The FCC Must Let Thee Be...

Yesterday, a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (one of the twelve circuit courts beneath the Supreme Court), ruled that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have the legal authority to impose “net neutrality rules” on internet providers. This is a good thing. Here’s what this means.

What Is Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is the idea that internet providers should not be allowed to regulate how their customers use the internet. Specifically, proponents argue that net providers should not be allowed to deny access to specific internet sites or to slow down service when their customers attempt to visit those sites. This was the idea of internet companies like Google and Amazon, who advocated that the federal government should pass regulations preventing internet providers from restricting content or prioritizing one type of traffic over another.

Opponents of net neutrality, basically internet providers and cable companies, counter that these rules would choke off new innovation and prevent them from conducting necessary regulation to prevent harm to their systems and to stop nuisances like spam and piracy. It also prevents them from slowing service to websites that place excessively high demands on the system.

What Caused The Present Case?

In 2005, the FCC adopted a set of principles that said “consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice.” However, these principles also allowed providers to conduct “reasonable network management.” Thus, they appear contradictory on their face. More importantly, the FCC acknowledged at the time that these principles were merely recommendations and were not legally enforceable. In other words, legally, they were meaningless.

Attempts by Google and Amazon and others to back five separate bills in 2006 that would have made net neutrality the law were all defeated. The Democrats, despite being proponents of net neutrality legislation, have been unwilling to advance any such bills since that time.

In August 2008, citing these principles, the FCC issued a cease and desist order to Comcast, after Comcast slowed transfers to and from BitTorrent, a site that allows users to upload and download all manner of songs, movies and software. The FCC decision, a 3-2 decision, was criticized at the time by Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, who noted that the agency lacked the legal authority to issue such a ruling and claimed that its efforts were “doomed. . . on appeal.”

Comcast appealed.

Tuesday, the DC Circuit struck down the FCC’s cease and desist order, noting that the FCC was unable to identify any law enacted by Congress which gives the agency the power to regulate the internet. In other words, Congress has never given the FCC the power to regulate the internet. Thus, it had no authority to issue the cease and desist letter.

While this decision technically only overturns the FCC’s cease and desist order, and thereby prevents the FCC from using the 2005 principles against providers, it has a larger effect as well. The decision at the least suggests that the FCC has no power at all to regulate the internet. It also suggests that the court will strike down any attempt by the FCC to issue such regulations (in October 2008, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that he would issue net neutrality rules). However, at this point, those are only suggestions.

What Happens Next?

If the FCC thinks that it has a good case, it may try to appeal the panel’s decision to the full DC Circuit. This is called a “rehearing” and would involve the entire Circuit Court presiding over the decision rather than a randomly selected three judge panel. This will most likely happen if the FCC feels that the three judge panel was somehow unique, and that it would have a better shot before the entire court. But I doubt this will happen.

Right now, the FCC retains a certain amount of wiggle room. Indeed, right now the decision only strikes down the cease and desist order, it doesn’t prohibit all regulation of the internet generally. If the FCC appeals, it runs the risk that it will lose that wiggle room if the Circuit Court makes the ruling more broad based. (The same sort of calculus would apply with any appeal to the Supreme Court.)

A more likely next step for the FCC would be to exploit that wiggle room. For example, net neutrality proponents now want the FCC to declare internet providers to be “common carriers,” like phone companies, and then impose regulations that include price controls, service quality requirements and technological mandates.

Could the FCC get away with this? It’s not decided, but probably not. The Circuit Court noted fairly clearly that the FCC has been unable to show where it gets the authority to regulate the internet. That means it can't issue such regulations. However, we must remember that this was only suggested by the decision, which was in fact much narrower -- holding only that the FCC had no power to issue the cease and desist order.

Would the FCC try this? It might. Indeed, the FCC indicated it is considering this. In a Tuesday statement, it noted that the DC Circuit’s ruling did not “close the door to other methods for achieving this important end.” However, the former chief counsel for the FCC has noted that this is unlikely to lead to the types of regulations the net neutrality proponents want. So it’s unclear if they will try this, or if they will focus instead on forcing a neutrality law through Congress.

The Democrats want the FCC to try again, probably because they are afraid to try again to pass a net neutrality law. The Republicans oppose any such attempts by the FCC. Said Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX): “It would be wrong to double down on excessive and burdensome regulations, and I hope the FCC chairman will now reconsider his decision to pursue expanded commission authority over broadband services.”

All in all, net neutrality was significantly wounded yesterday, but it’s not dead. I guess we’ll see.

By the way, bonus points if you can tell me what the title of this article is alluding to. It’s someone who has had his own problems with the FCC.

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Over-Promiser In Chief

One of the first things you learn in dealing with other people is that over-promising is a horrible idea. Humans judge value based on expectation versus reality. If you are promised five dollars and you get five dollars, then you see yourself as having been treated fairly and you are satisfied. If you get ten dollars, then you are very happy. If you get less than five dollars, then you’ve been cheated. Obama hasn’t learned this lesson. Indeed, he has a history of promising way more than he can deliver, and he never seems to learn from his mistakes.

Obama has a history of over-promising. You might recall such laughers as “95% of Americans will see their taxes cut.” Uh huh. That didn’t happen. Indeed, sixty percent are seeing their taxes go up. He would close Gitmo by the end of his first year, change our relationship with China, stop Iran’s nuclear program, stop global warming, bring us together racially, and part the seas. Remember how none of that happened?

What made each of these instances all the stranger was that he could have promised something lesser and arguably kept his promises. But he felt the need to make the BIG PROMISE each time. He wouldn’t just “fix” something, he would “fix for all time.” This almost makes him a pathological over-promiser.

But these were campaign promises and people don’t really expect those to be kept right? Actually, they do. But let’s leave that aside for today, because his pattern continued after he took office.

Do you recall the stimulus? The majority of Americans were prepared to accept the need for a stimulus package, so selling it should have been easy. But Obama strangely felt that he needed to way over-sell it. So he promised that it would create millions of jobs. It didn’t. Indeed, it couldn’t. But he didn’t admit that, even after it became obvious that his promise had been false. Instead, he reformulated his promise as “save or create” and then he doubled down on his overpromises. Hang tight, millions of jobs coming up any moment. Of course, they didn’t come. So he scrambled to come up with jobs, which became a national joke when people started playing “spot the fake job in the fake district.” Even the media ultimately admitted that this turned into a disaster for the administration.

The recession ended in March. . . no May. . . no July. . . no November. We would have positive job growth in August. . . no November. . . no December. . . no March. . . no April.

So what did he learn? Nothing. When it became obvious that Copenhagen would produce nothing but hot air, Obama sprang into action and promised to rescue the conference and save the world from global warming. That didn’t happen. Instead, he ended up cutting some non-deal deal. When his environmentalist supporters turned on him because of his broken promises, he tried to deflect that by promising that he would soon push through cap and trade and thereby save the world. That didn’t happen either. So once again, his way-over-the-top promises came crashing down.

He had a deal to get sanctions on Iran, even China agreed!. . . would agree. . . might agree. . . is considering. . . might not stand in the way of. Oh, and now Brazil is backing out as well. At least the Russians agreed not to keep building Iran a nuclear reactor.

But he's learning to be more careful with his promises, right? No. Instead, he set about creating a series of elaborate over-promises with health care. He didn’t promise that he would extend coverage to some poor Americans, that he would cut a few costs, or that he would improve the quality of care. No. That wouldn’t be grandiose enough. Instead, he promised “universal care.” He promised he would cut costs so much that it would save the country, the treasury, the budget, etc. etc. He promised that medicine would be cheaper and better and we could all keep our current plans. He promised doctors more money under Medicare. And he promised that all of this would happen the minute they passed the bill.

So they passed the bill. And nothing happened, and soon people started questioning his promises. So he doubled down. He even sent Axelrod out to lie about the start date of all the benefits, assuring us that it was just a Republican “myth” that most of the benefits wouldn’t kick in for years.

But these lies are easily disproved. And within a week, after his “bounce” had faded and with public anger growing, the media began to question the bill. Indeed, in the past week, the media has discovered that: (1) Medical costs will go up for all Americans. (2) The doctor’s fix is stalled in Congress -- and it will blow Obama’s deficit promise out of the water when it finally does pass. (3) Most of the benefits don’t take effect until 2014 or later, no matter what Axelrod promised. (4) Companies are dropping their plans, despite Obama’s assurances. (5) Doctors are dropping out of Medicare at a record rate. (6) This “universal coverage” is neither universal, nor coverage, as 22 million Americans are expected to pay fines rather than buy coverage.

So how does Obama respond? “Hey, it’s only been a week, some of this stuff won’t happen for years.” Funny, that’s not what he promised.

What’s interesting to me about all of this is that Obama has expended virtually no effort to do the things he wants to do the right way in the first place. Instead, he just takes whatever is available and he sells it with a series of grandiose and obviously false promises. He is the car salesman trying to pass off the 1984 Yugo as the 2010 Rolls Royce.

In all honesty, this makes little sense. The public was willing to buy much of what he wanted to sell. But somehow that wasn’t good enough for him: he wanted to dazzle them. You could call it inexperience, except that he never seems to learn from his mistakes. So it seems more to be a personality defect than an experience gap. Indeed, I suspect it's ego, he wants to be the savior that everyone told him he was.

In any event, by trying to be a rock star and dazzle the public rather than dealing with the public fairly, Obama has discredited himself. He's converted himself from the principled politician who was going to do some unpleasant things that he felt had to be done into President False-Promise whose programs can’t be trusted.

Not smart.


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What's In Store If Justice Stevens Retires?

Barring unforeseen circumstances, the next vacancy on the United States Supreme Court is likely to be Associate Justice John Paul Stevens. At age 89, Stevens is by far the oldest justice on the high court, and though he's not about to be pushed out, he has expressed a desire to retire. All things considered, this might be the best time (from Stevens's point of view) to leave the bench.

If you want to learn about Justice Stevens before proceeding, or refresh your memory, hop over to the right-hand side of the page, go down to Index, then scroll down to Justice John Paul Stevens.

In the event that Stevens does retire in the near future, president Obama may have to nominate a candidate to replace him prior to the November elections. This could turn out to be a true dilemma for Obama. It's unlikely that even with the current Senate, Obama's choice would go unvetted and slide through quickly, meaning the nomination might expire and have to be renewed when the new Congress is seated next year. The Senate is likely to be far more hostile then than now. So what does Obama do? He could appoint a liberal, but otherwise respected jurist to the position, and try to slip him (or her) through. He could roll the dice and nominate an ultra-liberal "living Constitutionalist," and take his chances with the Senate. He could nominate a moderate, perhaps Republican, candidate and hope he "grows in office" the way Justice Souter did. Or he could appoint a moderate who has a decent pro-business record and hope that nobody notices the leftist bent of his social views. Whoever he chooses, he's likely going to irritate some major segment of his own or the other party.

Obama's recent nomination of far left Goodwin Liu to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals indicates where Obama is willing to go on the lower courts, but that is probably not an indication of where he might head in a nomination as visible as the US Supreme Court. In addition, Obama has just succeeded in winning the health care vote only to find the backlash is immense. And he still has cap and tax and immigration to try to shove down our throats. It's hard to say if he also has the time for a lengthy and bloody battle over the high court.

My father was a bit of a gambler, and he loved a longshot. Like him, I'm going to swim against the tide to come up with my guess as to who the nominee will be. There's some ego involved as well, since I've been predicting this person as my front-runner for the second appointment before Sotomayor was nominated for the first vacancy. My choice for number one topping the list of potential nominees is former professor of law and current Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein. Despite a major political gaffe shortly after his appointment to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein has stayed below the radar, and he is quite capable of arguing that his role as a political operative is substantially different from a role on the Supreme Court.

I have many reasons for picking Sunstein as the likely successor, not the least of which is that he is in many ways a younger version of Stevens. This would eliminate much of the early rancorous fighting over his nomination because it wouldn't mean a radical change in the court's direction either to the left or the right. Both sides might be relieved to simply have their say, then take the Senate vote, and get back to the business of dismantling the Constitution in the political branches.

Like Stevens, Sunstein is a legal minimalist. I find this trait in Stevens irritating as I do with Sunstein, but it is certainly not a ground for quashing his nomination. Minimalists prefer reaching results based on extremely narrow grounds rather than broad legal principles. That is a good stance for every court except the Supreme Court, which often has to set national standards for thirteen separate and often warring federal appellate districts.

Failure to state a broad principle in a major decision leaves thirteen districts free to focus on the one aspect of the case for purposes of reaching their previous conclusion by avoiding that single issue. This results in re-litigating similar cases at the highest levels multiple times, as well as ongoing confusion among the various districts. Once a case has been accepted by the Supreme Court, it should be decided on all the issues in the case, thereby setting a coherent national standard.

He has a view that irritates political conservatives, but shouldn't. He believes in judicial restraint as it relates to the two political branches. He believes that when the Constitution is silent on an issue, or alternatively does not specifically forbid political action, then all due deference should be given to the political branches with the courts refusing to substitute their wisdom for that of the executives and legislatures. This would often lead him, like Stevens, to support the ongoing expansion of government. Like it or not, that deference is precisely what the Founders intended. It is not the job of the courts to determine how big or how small government should be (within Constitutional constraints, of course). That is the job of the people, and their elected representatives.

When it comes to the war-making power, Sunstein was consistent in his support for the Bush administration--not because he liked Bush particularly, but because he agreed with the arguments of Bush's Attorney General, particularly as to wartime detainees. Sunstein excoriated the Supreme Court for its decision in Hamdan, which for the first time granted habeas corpus rights to prisoners of war. He never wavered from his belief that military tribunals were the proper forum for trials of terrorists who were caught in a war zone. When it comes to the inherent powers of the president to conduct war, Sunstein sounds much more like John Yoo than like Eric Holder.

Sunstein is a great debater. He held two professorships at the University of Chicago simultaneously. He was both a professor of law and a professor of political science. He once debated himself, arguing as the law professor that the political science professor was making proposals that exceeded the constitutional authority granted to the political branches and damaged the sovereignty of the several states. He was also heavily influenced by the University of Chicago school of economics, which most conservatives should applaud. Unfortunately, he takes the Harvard/Yale stance on free speech, contending that Holmes's "free marketplace of ideas" is not adequate to address the concept that the government must actively promote specifically free debate on politics and citizenship (the Brandeis view). This does not bode well for future overreaching by the FCC and the so-called "fairness doctrine."

Sunstein is certainly no great fan of strict construction, original wording, original meaning, and natural law. But he is also not a free rein advocate of the "living Constitution." He may interpret portions of the Constitution differently from Justices Alito, Roberts, Thomas, and Scalia, but it will be on those narrow grounds I mentioned earlier. He is not a judicial activist who believes that the Constitution is an outmoded document that the courts and the political branches can ignore with impunity. He has quietly criticized Holder Justice Department actions regarding civil trials for terrorists, overweaning regulatory bodies (Sunstein is an expert on administrative law), and presidential war-making powers (including interrogation techniques).

If Obama wants the best he can get without creating a determined Senate opposition, Sunstein would be the one. The angry left and the angry right will oppose him, but his legal/judicial qualifications for the office are excellent, and his views of the powers of the high court are if anything, to the right of Stevens's. Sunstein's elevation to the Supreme Court would effect only imperceptible changes in the court's current makeup, and that's a good thing for both sides, given the very hostile political climate in America today.

Since Sunstein heads my list, and nobody else's, I should at least mention who the apparent front-runners are. They are US Seventh District Appellate Court Judge Diane Wood, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, and DC District Appellate Court Judge Merrick Garland. I don't list them in any particular order, nor do I have any idea which of them would be most likely to be confirmed without a fight. None of the potential candidates is a doctrinaire leftist like Ruth Bader Ginsburg or a judicial idiot like Sonia Sotomayor.

Judge Wood is a strong supporter of abortion and illegal immigrant rights, but her decisions rarely reflect her political views. At 59, she is the oldest of the three leaders, and Obama is looking for someone to live long enough to preserve his "legacy" on the Supreme Court. Her nomination would raise some angry invective from the anti-abortion, anti-illegal immigrant crowd, but her judicial consistency would likely prevent her nomination from being trashed. Obama and Wood were both law instructors at the University of Chicago at the same time, and Obama is said to have a personal fondness for his old friend.

Solicitor General Kagan is the youngest of the three. At 49, she would likely spend many years on the high court. Kagan is known for being very even-handed, and that will not sit well with Obama's left wing. She was a well-known moderate as an adviser in the Clinton White House. As dean of Harvard Law, she made a conscientious effort to balance the teaching staff with conservatives. She has never sat on the bench, and therefore has no discernible judicial paper-trail to attack.

Judge Garland is known to be a conciliatory type, who is not afraid to take a stand, usually on the liberal side, but he is not a radical by any means. He fits the traditional mode of replacing a male judge with another male judge, which would also allow Obama to insist on nominating a woman if he actually gets a third shot at changing the makeup of the Supreme Court.

One other name is being bandied about, but Obama would do it only if his strategy is ultimately to wear out the Republicans in a full-blown fight this time in order to make them look like consistent bullies the next time. Obama, the first post-racial president, could nominate another of his favorite people, Yale Law Dean Harold Koh. Koh would be the first Asian-American on the Supreme Court, and Obama could really pull out all the "racist" stops, clouding the fact that Koh is a far-left radical legal activist. Koh proudly proclaims his belief in interpreting American law by citing and admiring international law as part of his legal analysis.

He has stated in a legal brief to the Connecticut Supreme Court that same-sex marriage is clearly and unequivocally a federal constitutional right, and that any state legislation forbidding it is a violation of the equal rights of gays. Koh is an unrepentant believer in the living Constitution view of law, and a proud supporter of judicial supremacy over the other two branches. Frankly, I don't think even Obama would make this mistake during his current unpopularity.
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Illinois--The More Things Change, Etc.

Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) was appointed by the disgraced Democrat Governor Rod Blagojevich to fill the remainder of the term of South Side Chicago Democrat, now president, Barack Obama. His term expires this year, and the Democrats haven't lost any time in nominating another typical Illinois politician to fill the Senate seat.

And who better to hold the purse strings of the state of Illinois in the US Senate than the former state treasurer and executive of a family bank about to collapse in bankruptcy? The Democrats have chosen Alexi Giannoulias as the next protector of the people's money and well-being. Giannoulias was an executive of the family bank as it began its downhill slide. On his watch, loans of nearly $20 million were made to two convicted felons. He is now spending more millions in an attempt to get the minds of the voters of Illinois off his profligacy and questionable connections. In other words, business as usual for Democrats in Illinois.

National Press Secretary of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Deirdre Murphy says: "Alexi Giannoulias is running a strong campaign on the issues that matter to the people of Illinois--like job creation and the economy." OK, I know, I should resist the obvious. But I won't. How does Giannoulias plan on doing that? By hiring federal employees to create federal jobs while improving the economy by printing money to pay for them? And while he's at it, I suppose he could get special federal loan provisions for all the felons who will need seed money for their next ventures when they get out of prison.

If this weren't a Chicago bank that Giannoulias helped to run into the ground, I'd hesitate to mention the name of one of the two felons they lent money to. You'd probably think I was making it up. But they did indeed lend millions to Michael "Jaws" Giorango. Not as sexy as "Scarface," but it will do. Giorango got approximately $27 million in mortgages from the Giannoulias Broadway Bank, starting in 1999. "Jaws" was convicted on fraud, embezzlement and other charges related to his land trust businesses.

The other felon, Demitri Stavropoulos, was convicted of interstate bookmaking and prostitution. So far, investigations have shown that at least $20 million of the loans to the two crooks were approved while Giannoulias was senior executive loan officer for Broadway Bank. The wannabe Senator, of course, claims absolutely no knowledge of the loans and says he didn't sit on the loan committees that approved the loans. We all know that senior loan officers who are members of the family that owns the bank have absolutely no influence whatsoever on loan committees, right?

The Obama administration is focused on the idea that any senatorial seat which changes party hands in the upcoming elections is a referendum on Obama himself. This is particularly true of the seat which Obama previously held. So they will be pulling out all the stops to whitewash Giannoulias. The spin is already beginning about the bank failure being "old news." As if "old news" doesn't reflect directly on the "new candidate." Obama will reportedly be campaigning on Giannoulias's behalf personally. Stop laughing. That's not the kiss of death in Chicago and Illinois that it has been in the real world, or even Massachusetts.

Another part of the spin is that Giannoulias himself will only "recoup a few million dollars from the bank collapse." Well, that's comforting. Nothing like a poor politician who has only a few million dollars of his depositors' and investors' money left for himself. The sympathy vote alone could put him over the top.

Giannoulias's Republican opponent Rep. Mark Kirk is not being shy about calling Giannoulias out. "Alex Giannoulias misled voters to get elected state treasurer and continued to mislead voters in an effort to win election as a United States Senator." Kirk has occasionally been even more direct: "Giannoulias has falsely claimed that he didn't know about the criminal backgrounds of Giorango and Stavropoulos."

But how can Giannoulias fail if Obama comes to the state and starts talking about personal integrity and government transparency? When all the Democratic machine politicians join hands and praise Giannoulias and laud his financial genius, how can the Illinois electorate not be energized? This year, however, it may not be such a sure thing. Many Illinois elected Democrats have been critical of Giannoulias, or remain silent about his candidacy.

The State Attorney General, Democrat Lisa Madigan, has been pushed to ask Giannoulias to step aside, but she has not done so, largely because she seems more interested in a future run for governor. Her father, state Democratic Party chairman Michael Madigan, has been notably unenthusiastic about Giannoulias's candidacy. Never a good sign for a Democratic candidate.

Still, Giannoulias has many of the traits that helped Obama. He's young, attractive, has no record of accomplishments (good or bad), can say a thousand stirring words without a single concrete idea, and talks incessantly about his plans and dreams for the futures of Illinois and the nation. One can only hope that his plans for America are better than his plans for the family bank.
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Question: That's News To Me!

We know that all of you rely on Commentarama as your first, and hopefully only, source of news. But some of you cheat on us. . . and we know who you are! So fess up, where do you go for news? [+] Read More...

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Liberal Blind Spot Kills CNN

Almost two weeks ago, ratings came out for the cable networks. MSNBC came in 26th in prime time, behind such luminaries as the Cartoon Network and the Food Channel. It just edged out BET. CNN didn’t make it into the top 30. When looking at the entire day, CNN came in 29th, losing to the vaunted Cartoon and Food Networks. MSNBC didn’t make the list. So news stinks right? Well, not really. FOX News was 2nd and 4th on the two lists. FOX had about three times the number of viewer as either MSNBC or CNN.

It took about a week for these numbers to start making it into the news cycle. And now, suddenly, we’re treated to all kinds of stories asking what is wrong with CNN and offering advice on how to fix CNN.

So what is wrong with CNN? Well, according to the liberal journalists being interviewed, CNN made a mistake when it decided to change its editorial policy and become a station without bias. Stop laughing, I’m serious. . . they did do that. CNN made a decision some time ago that they would try to chart the middle ground between FOX and MSNBC. While some might suggest that the middle ground between those two would be lunatics in bikinis spewing gibberish, CNN saw it differently. CNN decided that the middle ground was news, presented in all its unbiased glory.

Now, before we go further, let me say that I applaud CNN for that. I am a big proponent of someone finally presenting news again rather than opinion masquerading as news. And there have been times in the past three or four months where I almost felt that CNN had pulled off a fairly balanced presentation. But note my qualifier, “almost.” And that’s the problem. Liberals live in such a bubble that they don’t even know when they are spewing liberalism. It’s a blind spot. And CNN, staffed by former Clinton operatives, has a huge one.

The liberals who are opining about saving CNN don’t get this either. They say that obviously CNN’s foray into unbiased news was a failure because audiences no longer want “fair” journalism. Instead, we’re assured, they want “opinion journalism.” Thus, they advise CNN to pick a side (the liberal side) and start spewing. As usual, the lefties are wrong.

The real problem with CNN’s plan was that it never achieved a true middle of the road, and, consequently, no one believed their sudden conversion. They didn’t change their anchors, they haven’t stopped attacking Republicans more heavily and less fairly than Democrats, and they haven’t stopped bringing on the same hard-left jerkoffs they’ve been using for their “analysis” for years. Moreover, their assumptions remain distinctly liberal: government is the provider of solutions, spending is good, taxing is good, and liberal shibboleths remain unquestioned.

Why should anyone believe that the same people who venomously savaged the right for decades have suddenly become fair when nothing has changed at their station except the concept?

If you want to know why CNN’s ratings went down, just think about it. They spent 20+ years driving away any viewer who wasn’t several steps left of center. When FOX appeared, despite it ridiculousness, all of these people ran for the doors and never looked back. That’s about 60% of the American public, which coincidentally is exactly how the ratings break down if you compare FOX's ratings to the combined ratings of CNN and MSNBC.

Of the 40% of the market left for CNN after FOX arrived, about 40% of those were lunatic fringe, who just want their “news” to validate their opinions. So when CNN decided to go “fair,” it lost those people to MSNBC, which has no qualms about warping its “news” to fit its far-left agenda. That left only 24% of the market at CNN. (By the way, the real losers are the three networks ABC, CBS and NBC, who are bleeding viewers.)

What CNN was hoping was that people would come back to it from FOX once they realized that CNN was no longer biased. CNN hoped it would be the 60% and FOX and MSNBC the twenty percenters. But why should people go back? They were burned for 20 years by CNN before FOX came along. And since CNN does nothing more these days than read AP wire stories, which is all FOX does (though FOX has hookerish "attorneys" add their opinions to each story), why should a rational conservative switch from the right-leaning hookers on FOX to the depressed leftists in “centrist” drag on CNN? Yeah, I said “drag” Anderson Cooper. . . who studied at the University of Hanoi (and, yes, that’s true, I didn’t make that up).

If CNN wants to recapture some of the FOX audience, it’s going to have to dump its leftist journalists and find people who are not associated with the Democratic party to run the place. Stop hiring journalists who are married to prominent Democrats and who appear at Democratic fund raisers. It also needs to start providing more that just AP stories. For example, a couple of exposés on Obama and Pelosi would go a long way to winning people back. Until it does that, nobody’s coming back.

But CNN’s liberal blind spot keeps it from seeing this, because, from a liberal’s perspective, CNN's liberal-lite is already "fair." So I guess, all that's left to say is. . .

R.I.P.

CNN


Update: We have received an interesting video that discusses the ratings war, and it anyone is interested, you can check it out here: Video.

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SEALs Closer to Acquittal--Part 5

I don't want to mislead anyone into believing that the three Navy SEALs who have been treated worse than terrorists are anywhere close to home free. The leftist anti-military Obama administration is pushing hard to destroy these American heroes. But things have started to go the SEALs' way. This is a major development. For the four previous articles on the SEALs, go to our "Index" on the right column, and click on U.S. Military.

The self-righteous Maj. Gen. Charles Cleveland who has spouted the Obama party line on "keeping the military on the straight and narrow" has signed grants of immunity to five Navy personnel who were present at the alleged bitch-slap rendered to terrorist and mass-murderer of civilians Ahmed Hashim Abed. An unidentified Navy source (I'll bet they'll be looking for him or her next) says two officers and three enlisted men will be testifying in direct contradiction to the claims of the subhuman terrorist and the one Navy eyewitness against the SEALs. The sole Navy witness who was supposed to have corroborated the eyewitness will not be called by the prosecution after all.

Additional rulings have also been made allowing the SEALs to conduct a full and fair defense. A military judge has ruled that the military must produce Abed as a witness at the court-martial. Let the bastard hang himself figuratively the way he hanged the American civilians literally. Unfortunately, the defense won't be allowed to set fire to the terrorist first, the way he did to the American civilians.

The Navy's sole eyewitness, the master at arms at the detention center, is now the only witness (except the terrorist who has read the Al Qaeda manual on how to claim brutality) who will testify that SEAL petty officer Matthew McCabe punched Abed in the stomach and gave him a bloody lip. What a fine pair they are. A mass murderer and a lily-livered rat. As I've discussed in the four previous posts, nobody will support a military man who brutalizes a helpless prisoner. But that's how the armchair political generals and admirals want to characterize the SEALs' behavior in this case. Baloney. If McCabe actually did use strong methods to restrain the whining dog, which is hardly a proven fact, how delicately does the leftist claque expect a warrior to treat a vicious and undoubtedly recalcitrant prisoner who is being placed in the cage he so richly deserves? Do they think this is a game on the Bible school playground?

Prior to the heat put on the military prosecutors and their fellow-travelers in the Pentagon, the witness list for the Navy included the master-at-arms and the corroborating witness. The automatic civilian right of the SEALs to call the prime witness who accused them of brutality and collusion were not going to be allowed, let alone five witnesses who would refute everything they said. So much pressure and publicity has brought this travesty to light that the persecutors were forced to yield to the norms that any American has the right to expect, military or civilian.

In addition, McCabe has never wavered in his denial of any wrongdoing. His exact words are "I did not assault nor did I see anyone assault or abuse Abed." Although it cannot be used in court, McCabe took a polygraph test at an independent institution, and answered the very simple and direct question "did you strike Abed" with a clear "no." The test indicated he was telling the truth. This clear abuse of military discretion and politicization of the military courts has drawn national attention. The FaceBook page "Support the Navy SEALs who Captured Ahmed Hashim Abed" has 120,000 followers, and "Americans United Against the Prosecution of Three Navy SEALs" has over a quarter-million.

They're not going to be able to hide this damnable treatment of an American hero under a Pentagon rock. The SEALs had ample opportunity to merely kill the Islamofascist murderer. They had just completed a picture-perfect operation, using local intelligence to capture the slimebag in his bed, march him off to an awaiting helicopter and leave the area without firing a shot. Yet now we're expected to believe that men so cool and professional in the middle of a war zone suddenly lost all control and brutalized a helpless prisoner when everybody was safely out of harm's way.

Maj. Gen. Cleveland is merely covering his political arse, just as he did in first defending his half-assed investigation into the matter. He had cavalierly dismissed the formal concerns of multiple members of Congress who questioned the decision to prosecute brave warriors on such flimsy evidence. He ignored their mention of the Al Qaeda instructions for all terrorists to wound themselves if possible and claim they were beaten by American personnel. They also demanded to know why the only physical injury on Abed of a punch in the stomach is a cut to the inside of his lip. Cleveland and his point-men must have studied different anatomy books from the rest of us.

One thing is sure. The SEALs will be tried long before the mass murderer is even told if and when he'll have a trial of his own. Meanwhile, the SEALs are treated as ordinary military defendants while Abed feasts on his carefully-prepared halal meals, is given a nice clean rug on which to pray five times a day to Mecca for the destruction of Israel, America and all infidels, reads his Koran untouched by infidel hands, and gloats at the murders he has committed and the heroes he as caused to be put on trial. This is what the Obama administration and its political hacks in the Pentagon call "justice."

I WISH EVERYONE A JOYOUS EASTER.

And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen.
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Film School Follies: Part 18 – Dancing into the Fire

By ScottDS
While we were busy with Natural Born Canadians, two other 35mm films were in pre-production. One was Shooting for the Moon, but since the first thing I did after Canadians was go home for a week-long vacation, I can't say what happened on that set one way or another. All I know is, when we finally watched all three films back to back to back, somehow Canadians was no longer "the worst film in our class" anymore. The other film in prep was In the Nude. At the last minute, I had decided to toss my directing hat into the Canadians ring, knowing that Mike (my co-writer) would most likely be given the directing reins on Nude and would do a fine job.

The following consists of iChat conversations Mike and I had over the span of three days in February. And yes, I transcribed all of this!

No Nudity Required: The Application Process

In the Nude tells the story of Scooter (ostensibly based on me) who has a crush on Anna, a girl in his class. Anna has developed some risqué photos and accidentally leaves them in the school photo lab after everyone's forced to evacuate when the fire alarm goes off. Scooter and his two friends, Matt and Ronnie, decide to break into the photo lab after hours to get a look at the photos.

Scott: "I'm sure there were a ton of scripts written that we never heard about but the big thing was that ours just seemed to have this buzz and people were always interested in it and were looking forward to it and everyone thought it would get made."

Mike: "I wouldn't say that. I think, within our circle of friends... people that knew it, there was a buzz. The [big] buzz didn't happen until the script got out." (After Spoon distributed copies of all three 35mm scripts to the class, people started coming up to us and asking questions about it.)

Scott: "Even then I just remember it was nice to be a part of something that people – once it got out, anyway – that people sort of dug. Maybe if it had been something different and not based on something at Full Sail [that] was about us, maybe people would've felt differently but it had a good thing going on."

Mike: "Yeah. People responded pretty well to it."

Scott: "How did you go about putting your portfolio together, if you remember?"

Mike: "I went out and bought a really nice binder and I wanted to do this neat thing where I created this little logo. I was drawing in Windy's [business] class – that's how much fun it was in [her] class – and I drew this little face that I thought kinda looked like me. I [later] did it in Photoshop and used it as a giant watermark on each page, and then I typed all my info over that. And then what I did was, my [ex-] brother-in-law is in advertising and they use a lot of vellum so I turned [all my paperwork] into PDF files and I e-mailed them to him. He printed them out and FedExed them to me. And then I typed this from the heart 'Why I should direct' [cover letter] and it was a little bit aggressive but it really spoke to how I felt. And I guess I got the job. I do remember in hindsight thinking it probably wouldn't have taken much to get the job!"

A Hard Place and a Rock: The Co-Director and the Faculty Producer

One Full Sail policy that most of us didn't like was their policy of assigning films to more than one director. Canadians had three, including myself. Moon had two (I heard it didn't go too well), and Nude also had two: Mike and another guy named Ryan who will now be known as Ryan #2 (as opposed to the Ryan who worked with me on Canadians).

Scott: "I know no one was a big fan of multiple directors but you guys lucked out with only two. Do you recall when Ryan #2 was first announced?"

Mike: "I didn't know Ryan #2 from Adam when he was announced [...] so it was really like meeting someone out of the blue and [saying], 'I need your help to make this dream of mine come true.' It wasn't the best feeling but I wasn't upset about it for the longest time before [the unpleasantness]. Before that, I was very pleased because there were only two of us, which was fantastic and we seemed to be on the same page [and] I have to give him credit [for that]. It was just in certain areas where he was a little inexperienced and was trying to do things he had seen others do but didn't understand why. He just thought those things would be cool but you have to know why you're doing something."

Scott: "I think if I had selected Nude instead of Canadians and if it had been you, me, and Ryan #2... you and I probably would've been okay but I'm not sure how Ryan #2 would've dealt with the two heavyweights [not physically] who wrote the script."

Mike: "It wouldn't have been the best situation. But if it were you and I, I don't think we would've split days. I think we would've directed together. (All of the 35mm directors split days – X on day 1, Y on day 2, etc. – and did not, in fact, direct together.) This isn't to speak highly of myself but I didn't need anyone to direct In the Nude with me and giving it up to Ryan #2 was difficult at times because he wasn't up for it... so it wasn't the easiest thing in the world."

The faculty producer of In the Nude was a no-nonsense woman named Debbie. A professional script supervisor who was listed in local film guides, Debbie had taught Steve and me the finer points of script supervision in 16mm and was seen in a previous class' making-of documentary, Missing Something, where she was portrayed in a less than flattering light.

Mike: "I was happy, to be honest with you, because even though I saw her be a hard-ass [in the documentary], I was familiar with her, whereas just by looking at Katie, I didn't feel like she was going to be of much use. With Debbie, at least there was a familiarity and what I saw in that [documentary] was not someone who was being abusive or anything. I just saw someone who was like, 'Hey, you weren't getting the job done' and I'm fine with that."

Below, Above, and Straddling the Line: Meet the Crew

The unit production manager on Nude was a guy named Laz (for short). I didn't know him that well and I still don't.

Mike: "There were bad moments and there were good moments. Laz was really unnecessary because Paul [1st A.D. and Sanguinity veteran] and I had it but what Laz ended up doing was kind of what a TV producer does. He did a lot of the dirty work. He just interfered sometimes with scheduling... our dealings with the actors... and with the catering and stuff like that. There was one night where he was interfering with our schedule so Steve [script supervisor and Sanguinity veteran], Paul, and I talked about it and we were ready to have him removed. It was Paul who convinced me to let him handle it because I was like, 'I can't go forward with Laz interfering like this.' My big thing wasn't, 'It's my movie! You can't mess with it!' My big thing was, 'We're trying to learn to be professionals. We have to stay in our roles.' The thing is Laz did [his job] well but he interfered because he didn't see the point to certain things we were doing. I didn't particularly want to work with him again [after 16mm]. [But] in the end it worked and he was game to do the things we asked him to do."

Scott: "Dave was announced as your production coordinator and that lasted for many minutes." (Dave left Nude to serve as script supervisor on Canadians.)

Mike: "I think he went to our first production meeting. I [later] said, 'Screw him. We don't need him.' But I do remember thinking that I would've liked to have someone there as a buffer for Laz. Had there been an extra person between Laz and us, some of those [bad] moments may have been avoided."

Just like they did with Canadians, they announced the crew roster for In the Nude in Rob's class. I already knew Mike would keep the VTR/playback operator position open for me and that's what I did after coming back from my vacation.

Mike: "There was a great crew at the top because... Paul was our 1st A.D. but then we had Seth and Phil... they were fantastic. (Phil was the casting director and later served as an additional 1st A.D. with Seth serving as his 2nd A.D.) Seth was like, 'Whatever I have to do, I'll do it' and he did it well. And Phil wasn't from [our] group of friends but he was somebody who was very serious: 'What needs to get done gets done.' Those two A.D.s were fantastic. They did their job well, they did what they had to do, and they never stepped out of line. They handled the talent, they worked in casting... I could not have made the movie as well as I did without them."

Scott: "And Justin as your director of photography?"

Mike: "Justin, as we've come to know him over the years, is a great guy. He really knew his stuff. He knew the film stocks, he understood everything, and so he was a great person to have there. But Justin has his moments [and] if he doesn't agree with what you're doing, he can get a little bitchy. He's kind of grown out of that [and] there were very few moments where Justin and I had any issues. Mainly it was that one day on the set when we were doing the reshoots at the end of my second day to cover stuff that Ryan #2 hadn't covered. I just overruled him there in front of everybody and he had a little bit of a tantrum in front of the crew but everything was fine. We did it, we got it done, the shots worked – end of story. But never did I think, 'Oh, I wish I had someone else.' I was very happy with Justin."

Scott: "And if you were happy with Justin, then you must've been very happy with Chris (the genius) as production designer."

Mike: "There was a point where Chris went from, 'Oh my God. What am I doing here? I want to be on Canadians' to 'This is kind of cool' to 'I'm so glad I was on In the Nude!' I think at first he was not happy at all that he was there, in the sense that all of his friends were on the other film. I don't think he knew what to make of me at first but that being said, we made a fantastic team and he is awesome. He was probably the most gifted person in our whole class – I think we all kind of conceded that. I kind of pushed him a little bit and let's not forget that even though he's medicated, he suffers from severe ADD and there were times where I had to rein that in. But we had a lot of fun and I love Chris and it was a pleasure seeing him recently."

Scott: "In retrospect, he was much better off with you guys because of the amount of design and creativity involved, not just in the sets but matching locations and that [custom-built] camera rig to shoot inside the ducts [which is how our heroes sneak into the photo lab]. I don't know how he would've reacted to our bull---- on Canadians and our sets wouldn't have required as much. Maybe Chris would've pressed Ryan to shoot on location. At graduation when I won that bull---- set design award, I told Chris afterwards, 'This is yours!' But considering Hitchcock never won an Oscar, that works! Moving on... Steve as script supervisor?"

Mike: "I can't say I relied on him too much but he was my friend on the crew and he was... as kooky and nutty as Steve is, I always found him to be the calm voice of reason in our productions and I consulted with him as much as I could. He was always for what we were doing [and] he may have had some input here and there. I always tried to include him in everything. I invited him to every meeting, as I did [with] Justin. I don't think that happened on every other production.

Scott: "I'm pretty sure that Matt, maybe by virtue of just being Ryan's roommate… I'm pretty sure Matt tagged along to most of our meetings [on Canadians], not when we were working on the script but Matt was usually always a constant and by the time the s--- hit the fan, Matt was one of the few where it was like, 'Okay, Matt's good! We know he's okay and he won't do this or that!' And the fact that other people on the crew [maybe] didn't like [working with] him sort of solidified that for us."

Mike: "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Scott: "Exactly! Audio... who cares? Eliezer and Carlo."

Mike: "Audio was a big problem. I trusted Eliezer and thought that he was into what he was doing. And no, they screwed up our whole movie. And they taught me a valuable lesson if I ever direct anything in the future which is: I'm gonna wear headphones the whole f---ing time. I'm gonna be hearing everything [the sound guys] are hearing the whole f---ing time. You can quote that."

Scott: "Don't mince words, Bones. What do you really think? Diane as art director?"

Mike: "Everything I told her to get, she got. She was kind of Laz' lackey... I don't know why that ended up happening. I think Laz got very hands on and if we needed to look for clothes and costumes, he went and looked for them but Diane was kind of Laz and Chris' lackey and she did her job well. I told her I wanted a trucker hat [emblazoned with a non sequitur phrase: "kaboontang"] and she got it for me."

Scott: "I don't know how closely you worked with any of the camera guys individually: Ed, [another] Ryan, Tony, Nick, and Ricky."

Mike: "The camera guys were great. There wasn't a lot of communication with them during pre-pro. Nick was one of the ones who suggested a couple of changes in that first script meeting where I said, 'Does anyone have any ideas? I'll listen to them now' and [his suggestions] actually made it in. But during production, I worked very closely with them. Every shot we got, I was always like, 'Good job. You guys are awesome.' I felt like they were all very happy to be on the shoot, they liked working with Justin, and I think they liked working with me.

Scott: "At least you all had that relationship. By the time we started shooting [on NBC], I couldn't trust half of our camera crew! And it's not like you found out Tony was rewriting the script behind your back with Laz. [...] What about Mike #2 as gaffer?"

Mike: "That was [a case of] 'We care about him; let's give him something to do.' He relied a lot on others. Mike #2's that guy... you want him around and he's got all the smarts in the world but… did he really do anything? No. But he tried."

Next week: pre-production, script revisions, Chris goes to work, and a Canadians camera operator is cast in the lead role with mixed results.

To Be Continued...

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Commentarama Book Club -- Next Date

Our next book club meeting will be on Wednesday April 21, 2010 at 8:00 PM (EST). The book is "Game Change" by John Heileman and Mark Halperin. It's about the 2008 Presidential election and it sounds quite interesting. Here is an excerpt about John and Elizabeth Edwards. This will be on the year-end test. See you there! [+] Read More...

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Obama Wields Big Stick--Backwards

Who knew that Barack Obama would become the Teddy Roosevelt of the 21st Century? Like Teddy, Barack is wielding that big stick in Latin America. Teddy wielded it against repressive regimes and for the interests of the United States. Unfortunately, Barack is using it in exactly the opposite direction. We've discussed Obama's support of power-grabbers in Honduras in the past on this site. We thought it was over. We were wrong.

The Obamists and their socialist cohorts decided last year that Honduras could not exercise its sovereign power to protect its own constitution because it would result in ousting the next banana republic president-for-life and insult his good friend, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Manuel Zelaya violated the clear terms of the Honduran constitution by attempting to change the voting and election rules during his term of office. The Honduran legislature and the Honduran supreme court exercised their powers under that constitution to remove Zelaya from office. Fellow socialist Barack Obama ordered the State Department to go into high gear and mend Honduras's constitutional ways by reinstating the wannabe future dictator.

Honduras ducked Obama's big stick and proceeded with its originally-scheduled exercise of constitutional sovereignty, installed an interim president according to the rule of law, and expelled Zelaya. Despite Zelaya hiding out in the Brazilian embassy (imagining Israeli plots to kill him by using poison gas from an invisible Israeli encampment outside the Brazilian embassy) and Hugo Chavez threatening Honduras with his nonexistent Venezuelan air force, the Hondurans stood their ground.

So the American messiah sent teams of fellow leftists from the State Department to work out a compromise which would have reinstalled Zelaya pending the next election. Since Zelaya, like his friend Chavez, believes in the rule of banana republic democracy--one man, one vote, one time--the Hondurans refused to cooperate or be bullied by a president from the north who doesn't even understand his own Constitution, let alone Honduras's. Obama and his leftist friends were publicly humiliated, and bullies don't like to be humiliated. The elections went forward, violence was minimal, the people made their constitutional choice, and for once, Obama's support of a leftist dictator went straight to hell.

But bullies don't give up easily. After being beaten fair and square, they sneak off, plot, nurse their grievances, and decide on a plan to gain the upper hand. Obama is no exception. It has now been four months since the Honduran elections, and the Honduran people are perfectly happy with their choices. But the Obamabully is determined to destabilize Honduras, and put the leftist Zelaya back in power from his exile in the Dominican Republic. It's a two-prong attack.

First, there are the subversive activities of Obama's senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs in the National Security Council, Dan Restrepo. He is actively attempting to undermine the current constitutional government of Honduras. He has made the sovereign power of a constitutional republic the target for Obama propaganda. During the attempt to force Hondurans to accept a compromise that violated both the Honduran constitution and the sovereign rights of Honduras, Restrepo said: "The Republicans were using the administration's support for Zelaya, (an ally of Venezuelan Hugo Chavez) against the Democrats. It's not going to work because we [the Democrats] have the power and would be keeping it for a long time." In other words, the need to retain Democrat power in the US outweighed any interest Honduras itself might have in conducting a sovereign and constitutional republican form of government.

Restrepo's ally in place is US ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens. Llorens has been agitating in the Honduran capital for the ongoing US demand that Zelaya be allowed to return. He has been in constant contact with the Honduran opposition (which does not necessarily support Zelaya either) to get them to convince the majority of the Honduran Congress (a unicameral legislature) to order a new election and call Zelaya back to Honduras (another purely illegal act under the Honduran constitution). It's a nefarious plot by the two Obamists. They know it's unlikely that they could ever convince the legislature to do anything so lawless and contrary to the will of the Honduran people, but it could accomplish the secondary goal--to destabilize the current Honduran government.

Llorens is so blatant in his attempts that many Hondurans have now dubbed him "Obama's proconsul in Honduras." Restrepo, equally blatant, inept and obnoxious has irritated even many of the moderate-leftist members of the Organization of American States. Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva would like to see Obama and Chavez succeed in destabilizing the Honduran government, but even he has doubts about Restrepo's high-handedness.

On the home front, Obama's State Department early on in the bullying pulled the visas of dozens of pro-constitution supporters of the Honduran legislature and supreme court. Later, the administration started pulling the visas of Honduran businessmen who were largely apolitical, but refused to support the US position on restoring Zelaya to power. Since the Honduran election, the war of attrition has gone on. The day before the new Honduran president, Porfirio Lobo, was inaugurated, the State Department pulled the visas of somewhere between fifty and sixty diplomats who had merely suffered the misfortune of being appointed by interim Honduran president Micheletti.

Restrepo (and quite possibly Llorens) was involved directly in meetings with the Zelayistas who had attempted to overthrow the interim Micheletti administration as head of the winning party. If they could weaken his hold on what was becoming the majority party, he could weaken the party itself, and possibly bring in a pro-Zelaya coalition in its place. That also didn't work. But it did produce a small victory for the wounded Obamists. New president Lobo has indicated (not verified) to Salvadoran president Mauricio Funes that he (Lobo) would allow Zelaya to return in exchange for reinstituted US foreign aid. This allegedly occurred when Lobo met behind closed doors with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

There's the destabilization at work. Bribe a country that needs US aid, and get a newly-elected and inexperienced chief executive to cave in without consulting the important members of his own party. The result is that the Honduran state minister of security has declared publicly that if Zelaya returns against the wishes of the legislature and the supreme court, he will be arrested. Divide and conquer.

Obama's ultimate hope is that he can achieve so much dissension in Honduras that the current administration will be unable to accomplish anything. At the same time it stirs up the notoriously violent and oppressive Zelayistas. If the plan is successful, the Zelayistas can pull whatever destablizing shenanigans they choose, get the support they need from Obama and Chavez, and bring the Zelayistas back into power somewhat constitutionally at the next regular election. And that would put yet another leftist wannabe president for life back on the road to permanent power.

Obama sees the American Constitution as a troublesome document that gets in the way of his fundamentally transforming the nation. It would be both sad and ironic if a small nation in Latin American ended up defying Obama and proving that the form of constitutional government and the rule of law put together by the American Founding Fathers can exist somewhere, even if it isn't in Obama's America.
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The Problem With Hollywood Villains

These days, Hollywood villains suck. You know I’m right. They’ve all become cartoon villains. . . psychopathic Snidely Whiplashes. How did this happen? Actually, it’s simple. For all of its talk about “strong characters,” modern Hollywood doesn’t understand the first thing about human motivations. That’s the problem.

Why does motivation matter? Because conflict drives the story, and motivation defines the conflict. This is a critical point to understand. It’s not the object of the conflict that matters, it’s the motivation for the conflict.

The object of the conflict simply provides the background, a few details of how the characters’ lines will work and maybe a few extra hurdles that will be encountered. The object does not drive the story.

Consider, for example, the classic cops and robbers story. The object is whatever they are trying to steal or kill or whatever. Does it fundamentally change the story if they are robbing a bank rather than a casino or a jewelry store or even a pet store? No, it doesn’t. The conflict is the same in each case. Is there a difference between killing a witness, a businessman, a congressman or a foreign dignitary? Nope. What if two people are competing for the affections of a third? Would it change the story if they were competing for a man or a woman, friendship instead of love, respect or employment? Nope.

Indeed, in each of these instances, you could swap objects with very little change to the underlying story, just as you could swap time periods, races or genders of the characters, or any other number of details. But motivations are different. Change the motivation and the entire nature of the story changes.

The reason for this is simple, and it goes back to what I said the other day about humans judging stories based on emotion rather than logic. With rare exceptions, the object of the conflict does not trigger an emotional response in us. Do you care that someone might rob a bank, or kill a witness, or that aliens are fighting a war over Smurf 7? Not really. On occasion, a film might stumble into something that means something to you, like if you’re a bank aficionado, but that’s just dumb luck.

Where a story becomes meaningful to us, is when we start to learn of the character’s motivations. That’s when we begin to judge who is right and who is wrong, and we start to take sides. That’s the point that you become invested in the story, and it’s the motivations that do it.

And when it comes to motivations, the villain’s motivation is almost always the most important. It is the villain who gives the story meaning and sets everything into motion. If the villain’s motives are pedestrian or nonexistent, then the story is handicapped from the get-go.

Unfortunately, Hollywood is all about pedestrian villains these days. Despite its protestations to the contrary, Hollywood is afraid to be the slightest bit complicated or to delve into “shades of gray.” It wants villains who are undeniably evil, and it has decided that it’s safest to skip the motivation question -- as that may unintentionally inspire sympathy -- and to just define the villain by letting them commit a few clearly “villainous” act. Thus, Hollywood requires its modern villains to ooze evil from their pores. They must be sociopathic and psychopathic. They need to yell and scream and rant and do things reserved for villains, like kicking puppies and shooting uppity henchmen. And in those rare moments where they are called upon to provide a motivation, they mumble something about power or money.

The perfect example of this is Al Pacino in Devil’s Advocate, where Pacino takes the greatest threat to the human race and turns him into a goofball. His Satan is loud and obnoxious and spews nonsensical dialog, he’s way over the top. But he’s neither effective nor menacing, nor does he ever make sense. Indeed, he has no plan worth mentioning -- "I'm going to run a law firm to mess with New York City!" Yeah, ok, yawn. He's taken the most evil, most interesting character available and turned him into that annoying, drunk guy you wanted to punch at that party in college, not something you should fear.

What Hollywood’s missing by giving up on motivations are the truly interesting bad guys. Think of some of the best film villains and what motivated them:

• Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty who had a tremendous ego and could stand no disrespect.

• Sheriff “Little Bill” Daggett in Unforgiven, who thought he was the good guy.

• The Terminator in any of its incarnations, which was motivated simply by relentlessly following its orders.

• Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, who abused her power because she could and because she despised the people under her care.

• Norman Bates in Psycho, who was compelled to kill people by the psychological trauma of his relationship with his mother.

• HAL 9000 in 2001, who couldn’t resolve a conflict in his programming.

• Michael Corleone in The Godfather, whose problem was his lack of humanity.

• Darth Vader (pre-whiny Hayden Christensen), who thought he was defending the Empire against rebels bent on destroying it.

Do you notice something in this list? What made these characters memorable wasn’t what they did, it was why they did what they did. That’s why we remember them. And even more interestingly, none of these villains thought they were evil.

In the real world, evil people don’t think they are evil. Hitler never thought of himself as the bad guy, he viewed himself as the savior of the German people. Pelosi doesn’t think of herself as evil, she genuinely thinks her lies and demonizations will make a better society. Few humans do things that they consciously believe to be wrong or evil -- the human mind simply isn’t built that way. We either don’t do these things, or we justify that behavior to ourselves so that we can maintain our belief that we are doing the right thing.

This is something Hollywood no longer understands. In the past (as evidenced by the list above -- note the absence of modern villains from the list), Hollywood recognized that people could do evil, despite believing that they were doing the right thing. But, for the most part, modern Hollywood doesn’t recognize this aspect of evil anymore. It prefers to have its villains prance around declaring how evil they are.

Why do I think Hollywood has come to this? In all honesty, I blame liberalism.

The problem with liberals is that they seem incapable of realizing that other people have different views. Indeed, the one trait that almost every liberal I've ever met shares is a belief that their views are right AND that everyone knows they are right, and that those who disagree with them do so only for personal gain. The idea of genuine disagreements simply don't enter their consciousness.

Thus, when they set about creating villains, they realize that they would never act the way the villain does, thus they start from the premise that the villain must know that they are evil. And that is where the problem begins. Once you begin with the idea that your villain knows they are evil, you deprive them of all motivation except personal gain. From there, it's only a hop, skip and a jump to Clichéland, with carbon copy villains prancing around trying to show the audience that they are fully aware of how evil they are.

Sadly, until Hollywood wakes up to the need to think about their villain’s motivations, and to realize that no villain would see themselves as evil, we’re doomed to keep getting shallow movies with clichéd conflicts.

Ug.

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The Price of Disasters

There are two prices to be paid in the event of natural disasters. One is the human toll, the other the financial losses. US News and World Report recently did an interesting article on how the two types of losses don't necessarily work in parallel.

Chile and Haiti both recently experienced devastating earthquakes. America experienced the horror of Hurricane Katrina. As populations increase, so do the numbers of human beings moving into potential natural disaster areas. The photograph shows a little of the two types of losses in the capital of Haiti. The crumbling building is the presidential palace with human sufferers on the lawn and an American rescue helicopter hovering overhead.

Over the past ten years, the world has suffered the costliest natural disasters in history, but not necessarily in the same places nor in the same ratios. Haiti suffered a big quake that resulted in an immense human loss. Chile suffered an even larger earthquake (perhaps the strongest in more than half a century), but the loss of life was relatively low. At the same time, and over the past several decades, financial losses have increased at a rate of approximately 5% annually in natural disaster zones--but not human deaths. As Matthew Bandyk reports: "While the economic cost of disasters has been rising, a perhaps more important value--the death toll--has been falling. From 1900 to 2003, 62 million deaths resulted from natural disasters throughout the world. But 85 percent of those deaths occurred between 1900 and 1950."

Where is this disparity showing up most clearly? A study at the UCLA Institute of the Environment, helmed by professor Matthew Kahn seems to answer that question. The human losses occur most heavily in areas of the world where there are the largest concentrations of poverty. It had been assumed prior to the study that the correlation existed in that poor countries tend to be located in the areas most subject to natural disasters. Kahn seemed to notice that poor countries seem inherently more vulnerable to severe human losses no matter where they are located. Bangladesh, for instance, is located in a hurricane and flood zone. Haiti, on the other hand, experiences rare instances of hurricanes and floods, and is not in a particularly active earthquake zone.

Kahn's conclusion was that higher death tolls in some nations was not explained by a larger number of catastrophes or severe earthquakes, floods, droughts, or other shocks. "After controlling for the number of natural disasters and the intensity of those disasters, wealth was the most important factor in determining why some nations have higher death tolls from disasters than others." Even more detailed analysis showed that "if a country's gross domestic product per capita increased from $2,000 to $14,000,that country would have 764 fewer deaths from natural disasters every year."

At $14,700, Chile suffered far, far fewer human losses than Haiti at $1,300. As Kahn puts it: "In Chile, we know that they had better building codes [which result in higher construction costs]. A richer guy can afford a home built from better materials with better structural integrity. In Haiti, many houses were built with cruddy materials."

But that doesn't tell the whole story. Katrina caused far fewer deaths than the earthquake in Haiti, but it created $111 billion dollars more in estimated financial losses and reconstruction costs than that estimated for Haiti. Kahn explains that very simply: "Being richer also means that there is more wealth to destroy." The poorest of New Orleans residents lived well above the economic level of all but the very richest of Haitians. Harvard Business School professor Eric Werker adds to that assessment: "Even as disaster mitigation lowers the total percentage of capital stock that is damaged, when the capital stock itself goes up, it's possible that the total damage goes up as well."

California experienced a stronger earthquake than Haiti in 1989. But California was a wealthy state with largely modern (and expensive) infrastructure. By Haitian standards, California is still a rich state. The quake did immense financial damage to the heavily-populated Bay Area, but resulted in comparatively few deaths (most as the result of a badly-planned and archaic piggyback freeway collapse).

But even such logical analyses by college professors are not going to be free from the mantra of "climate change" (formally known as global warming). The professors conclude that with climate change, storms and droughts will get worse, and even if populations become wealthier and better prepared, it won't be enough to keep up with the damage caused naturally. Amazingly, after paying proper obeisance to "climate change," they both assume that with more economic growth and wealth, improved economies can help to prepare for those natural disasters. In other words, they'll be more expensive financially, but less expensive in terms of human losses.

Still, there are limits to what money alone can do to improve the future lot of poor people caught in natural disasters. Wealthy nations, most notably the United States, are pouring billions into the cause of the Haiti disaster. But how much good will that do in the long run? Like the failed financial bailouts domestically, the handouts to Haiti can produce both a temporary euphoria while producing long-term dependence on the good nature of others. Werker says: "Just as large financial institutions know that, since they are 'too big to fail,' the government will bail them out in a crisis [despite their poor planning and profligacy], so too can individuals or even governments expect to be bailed out in the event of a natural disaster."

That latter expectation does not lead toward sound planning and good investment for the future. Why plan well if poor planning and loosened-belts have no serious consequences? In the case of natural disasters, that will result in continued large human losses with the unfortunate addition of the necessity of replacing the wasted money [so generously given to them previously] when the next natural disaster strikes. So Werker suggests that charitable donations can be a very good thing so long as countries and citizens with money to give shift their priorities.

Charity is still charity, even when it comes with strings attached. Says Werker: "It's probably safe to say that as a whole, the international community is too focused on relief over prevention. Donors [should] give money to institutions that will allow poor countries more of the same advantages that rich countries can afford: building codes and enforcement, dikes, levees, early-warning systems for tsunamis, and basic infrastructure like irrigation and rural road maintenance to combat drought."

Although Werker did not directly address the Haiti earthquake by itself, he certainly touched on it in his suggestion regarding building codes and enforcement. After the medical care has been rendered from the funds of charities and the US government, what money is left (and even more) should be spent on building safe homes, hospitals, and other infrastructure. But that money is not a bottomless well. Sooner or later, Haiti, like many other nations, is going to have to get its priorities straight, get its economy in gear, and learn to plan for the future using their own funds. How many times can we continue to provide new livers for patients who refuse to stop their alcoholic ways? We're a generous people, but even charity has its limits.
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San Francisco Diary--Journal Of An Exile

Well, the weather has turned gloomy again, but that's normal for spring in San Francisco. Our spring tends to break out in sunshine and blue skies a bit later than in the rest of the state. The birds are already beginning to gather, though. But mostly it's crows and sparrows. Later, we'll get the blue jays and hummingbirds, along with the nesting doves. Of course only about one in four nesting doves succeed, because they're attacked by the local pigeons. Somewhat appropriately, the most common dove in San Francisco is the mourning dove.

NOTE: You may be surprised to find out that not all San Francisco Chronicle writers are leftists. Debra J. Saunders is not only a conservative, but she's a tough cookie as well. Needless to say, as a conservative in San Francisco, she gets more than her share of nasty e-mails, letters, insults, and threats. So on Monday, she wrote a column on the leftist hysteria over some alleged insults and low-level "threats" received or suffered by the poor, sensitive, beleaguered Democrats. "When activists break the law protesting Republican policies, it is because lefties care so much. But when conservatives act likewise, it's because they are loudmouths and louts," says Ms. Saunders.

She was particularly amused by the gasping over Sarah Palin's "don't retreat, instead--reload." And then, in the most violent act of all, Palin added "a map highlighting weak Democratic districts that conservatives should target with a crosshair symbol." Of course, "target" and "battleground" have been used for years by both ends of the political spectrum, but only now has the left discovered that Republicans actually intend to kill them. Hell, there's even a song with the words "love is a battlefield." Next, the Democrats will want to eliminate "love" from the lexicon lest some enraged conservative love a lefty to death.

For the locals, Ms. Saunders points out that Obama and the cowering Democrats are far more horrified by an occasional harsh (and perhaps even profane) criticism of Obamacare "than, say, students who have vandalized UC Berkeley property, including the chancellor's home, or by violent anti-Bush protests." And she adds that "being a victim is great for business, too. As Pelosi said Monday, the GOP 'really helps with my fundraising'."

"On Saturday, authorities arrested a Philadelphia man for threatening House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Virginia). Apparently Norman Leboon videotaped his threat to kill Cantor and his 'cupcake evil wife' and children, and was so impressed with himself that he posted his threat on the Internet." She concludes: "Yet somehow, threats made against Democrats are supposed to reflect on the right. Democrats have a story line, and they'll make the facts fit it. When the facts don't fit, there is no story." Selective rage is used to serve offended Democrats by the MSM and Demogogues, but when a true left-winger makes a criminal death threat, or bites off the finger of an Obamacare opponent, or beats down an elderly black man who opposed Obamacare, move on, nothing to see here.

NOTE: Oh, the violence. Why are all these horrible right-wing nutjobs threatening those kind and gentle Democrats? For instance, Karl Rove was attempting to make a brief speech at a Beverly Hills book-signing, and was shouted down and physically threatened by antiwar protesters and Code Pink. Code Pink co-founder approached Rove with a pair of handcuffs, threatening to arrest him as a war criminal. The hecklers became so loud and unruly that he could not finish speaking, so he finally left in disgust.

Oh, wait. Rove isn't a gentle Democrat. Never mind, the threats of violence were OK after all. On the other hand, Rove received a fairly warm reception (of the good kind) here in the Bay Area suburb of Lafayette. Rove made an appearance there this week, and was well-received even by Republicans who were attentive when he went off on the Republican National Committee and its recent reimbursement for a $2,000 expense at a Hollywood strip club. The attendees were largely holding their copies of Rove's new book Courage and Consequences waiting for his signature on the same book he got flak for in Beverly Hills. In case you haven't read about that scandal, Orange County (California) political operative Erik Brown received reimbursement from the RNC for a fundraiser at Voyeurs, a West Hollywood S&M topless dancing and simulated lesbian sex joint.

Rove was critical of the expenditure, but more critical of the way the RNC continues to throw money around carelessly and without carefully determining where the expenditures are going. "The chairman of the Republican National Committee (Michael Steele), for good or ill, is the steward of the party's money" said Rove, "and whenever you have whatever lax controls are down in the bowels of the buiding so that somebody can submit a $2,000 voucher for entertainment at Voyeurs, somebody ought to go check the thesaurus and find out what that means." The staffer who authorized the reimbursement to Brown was fired Monday, so I guess Steele is listening.

The usual suspects gathered outside the Lafayette Veterans Memorial Hall, but the locals and the police were able to keep them outside where they couldn't interrupt the proceedings. Over 400 people attended the meeting, and when he entered the hall, he was greeted with a standing ovation. He also got cheers and applause whenever he mentioned the difficult decisions made by his boss, George Bush. Rove spoke mostly about the war on terror, and the crowd was less enthusiastic when Rove spoke of some of the big government programs that Bush allowed to slip past him when he misplaced his veto pen for most of his administration.

NOTE: The Chronicle has discovered to its horror that as national death sentence statistics have decreased, California's have risen. In 2009, death sentences rose to 29, the highest in over a decade. Amazing--the state with the highest population and a statewide violent crime rate increase, is among the states imposing more death sentences than, say, Colorado. Most of the death sentences were imposed in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties according to the ACLU. Those counties have extremely high numbers of illegal immigrants, so you can guess where their indignation is heading.

Only two death penalties were handed down in the Bay Area, and since both are white males, the ACLU doesn't seem to be particularly concerned beyond its basic opposition to the death penalty. The Chronicle seems to agree that the decline in other states is due largely to public concerns about wrongful convictions and the "high costs of capital punishment." The ACLU has somehow determined that capital punishment is costing California $137 million annually, plus another $95 million a year if it is going to cut appeals times to the national average.

Well, capital punishment costs nothing if the execution is never (or rarely) carried out. The California appellate courts accept nearly any nonsensical procedural appeal sent their way, resulting in multiple relitigations of cases which finally, after years and millions of dollars finally make it to the state supreme court where they're routinely reversed. But the ACLU has outside help as well. The Ninth Circuit federal judges decided in 2006 that lethal injection caused inmates "prolonged and excruciating pain" and halted all California executions. That alone is probably worth another twenty years of appeals.

The left, including some misguided religionists, think that life sentences without possibility of parole are the answer. Apparently, nobody has informed them that in California, there is no such thing, at least until the state constitution is amended to remove the governor's plenary power to commute, reprieve, and grant clemency. If the death penalty is applied at all, it takes place years or even decades after the original trial and sentencing. Justice delayed is justice denied, and that applies to the people of the state and the families of the victims, not just to the defendant.

The ACLU has concentrated on the alleged increase in the number of blacks and Latinos on Death Row. It's a false statistic, but it serves their racial profiling agenda. Per capita, the number of blacks has not increased statistically. The number of Latinos had indeed increased, in direct proportion to the increase in illegal immigration and the growth of violent Mexican and Central American gang members. Both of these demographics have a higher violent crime rate, so it should come as no surprise that they suffer more death penalties. But if racial prejudice were the measure, why are almost all such death penalties imposed in black-on-black, Latino-on-Latino, and gang-on-gang related murders?

NOTE: Californians are slowly awakening to the real costs of Obamacare, even here in the Bay Area--Nancy Pelosi's home base. Conservative estimates are that Medicaid (called Medi-Cal in California) will add between 1.5 million and 1.6 million new beneficiaries under the federal plan. That undoubtedly is a very low estimate. There are already 7 million official Medi-Cal recipients, not including the estimated numbers of illegals using the services. By adding "other persons" who are at 133% or lower in relation to the federal poverty level (a discussion all by itself), Obamacare will cost Californians billions.

Governor Schwarzenegger went to D.C. to beg the feds to make certain exceptions for California's financial mess. That takes nerve. He helped create the huge California deficits, and keeps piling on. And he fails to mention that California already permits Medi-Cal benefits at 106% of the federal poverty level. But nothing stops the relentless statist/socialist drumbeat in California. Anthony Wright, executive director for Health Access California, says: "What concerns me about how the governor has approached this is he sees Medicaid as a burden rather than a huge opportunity to bring in federal funds for our health system and our economy." Apparently he thinks that bringing in "huge federal funds" doesn't involve huge surrender to federal authority and huge surrender of state sovereignty. Alternatively, he probably just doesn't care. Bring on leviathan!

Despite all this, Nancy Pelosi had a big party with her lefty friends in the Bay Area to celebrate the dismantling of the Constitution and the impoverishment of all but the elite. RNC Michael Steele responded by saying that "it's time to start getting Nancy ready for the firing line this November." There go those violent Republicans again.
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What's On Your Bucket List?

"Yes, live! Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!"

       - from "Auntie Mame" by Patrick Dennis


If you saw the movie "The Bucket List" with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, then you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, let me explain. A "bucket list" is that mental or written list of experiences you want to have before you "kick the bucket", leave this earthly realm, meet your maker, receive your heavenly reward...you know...die.

What are you dying to do? Is it visiting the Great Pyramids in Egypt, or skydiving out of a perfectly good airplane? Maybe it's something more cerebral like reading the collected works of William Shakespeare or learning to say "hello" in 50 languages. If you are really adventurous you, could do what this woman did. Her bucket list included armed bank robbery. Hey, no judgment.

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New Google Fairness Policy

We are on blogger, which is a Google service. Unfortunately, that means we need to comply with Google policies. Google recently instituted a “fairness policy,” which requires “all politically oriented blogs to provide competing opinions.” We even got a letter from their lawyers about this. So until we can find a new place to host Commentarama, we are required to comply (with apologies):

Some say. . . China is our friend.

Some say. . . You can tax your way to prosperity.

Some say. . . John McCain is a true conservative, in the Charlie Crist mold.

Some say. . . Obama actually is paying attention to overseas events.

Some say. . . The Democrats are not a collection of angry tribes that pretend to rail against big business as they hand out goodies to and collect moneys from those same businesses.

Some say. . . ObamaCare will do all the things it won’t and won’t do the things it does.

Some say. . . Biden is not the world’s biggest idiot.

Some say. . . Unions have not become associations of lazy, corrupt thugs.

Some say. . . Star Trek stinks.

Some say. . . Pelosi is one sexy mama.

Some say. . . “Lawhawk” is not his real name.

Some say. . . Neil Kinnock stole his own family history from Biden’s imagination.

Some say. . . today is not April 1.

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