda.

Earlier in the year the Clinton campaign also used red-baiting against Bernie Sanders and tried to paint him as a communist sympathizer.

The Democratic Convention Concludes: War Is Peace, And Fears Of A Loss To Donald Trump

Clinton Acceptance Speech

The Democratic National Convention concluded with a rather conservative message,followed by platitudes and imitation progressivism from Hillary Clinton. The message of the evening seemed to be: I will throw a few bones your way like paid family leave, and in return forget about restoring the civil liberties which you have lost since 9/11, don’t think about curtailing the surveillance state, and don’t get in the way of my wars.

Hillary Clinton gave a great speech in support of compassionate conservatism, but no mention of her support for expansion of the warfare/surveillance state. Hillary Clinton also gave a revisionist history, as Bill did earlier in the week. She boasted about helping children while ignoring how she betrayed them as First Lady. She once again took credit for the work done by Ted Kennedy, exaggerating her role in the creation of the Children’s Health Insurance Program. More fact checking of Clinton’s speech here,

Clinton spoke of service, leaving out how much money she has made off of “public service” and influence peddling. The Onion captured the spirit of her career and  campaign in mocking Clinton’s speech:

When I Was A Child, Most Special Interest Groups Wouldn’t Even Consider Donating Large Sums Of Money To A Woman

Delivering a historic and uplifting speech to the Democratic National Convention Thursday night, presidential nominee Hillary Clinton told the American electorate that when she was a little girl, most special interest groups would never even consider donating enormous sums of money to a woman. “It’s hard to fathom now, but back when I was growing up in the 1950s, Wall Street banks, major law firms, and every other special interest out there wouldn’t let a woman through the door, let alone funnel inordinate sums of money into her campaign as a means to advance their agendas,” said Clinton, adding that she personally had to work twice as hard as her male colleagues for decades just to be deemed qualified as a viable political conduit for hundreds of millions of dollars controlled by wealthy corporations and narrowly focused institutions. “In those days, it never even occurred to lobbyists that a woman was capable of accepting a gigantic check from a powerful entity in exchange for favorable policies several months later. My, how times have changed. We sure proved them wrong, didn’t we?” Clinton then assured the cheering crowd at the Wells Fargo Center that while she might be the first female presidential nominee of a major political party beholden to well-heeled influence peddlers, she would certainly not be the last.

Democrats are worried about Hillary Clinton’s inability to separate herself from Donald Trump in the polls, even after what they believe was a largely successful convention that represented a real step toward party unity.

Clinton is hoping for a big post-convention boost, but the reality right now is that she in behind Trump in the polls, and has been in a relatively tight race for weeks.

While the Electoral College may give her an advantage, party leaders and strategists say they remain concerned that Clinton is a tough sell when a majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track and want to shake up Washington.

“The most important thing is there is a bias for change and there’s an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll where people express that bias even when they don’t know what the change is going to be,” said Geoff Garin, a pollster who worked for Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and now advises Priorities USA, a pro-Clinton super PAC.

That July survey showed a majority of voters, 56 percent, prefer someone who will bring major changes to government even if they don’t know what those changes will be. Only 46 percent wanted a candidate who would bring a steady approach to government.

The Democrats sure are looking foolish for rejecting Bernie Sanders, a candidate who both led Donald Trump by double digits in the polls while Clinton was losing her lead, and who would win the support of voters who desire real change.

Thomas Frank warned that the Democrats are being outflanked by Donald Trump from the left:

Donald Trump’s many overtures to supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders were just the beginning. He also deliberately echoed the language of Franklin Roosevelt, he denounced “big business” (not once but several times), and certain of his less bloodthirsty foreign policy proposals almost remind one of George McGovern’s campaign theme: “Come home, America.”

Ivanka Trump promised something that sounded like universal day care. Peter Thiel denounced the culture wars as a fraud and a distraction. The Republican platform was altered to include a plank calling for the breakup of big banks via the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall. I didn’t hear anyone talk about the need to bring “entitlements” under control. And most crucially, the party’s maximum leader has adopted the left critique of “free trade” almost in its entirety, a critique that I have spent much of my adult life making.

It boggles my simple liberal mind. The party of free trade and free markets now says it wants to break up Wall Street banks and toss Nafta to the winds. The party of family values has nominated a thrice-married vulgarian who doesn’t seem threatened by gay people or concerned about the war over bathrooms. The party of empire wants to withdraw from foreign entanglements.

He warned that another Clinton move to the right (as occurred under Bill) might not result in victory this time:

Let’s see: trade agreements, outreach to hawks, “bipartisanship”, Wall Street. All that’s missing is a “Grand Bargain” otherwise it’s the exact same game plan as last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. Democrats seem to be endlessly beguiled by the prospect of campaign of national unity, a coming-together of all the quality people and all the affluent people and all the right-thinking, credentialed, high-achieving people. The middle class is crumbling, the country is seething with anger, and Hillary Clinton wants to chair a meeting of the executive committee of the righteous.

When Democrats sold out their own rank and file in the past it constituted betrayal, but at least it sometimes got them elected. Specifically, the strategy succeeded back in the 1990s when Republicans were market purists and working people truly had “nowhere else to go”. As our modern Clintonists of 2016 move instinctively to dismiss the concerns of working people, however, they should keep this in mind: those people may have finally found somewhere else to go.

It is theoretically possible for the Democrats to be outflanked from the left as Clinton’s DLC Democratic Party is a party of the right. It is only the view that support for reproductive rights and any government at all is sufficient to be considered liberal by many in the United States (and forgetting that it wasn’t all that long ago that many Republicans were pro-abortion) that Clinton is not widely recognized to actually be a right-winger. On the other hand, Donald Trump is far too incoherent on policy to be given a clear ideological label. His racism and xenophobia will make it especially hard to challenge Clinton from the left.

Correction: Donald Trump’s acceptance speech had higher ratings than Clinton’s speech, while the Democratic convention had overall higher ratings.

Democratic Convention Night Three: Identifying The Worst Person In America

Trump Clinton Celebrity Death Match

The highlight of the third night of the Democratic Convention was Barack Obama speaking. It has become a rarity in modern times for an incumbent, or even recent president, to be seen as helpful to the nominee. Obama, like Bill Clinton the night before, provided a selective history. There was no discussion of Clinton’s Libya policy as Secretary of State, which Obama in recent interviews has said did not work, has turned Libya into a “shit show,” and was the worst mistake of his presidency. Nor did he discuss why he rejected Clinton’s advice to intervene in Syria.

Tim Kaine spoke earlier in the evening. Other than for his impression of Donald Trump, the line which comes to mind was “I trust Hillary Clinton with our son’s life.” Do we really want someone this foolish a heartbeat away from the presidency? Kaine’s opponent for the vice presidency, Mike Pence was not far from me this afternoon. Just as Mike Pence began a town hall nearby in Michigan, the sky became dark and rain came down from the heavens. Was it the wrath of an omnipotent invisible being in the sky, or just coincidence? We report, you decide.

The goal of the various speakers was to paint Donald Trump as being such as awful person that nobody would consider voting for him. That was not hard to do. After all, he once spoke of obliterating Iran. What type of monster speaks of obliterating another country. Oh, wait, that was Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump fought against a ban on the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas. Oops, again that was Hillary Clinton joining with the Republicans. If Trump is elected, we will see mass incarceration, deportations, and cuts in welfare for women and children. Again, Clintons, been there, done that. Donald Trump would ignore the Bill of Rights, for example by proposing to imprison people for burning the flag in protest. Yet again, it was Hillary Clinton who introduced such legislation. Donald Trump has mocked freedom of speech if it comes in the way of fighting terrorism. That one is true about Trump–but Hillary Clinton has taken the same position.

The nominating process really has been successful in finding the worst two people in America. Now they can fight it out to see which one really is the worst.

That is why there were protests, and chants of “Hell No DNC, We Won’t Vote For Hillary.” We need someone creative out there to be ready with an updated version of “Hey There LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?”

Stephen Colbert also gave a rundown of last night’s events:

Plus he mocked the attempts by Viacom to retain the rights to the Stephen Colbert character from his Comedy Central show, and used an entirely new segment, Werd, to look at voting for the lesser evil:

Charges Dropped In Freddie Gray Case

All charges have been dropped in the Freddie Gray case now that any convictions look to be very unlikely. Apparently Freddie Gray did not die of mistreatment while in police custody. He just died of being a black male. There is an epidemic of such deaths in this country.

Posted in In The News. Tags: . 2 Comments »

Hillary Clinton Offers Continuity With Change (Plus More War & Flipping on TPP)

Continuity With Change

The second night of the Republican-Lite Convention featured fictitious story hour from the aspiring First Lady’s Man (to use Stephen Colbert’s title for him). It was good to see Rachel Maddow being critical of Bill Clinton’s speech, but the real problem was not talking about his courtship of Hillary, but his whitewashing of their political record and bogus claims that Hillary is a Change Maker.  Trying to hide the fact that Clinton is the candidate of the status quo in a year voters want change reminds me of Selena Meyer’s slogan of Continuity with Change on Veep. I imagine this is better than the two unofficial slogans of Clinton’s primary campaign: “It’s My Turn” and “No We Can’t.”

There was no mention of mass incarceration, welfare “reform,” and the consequence of his trade deals. A more honest assessment of the Clinton years from a liberal perspective can be found from Thomas Frank and Howard Zinn, who I have previously quoted here.

Despite having been debunked many times by the fact checkers, last night we again heard the exaggerations of Clinton’s role in the passing of CHIP. I imagine this comes from desperation in promoting a candidate who has accomplished so little during her career–unless you consider the devastation of Libya and increasing instability in the middle east to be an accomplishment.

Fact checkers have shown many other falsehoods during the speeches last  night, both on Clinton’s record and in distorting some of Donald Trump’s views. There is really no need to distort Trump’s views when his actual views are crazy enough. While it is no excuse, this was not out of the ordinary for political conventions, and there were far fewer falsehoods than in Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican Convention.

Not everybody in the convention hall went along with the falsehoods of the convention. Some Sanders supporter walked out, with the media generally ignoring this. Reportedly actors are being hired on craigslist to fill the empty seats. There was also an unexpected moment of honesty when Terry McAuliffe told reporters that Hillary Clinton will flip on TPP.

Hillary Clinton had a video appearance to mention little girls who might be inspired to become president some day. I wonder how many little girls have been injured or killed by Hillary Clinton’s bombs? The manner in which her supporters have turned revelations of corruption into the DNC into anti-Russian hysteria makes me wonder if this is the start of a new front in Hillary Clinton’s wars. After all, Clinton does have a long history of belligerence towards Russia, including attempting to interfere in their politics against Putin, and it has been a neocon goal to bring about regime change in Russia. Haven’t we learned anything from how the government lied us into wars in Vietnam and Iraq?

Stephen Colbert continued to air The Late Show live to mock the conventions. The first clip contains his monologue and the second features an interview with cartoon Hillary Clinton:

Clinton Achieves Great Victory For Oligarchy And Neoconservativism

Stop Her

Despite protests from Sanders supporters and controversy, Hillary Clinton has won the role call vote for the Democratic nomination. The Democratic Party is now firmly under the control of DLC Democrats and neocons. The irony of the Clinton camp trying to convince voters that Clinton is not a tool of Wall Street and the big banks at Wells Fargo Center.

Highlights from the first night of the convention included Michelle Obama  plagiarizing a speech from the 2024 Republican convention. (Wait eight years and you will see that I am right.)

If the goal tonight was to win the support of those of us who have opposed Clinton, it was a failure. Not a word on ending the damage from neoconservative military interventionism because the nominee is herself a hard core neocon. Not a word on restoring the civil liberties which have been violated in the war on terror, because the nominee is extremely conservative on civil liberties. Not a word on separation of church and state as the nominee has promoted an increased role for religion in public policy. Not a word on increasing government transparency as the nominee is a life-long opponent of open government.

We now have an election with the two worst, and unpopular, candidates in memory. Both will seek to win by making voters hate the other even more. For Clinton, the election could partially come down to how much more unfavorable news comes out. The Clinton camp is already expressing fears over more revelations via WikiLeaks, sounding like an acknowledgment that they have even more they are trying to hide. This also gives them the opportunity to distract by attacking Russia, furthering the neoconservative goals of further conflict and war. On the other hand, leaks might not be necessary to sink Donald Trump’s campaign. He could do this with his own mouth.

With candidates as awful as the racist, xenophobic Trump and the corrupt warmonger Clinton, the only rational course this year is not to back a candidate but work to bring down the two party duopoly which preserves the status quo. It is an uphill battle but this year the polls show that the majority are receptive to this goal.

Stephen Colbert described the events of the first day of the convention.

And more from Seth Meyers above.

Republican-Lite Convention Opening With Trump In The Lead

Weaver DNC Emails

The Democratic (or more accurately these days, Republican-lite) Convention is beginning surrounded by controversy, with Clinton now trailing Donald Trump. While this might just be a post-convention bounce for Trump, there is no guarantee that Clinton will match this, and it should be alarming that Trump could take the lead considering how terrible a campaign he has been running. CNN reports:

Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House, topping her 44% to 39% in a four-way matchup including Gary Johnson (9%) and Jill Stein (3%) and by three points in a two-way head-to-head, 48% to 45%. That latter finding represents a 6-point convention bounce for Trump, which are traditionally measured in two-way matchups.
There hasn’t been a significant post-convention bounce in CNN’s polling since 2000. That year Al Gore and George W. Bush both boosted their numbers by an identical 8 points post-convention before ultimately battling all the way to the Supreme Court.
Nate Silver now gives Trump a 57.5 percent chance of winning.  FiveThirtyEight has underestimated Trump’s chances throughout the campaign, basing their predictions on assumptions which are probably not valid in 2016. They have finally figured out that this year is different, and Clinton cannot count on getting the votes from Sanders’ supporters as those who have won thier party’s nomination in the past have:

Hillary Clinton is coming into her convention with a real problem. Even before WikiLeaks released thousands of Democratic National Committee emails, including some that suggested officials were actively working against Bernie Sanders, Clinton had about a third of Sanders supporters left to try to win over. The emails have exacerbated tensions with Sanders loyalists. And here’s some more bad news for the Clinton campaign about those loyalists: New data and analysis shared with FiveThirtyEight from Catalist and SurveyMonkey shows that, before the 2016 primaries, Sanders’s supporters voted less frequently than other 2016 voters, and they were less reliably Democratic than Clinton supporters.

In other words, it’s not a matter of Clinton simply coaxing Sanders supporters back into the fold — many were never in the fold to begin with. That could increase the difficulty of the task facing Clinton.

In other words, if Democratic partisans think it is as important as they have been saying to beat Donald Trump, they must remove Clinton as the nominee. There is no guarantee that Clinton can receive a bounce to match Trump’s with the Democratic convention opening amidst such controversy.

The WikiLeaks revelations, which I discussed over the weekend, further weakening the argument that Clinton is any better than Trump. The accusations of fascism leveled against Trump sound less convincing when it is Clinton’s party which has conspired to rig an election. You can’t get more undemocratic than that. Nominating Clinton with what we know now would be as if the Republicans had nominated Richard Nixon with full knowledge of Watergate. Debbie Wasserman Schultz leaving the Democratic Party leadership, to only move over to the Clinton campaign is not enough. The penalty for rigging an election process should be disqualification of the candidate.

SciFi Weekend: 12 Monkeys; San Diego Comic Com Top News; Batman v. Superman; Torchwood

12 monkeys season two finale

The second season of 12 Monkeys concluded last week. The series demonstrated a problem with many series which start out with a good story which can be told in a season or two, but the economics of American television demand that they try to find a way to extend the series longer. The initial story line of going back in time to stop the plague would have made a great story if it could have been concluded over one or two years, but it could not be dragged out indefinitely. Continuum had a similar structure with characters who went back in time to change their future, but managed to keep it fresh every season while sticking to the same overall structure.  12 Monkeys instead changed the focus of the series.

While there were good moments, I just could not find the story this season to be as compelling as the first season. The finale did wrap up some of the events of the season, while leaving other matters open. After seeing such division between the main characters over two different strategies, both failed leaiving most of the characters either dead or stranded in the past going into the finale. It took another means of traveling through time to repair the damage, followed by the revelation of the identity of The Witness. It was also fun to see Madeline Stowe, who was in the movie version, have a significant role in the finale.

12 MONKEYS -- "Memory of Tomorrow" Episode 213 -- Pictured: (l-r) Madeleine Stowe as Dr. Kathryn Railly, Aaron Stanford as James Cole -- (Photo by: Steve Wilkie/Syfy)

Show runner Terry  Matalas discussed the finale with Blastr. Here is the start of the interview, which begins with a major spoiler if you anyone intends to watch this in the future:

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: We now know the identity of The Witness, and it’s the child of Cole and Cassie. What can you tell us about the big reveal? 

Matalas: I knew from the outset that this is where our characters were heading – that the reveal of The Witness shouldn’t be just a surprising narrative revelation, but a hugely emotional one. We easily could have put a familiar face behind that mask and the moment might’ve been shocking – maybe even satisfying – but it ultimately would’ve felt like plot. Mind-blowing is fantastic, but it also needed to be heart-breaking; it needed to really challenge Cassie and Cole and pose these massive, emotional questions for Season 3.

How long have you been setting up this Witness reveal, and what hints might we have missed along the way? Was this the plan all along from the start of Season 1?

Matalas: Yes.  In many ways, the biggest hint from the start is that Cassie and Cole are continually left alive. The Army of the 12 Monkeys – Pallid Man, Olivia, The Messengers –they’ve made no secret that these two characters are important in the grander cycle. Time and again, they’ve opted not to kill them – even when the opportunity was painfully clear.

Speaking a bit more thematically, if you look closely at Season One, it’s very much about fatherhood. Season Two is equally about motherhood. Season Three, it stands to reason, will focus on the children.

You obviously can’t give us the play-by-play for Season 3, but what can you tell us about how this reveal will inform the next chapter of the series for Cole and Cassie?

Matalas: If you knew that your child was destined to become the Destroyer of Worlds – that the gentle, loving child in your arms would one day murder billions – what would you really do? Or not do? The “Kill Hitler” scenario becomes much more complicated when you’re Hitler’s mom or dad. So a major part of Season Three for Cassie and Cole is that central question, the weight and responsibility of it all.

But Season 3 will also be a “Sympathy for the Devil” tale. What if you met The Witness, heard his story and actually understood why he’s done what he’s done? Maybe even agreed with it?

12Monkeys_gallery_212Recap_16

More questions are answered in the full interview, and in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Plus Entertainment Weekly also  interviewed Amanda Schull:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you feel when you found out that Cassie was not only pregnant, but their child was the Witness?
AMANDA SCHULL: [Executive producer Terry Matalas] told me fairly early on. I hadn’t had all of the moments with the Witness — understanding the gravity of how upset and just how violated she feels by the Witness — so it didn’t have the gravitas when he told me initially. Then, as we progressed throughout the season, every single interaction with the Witness, realizing how much she despises and how much it makes her despise herself for what she’s done and everything about it, that’s what is upsetting. It’s much more impactful knowing later on after having been able to reenact those scenarios from the page.

Then [with] the pregnancy [reveal], I don’t have a child, I’ve never been pregnant and I really loved being able to have the moment. We don’t say it, it’s all done through looks. I really liked the challenge. I really like having that interaction with Aaron. I work really comfortably with Aaron. I really enjoy everything that we get to do together. We shot those moments the final week of season 2, and it was just us in this tiny little set and we kind of had a skeleton crew. It was really special and I think they chose an even less emotional take of mine, because we did his coverage first and I just kept crying every time he opened the card. I’ve never told anybody that I’m pregnant, so I’ve never had that opportunity to tell somebody that. And his reaction, just everything that they’ve gone through up until that point really moved me.

What do you think that internal struggle will be like for Cassie between wanting to protect her child and considering other possibilities?
My initial reaction to that when we were talking about it was very un-[politically correct]. It was basically, “Get it out of me at any cost.” But then in thinking about that, it becomes a question of nature versus nurture: Is there a possibility that she could change it? She could rewrite history if she were able to undo this. If she’s never going to see Cole again, is she going to hang on to the very last bits of his DNA that she has and try to salvage the upbringing of this child in a way that isn’t destructive to all human kind? It is really a fascinating battle and I think will largely have to do with the certain circumstances in which she is being kept in the future with the Army.

We know that Cole is headed toward the future to try and save Cassie. With the concept of nature versus nurture in mind, do you think her choices about the Witness might put her at odds with Cole?
I think it will be really interesting and I think that it could perhaps put them at odds, but the fact is they seem to end up coming around to the same page. Of anyone’s partnership on this show, they seem to have the understanding of one another for whatever reason. They were sort of meant for each other. I think they would have an understanding. They might be at odds at first, but I have no idea how Terry and his evil genius brain wants to play that out.

There was a tremendous amount of news out of San Diego Comic Con over the past weekend. The above trailer both gives a better idea of how Flashpoint will be handled on The Flash and confirms earlier reports that Wally West will be seen as Kid Flash.

In other DC news, despite her character getting killed on Arrow, Katie Cassidy has become the latest to be made a regular across the entire line of DC shows on the CW Network.

Also on CW, there was news on the upcoming season of The 100:

“The Earth strikes back in season four—it is an unbeatable foe,” creator Jason Rothenberg teased regarding next season. “It quickly becomes about not how to stop it, because stopping it is not possible, but about: How do we survive? There aren’t enough lifeboats, so who gets to choose who lives?”

With total nuclear destruction on the way, getting her people to safety is something Clarke (Eliza Taylor) will have to deal with. In the exclusive clip shown off during the panel, we hear Clarke’s ominous narration: “Our enemy isn’t something that can be fought. It can’t be reasoned with. It can’t be killed. When all is lost, can hope survive? can we survive? After everything we’ve done, do we deserve to?”

After losing major characters like Lexa, Lincoln, and Pike last season, facing the impending apocalypse will be difficult for everyone. Octavia, for instance, will be traveling down a much darker road, channeling her inner assassin. She explained, “Octavia will take a really dark turn. She’s going to do what she does best, which is killing people. She really found her home within herself in becoming a warrior, and that’s thanks to Lincoln and Indra.”

More was seen of the future of DC’s cinematic universe with the above trailers for Wonder Woman and Justice League.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice came out on Blu-ray and DVD last week, also making this a good time for the above video of Easter Eggs in the movie.

An Honest Trailer was also released for Comic Con.

In other news, it has been confirmed that Daredevil will be back for a third season. While it was a complete story, a lot of personal matters for the characters were left hanging at the end of the second season.

Star Trek Beyond came out Friday and there was news at Comic Con on the upcoming television series. While the movie still had some of the flaws seen since revived by J.J. Abrams, it did feel the most like true Star Trek. I discuss both the movie and what we know about the television show together, and will hold off until next week to give more people a chance to see the movie.

Benedict Cumberbatch of Sherlock is involved in yet another franchise. A trailer for Doctor Strange is above.

In other potential big news in the Doctor Who universe, John Barrowman said he is working hard to bring Torchwood back, and he has a big telephone call related to this scheduled for Monday. Hopefully we will have some real news afterwards.

Leaked DNC Email & Choice Of Time Kaine Show It Is Time For DemExit

DNC Sanders Religious Views

The two big stories of the past day provide the same message–the Democratic Party is no longer a suitable home for liberals and progressives. The latest batch of leaked DNC emails via Wikileak shows what we already knew: rather than staying neutral as they should have, the DNC was rigging the system to support Hillary Clinton. Particularly disturbing was the manner in which they contemplated using Bernie Sanders’ religion against him, insulting both Jews and atheists. The DNC email also shows, as did some of Hillary Clinton’s email, how the Clinton campaign and its allies have manipulated the press.

This was hardly the first sign that the nomination process was unfairly tilted to support Clinton. As I discussed in April, Sanders has had to deal with party rules which have made it difficult for insurgent candidates to win since George McGovern won the nomination. Party leaders subsequently thought the party was best off with moderate candidates who do well in the south despite significant changes in the country since 1972. The use of super delegates, restrictions on independents voting in may states, and front loading of southern primaries make it harder for insurgent candidates to win. Plus the Democratic Party showed even more favoritism this year, including with the debate schedule, failing to release the popular vote in Iowa, as was done eight years ago, which Sanders very likely won, Harry Reid’s actions in Nevada, and changing rules on contributions from lobbyists to help Clinton.

While Hillary Clinton has tried to pretend to be a progressive at times, her choice of Tim Kaine as running mate shows again that she remains a DLC Democrat who opposes liberal values. As The Hill reports:

The moderate Democrat has backed abortion restrictions; supported fast-track authority for a controversial Pacific Rim trade deal; and just this week joined a push to deregulate some of the nation’s largest banks — all positions that are anathema to the liberals being wooed by the Clinton team heading into November.

Bloomberg adds:

In selecting Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia over progressive favorites like as Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts or Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Clinton is partnering with a lawmaker whose stances on finance and trade policies have sparked backlash from some of her most persistent critics…

Kaine was also one of 70 senators supporting a bipartisan effort to urge the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to ease some rules on smaller banks and credit unions. His vote in favor of giving the Obama administration more leeway in sealing a trade deal with 12 Pacific Rim nations also has rankled progressives.

His “support for fast-track authority for the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership and recent backing of bank deregulation will make our work more difficult,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America, a progressive political action committee. He said he was referring to efforts to unite the “political revolution with the Democratic establishment to defeat Trump.”

The choice of a supporter of Wall Street deregulation and trade deals such as TPP plays right into Donald Tump’s hands, shortly after he made an appeal for Sanders supporters to vote for him. It also provides more reason for liberals to consider Jill Stein as opposed to voting for Clinton. Both Kaine and Clinton are preferable to the Republicans on abortion, but that is not enough. Neither recognizes it as a woman’s right as true liberals do and therefore, while they would keep abortion generally legal, they are also willing to compromise and accept restrictions. Clinton’s idea of keeping abortion rare not only stigmatizes women who have chosen to have an abortion, but also plays into Republican hands in making it harder to obtain abortions. Again, they are better than Republicans on this issue, but not good enough. If this was the only issue I could live with them, but there are other issues where they are far worse.

The Democratic Party is looking far more like a DLC, or Republican-lite, Party, unwilling to promote liberal goals. Instead we risk a return of the triangulation and moves to the right seen under Bill Clinton. We had enough problems with DLC policies under Bill Clinton. The dangers under Hillary Clinton are now far worse as she supports an expansion of the warfare/surveillance state which has grown out of control since the Bush years.