The Alarming Second Term of Barack Bush

CNN is struggling to figure out why President Obama's approval rating has dipped among young people.

Gee, what could the youth of America possibly have a problem with? Warrant-less surveillance, drone strikes on American citizens, overzealous federal prosecutors?

That's the Bush-era stuff we thought we'd gotten rid of when we made Obama President. Now he's seemingly embraced and expanded upon these violations of the constitution and America's liberties.

The question comes down to this: Do you trust your government will always use these "tools" in a responsible way without oversight? Okay. Now, imagine the other party is in charge. Do you still trust your government will always use these "tools" in a responsible way without oversight?

Keep in mind, the government is not one, seamless entity: it's comprised of individuals, most of whom we didn't vote for and don't know. Who's to say Jimmy CIA doesn't have a crush on some chick, and taps the hell out of her electronic communications JUST BECAUSE HE CAN? Without oversight, without warrants, anyone can do anything and nobody will ever find out about it.

This may be a-okay with the older folk, but for younger people, already chafing against their parents monitoring their activities, the specter of being watched by government babysitters for the rest of their lives is not a thrilling idea.

I May Have Figured Out Bob Benson, But Probably Not

Last season on AMC's Mad Men, Meagan Draper was the breakout character, stealing our hearts with "Zou Bisou Bisou," and basically looking hot in underwear. This season, a new character has emerged..... and while he has clearly stolen our favorite buxom redhead's heart, he's creeping the rest of us the fuck out.

I'm talking of course, about smiling Bob Benson.

Internet speculation has been running wild. Who is this happy, well-adjusted man, on a show where everyone is broken in some way? HE MUST BE A PSYCHO KILLER!!!

I was reading one blog's theory when a paragraph got me thinking (emphasis mine):

He's an Army-trained registered nurse, and he's available now only because he's brought my father back to full health.
-Bob Benson to Pete Campbell in "The Better Half"

Bob Benson is up to something. He's a good guy, sure. He loves to help out, and he's good at it. But he's also a liar.

When Bob sends a "royal spread" to Roger Sterling's mother's wake, Ken Cosgrove confronts him. "I was just thinking of when my father died," Benson told Cosgrove in "The Doorway," the premiere episode of Mad Men's sixth season. Unless Benson has two fathers -- one who has died, and another who has been brought back to full health by an Army-trained registered nurse -- he's being dishonest.

 Hold the phone. This blogger didn't realize it, but I think they just stumbled onto the answer. Who is Bon Benson?

He's Don Draper's son. The ACTUAL Don Draper's son.

We know Don Draper, ad man, is actually Dick Whitman, prostitute's kid. Don Draper died in Korea, and Dick stole his identity. Draper's real wife tracked Dick down, and they developed a mother-son kind of relationship. But we know absolutely nothing else about the Don Draper that died in the war. Maybe he had a child (a love child hidden from his wife, or known about but never mentioned). This child grew up, and discovered that someone was using his father's name. "When my father died," refers to when the young Bob Benson learned his dad died in the war. "An army-trained registered nurse brought my father back to full health"-- that's a reference to someone who helped Dick Whitman recover from his war injuries, something the young Bob Benson may have learned about later.

In this context, Bob Benson isn't a liar. He technically has two fathers, one dead and one who recovered, both named Don Draper.

I don't know if the timeline works out, but it's an interesting idea. Bob Benson knows Don's/Dick's secret.

This Revolution Should Not Be Televised

If you were a first time watcher of NBC's Revolution this week (and given the dwindling ratings, that's unlikely), you may have been confused. 

"I thought they had no power? No one seems to act like it."

Indeed, with all the helicopters, cars, automatic weapons, computer screens, glowing pendants, you'd think at least one of these characters or the people they meet who spent the last decade-plus in the dark would be fascinated and perhaps a bit hopeful by the newfound presence of electricity. But like the writers of the show, they seem to have stopped caring much about the concept of a world without power after the first few episodes. 

However, this is not a show undone by the lack of devotion to its core concept. It's a show undone by shoddy internal logic and woefully insufficient character building. This is a show where characters do mind-numbingly stupid things just to advance the plot. Where a flashback seemingly designed to inform a character's backstory (ala LOST) lasts about a minute and is largely cliched and pointless (the big baddie's backstory thus far? He once slept with his former best friend Miles's girlfriend. Ooh.)

Fine actors are absolutely wasted in their parts. The biggest example--besides Juliet from LOST seeming angrier to be on this disaster with each episode--was the show's use of Mark Pellegrino (Jacob from Lost). When he first appears, it's as little more than a background character... But his acting ability instantly marks him as someone more capable than the actor he shares scenes with, the one-dimensional Monroe. When he finally does get significant lines in the script, it's to explain that he's "one of Monroe's oldest and closest friends," something not even hinted at in the previous episodes. Pellegrino is so good he actually sells it with the hurt, wounded look in his eyes. But no matter. Spoiler Alert: He's killed a few scenes later, illustrating something that we already know: Monroe's a paranoid crazy man who kills pretty much anyone he's ever had a one on one conversation with. 

That brings up another crucial failing of the show. Monroe is so one-dimensional that you question why anyone would follow his lead. In one episode, he orders the townspeople to be rounded up and locked inside a building, which he then orders to be set on fire. Mark Pellegrino briefly questions this, but no one seems to want to stop this lunacy. Are they all just as crazy as Monroe? What is it about the guy that inspires his followers? Couldn't anybody else do his job better? The guy has ELECTRICITY for goodness sakes, and instead of rebuilding his territory and giving the power to his people, instead uses it to ineffectually pilot helicopters that are no good at targeting anything but extras and redshirts with efficiency. Do you know what would happen if the Monroe republic was the only place with electric light, heat, tv, Internet, etc? The other countries would surrender to Monroe immediately. Their people would demand it, in order to access the technology. Instead, Monroe treats it like a toy. And not even an important toy. The number of pendants and generators that have been easily slipped out of his camp must number in the hundreds at this point. 

That's another thing. Juliet from Lost and the-random-scientist-we-forgot-about that was shot in this most recent episode (another good actor given little to do and dispatched this week) both are able to put together these portable electric amplifiers pretty easily. WHY AREN'T THEY DOING THIS? Why didn't they start doing it from minute one of the blackout? They could have sold these things and made billions. Or given them to the Georgia federation and Governor Ben Affleck in California (the show's best moment). Heck, why even make the trek to "The Tower" at all?? (The Tower, obstensibly, has the ability to turn the nanobots off and restore power everywhere) Just build a million of those generator thingys and it becomes a moot point. 

 

 In this last episode, the characters all find themselves in a contrived "who-done-it?" plot at an airfield in the middle of nowhere. Despite knowing their final destination would be out of range of their gas tank, they don't bring extra fuel. At this abandoned airfield, character WE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WERE ON THE HELICOPTER start dying in grusome ways. Someone is killing them. Guess who?

No, seriously, guess who? They story briefly becomes interesting, because the fact is, everybody except for Charlie and Miles could be the killer. Nora's coming down from hallucinogenic drugs after being tortured for no apparent reason (seriously, how hard is it to find Miles? Monroe bumps into him every other episode), Neville's an established villain who's tried to kill everybody multiple times, his son was offered some shady job by a Monroe spy, the scientist-we-forgot-about was just torturing Nora a few scenes back, and Hudson... well, I guess he's mad about losing his wife, but he's apparently okay enough to joke about it.

How does this crew figure out who the murderer is? Do they set a clever trap? Analyze the scene and evaluate the clues (Clue was the title of this episode)? No. The scientist-we-don't-remember sees that the knife used to kill the guys was manufactured in Maryland, and Hudson happened to be in Annapolis a few days ago. How this proves anything is beside the point, and it doesn't really matter, because Hudson shoots and kills the scientist before attempting to kill Miles. He's shot by Neville's son, and Neville seems kind of proud. It's a heartwarmer.

The AvClub recap commenters weigh in: 

"So I don't get how the knife's origin proves anything...like saying..."Hey, this was made in China...who's been in China recently."

"And why on earth are people making knives? There must be a thousands of knives lying around from before the collapse that would be of far better quality than could be made without electricity."

 

"The knife was clearly manufactured, i.e pre-power outage, unless they've adapted steam power to again enable mass production of uniform, interchangeable parts, which would be interesting if only the show's creators gave even a single thought to creating a believable, consistent world!"

 

All valid points.

 

"Monroe just blew up Miles' last campsite, so how would Nora [tortured in a windowless room for 21 days] even know where he'd go next?"

 

" instead of just shooting Miles in the head at any opportune moment in Georgia, Hudson concocts an elaborate scheme to strand everyone including himself in the middle of nowhere and pick them off one by one. Assuming he succeeds, how exactly is he going to get word to Monroe's people with enough evidence to get his wife back?"

 

So true.

 

Is there any saving this thing? Can it be more than a vehicle for hate-watching? 

Sure. Kill all the characters, refocus the show on a mysterious island, and make a plane crash happen. Rename the show Lost and hire a writing staff that knows how to make believable characters.

The Boy Who Cried "False Flag"

Conspiracies are fun, aren't they? Sure, you could just repeat the official line--"Muslim extremists carried out a terror attack"-- but that's BORING. It's far more exciting to imagine we're all living in some Die Hard-Mission Impossible-Manchurian Candidate mash-up, and the true culprits aren't the guys with mountains of evidence against them, but instead, covert shadow government agents seeking to turn America into a police state in the most complicated, meticulously planned, secret operation in history.

What movie keeps you on the edge of your seat--the one where it's clear who the bad guy is.... or the one with the unpredictable plot twists? THE KILLER WAS PRETENDING TO BE THE DEAD GUY ON THE FLOOR THE WHOLE TIME!!! OMG!!!

Of course, there are people who actually take these conspiracy theories seriously. In New Hampshire, they call these people "state lawmakers", the rest of us call them idiots. But I suspect that the majority of those espousing these conspiracy theories aren't true believers. Indeed, follow someone's conspiracy story long enough, and you'll hear them contradict themselves. People who are making it up as they go along suffer this problem.

I think they do it because the world is a sometimes scary, sometimes dull place. And conspiracies give us that jolt to the heart... that idea that we're in a battle against foes only the sharpest of us have the eyes to see.

Which is fine and all... except that there actually have been "false flag" operations in the past, sometimes to devastating effect. Our whole current kerfuffle with Iran has its basis in Operation Ajax, a joint British-American plot to overthrow Iran's democratically elected leader and replace him with a dictator more friendly to Western policies. Calling every single event from the past decade into question--as sites like InfoWars have--is like the being the boy who cried wolf. When "false flag," becomes associated with the crazies and the idiots, it makes it that much easier for an actual false flag operation to succeed. Anyone who raises a stink about something will be lumped in with the nutjobs.

Maybe InfoWars is the conspiracy--to make us believe any "false flag" is just a figment of some crackpot's imagination.

Up All Night In Watertown

In a few minutes, the sun will rise over Watertown, Massachusetts, ending one of the longest nights the City of Boston has ever known. I've been up, unable to sleep, following the events. Listening to the police scanner: http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/6254/web, watching Boston's local WHDH 7 News: http://www1.whdh.com/video/7newslive , hearing the buzz of MSNBC in the background, refreshing Reddit and Twitter. Its incredible that through modern technology, I'm better informed sitting in the comfort of my living room than most of the people actually in Watertown.

It started a little after 10PM, when "White Hat Guy," Suspect #1, robbed a 7-11 at gunpoint. They moved on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they began to set up bombs, but were stopped by a a MIT police officer, whom they promptly shot. They then carjacked a dark mercedes, and held the driver captive for half an hour, before dropping him off at a gas station and driving to Watertown. The driver called police, and officers found the vehicle. A chase ensued, with the two suspects throwing grenades or handmade explosives. There was a firefight, the suspects chucked a pressure-cooker bomb at police, and Suspect #1 was shot and killed. Suspect #2 jumped back into the stone vehicle and gunned it past officers. He was not able to drive the vehicle too far, however, and fled the car on foot. Police cordoned off a 20 block radius and are currently going door to door searching for the remaining suspect.

So yeah, what a night. The darkness may be done, but this search may continue for a while.

UPDATE: At 6:18 AM, police scanner chatter indicated that suspect has been caught, trying to flee in a vehicle with  "another middle eastern male."

UPDATE: 6:24, It seems neither may be the suspect. Geez. Wife is calling me to bed.

An Anarchist, Imaginary Form Of Money Is A Bad Investment? You Don't Say!

The Bitcoin Crash

It didn't take long for New York magazine's Kevin Roose to change his tune on Bitcoin, the "internet currency," which made headlines this week because... well, because people were writing headlines about it. The value of a Bitcoin rose more than $200 in just a few days, which as we all know, means it will keep going up, forever, cause like, duh man.

Except, you know, then it took a swan dive the next day. Its value is going up and down like a roller coaster, and the systems in place to buy and sell the currency make it difficult to capitalize on the swings. Basically, its a penny stock that's even less regulated and less liquid.

As Roose wrote in his original piece (emphasis, mine), "Several friends warned me about buying a Bitcoin now, since prices are at an all-time high, and most smart people are predicting that the bubble will pop eventually. But many people expect the price of Bitcoins to go higher than $140. Henry Blodget half-jokingly suggested that Bitcoins could reach $400, and there's no logical reason why they can't keep rising beyond that. The more publicity Bitcoins get, the more demand there is. And since supply is limited by design, and no central authority can step in and "print" more Bitcoins, it's theoretically possible that the price could keep rising for a while before a bubble burst happens."

It's also theoretically possible that Kate Upton will sleep with me, and my wife will be cool with it.

My Bitcoins are Up Here....

How long will it take Slate's Farhad Manjoo to backtrack? After all, he also went into Bitcoin with blind enthusiasm:

"Let me begin this column with a lengthy disclosure. One morning last week, I stopped at my bank, filled out a withdrawal slip for $1,027.51, and walked away with an envelope full of cash. The odd amount was deliberate; I had been instructed by LocalTill to be exact in everything I did. What’s LocalTill? Don’t bother Googling it—its shady-looking website offers only murky details, explaining that the firm is a way for “merchants to accept secure transactions when selling goods online."

Sounds super!

"Bitcoin, of course. Bitcoin is a “digital currency” invented in 2009 by a cryptographic expert who went by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, but whose true identity remains unknown."

Well he sounds like someone I'll trust my money with!!!

"Meanwhile the price just kept going up: Early last week the value of bitcoins soared past $100 each. This week, it went past $200. If you want a bitcoin today, it will cost you about $235, and if you wait till tomorrow, it will be more."

Because the value of imaginary currency just goes up, up, UP!!!

"The world’s supply of bitcoins is essentially fixed, but because people in the media keep talking about it, demand keeps rising. This leads to higher prices—and as prices go up, people who currently hold bitcoins develop greater and greater expectations for the currency. This causes bitcoin holders to hoard their stash, which further reduces supply, which in turn boosts the price and sparks yet more media attention—and the cycle continues until the bubble pops. Thus, by writing about bitcoin, I’m serving, in some small way, to raise its price. And as of last week, that benefits me directly."

Some of the worst economic analysis I've ever read. Buy Bitcoins, then get your friends to buy Bitcoins, and then they get their friends to buy Bitcoins. Every friend you get, the more money you earn! THIS IS A PYRAMID SCHEME, PEOPLE! PYRAMID SCHEMES COLLAPSE TERRIBLY!!!!!

"When the bubble will burst, at what price and for what reason, is completely unpredictable. And until then, while prices are going up, you could make a lot of real money from this digital funny money. My own guess is that the bubble’s popping isn’t imminent, and I think that when prices do fall, they’ll land somewhere higher than the $138 I paid for my bitcoins."

This is based on nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's irresponsible financial reporting. Farhad might as well just take the money from your pocket and throw it into a paper shredder. U.S. currency is no longer backed by gold, but it is backed by the power of the U.S. Government. It has something real to peg it to-- the American economy. Bitcoin's central authority is a guy using a fake name that nobody has ever met. Bitcoin could easily be worth ZERO.

As of this writing, one of the biggest Bitcoin websites, where Manjoo bought his Bitcoins, is down due to technical difficulties. According to a MtGox spokesperson, "Upgrading computer systems means ordering more servers (2 weeks timeframe), setting up (1 day), load testing (2 weeks) and deployment (1 day). It's a process that can take up to one month in total."

Just like the stock exchange!!!!

MtGox is claiming a Denial of Service attack by hackers, but in reality, it's probably closer to a "gold rush" that's overwhelmed their substandard servers. All the media has caused people to flock to these sites, which were unprepared for such a large influx of customers.

A Bitcoin's value now, by the way, is $75 and dropping fast.

Manjoo and Roose should by publicly flogged for touting this speculative nonsense.

Mad Men Premiere: Caring For The Wrong People

Mad Men season 6 begins in an odd moment of confusion: a POV shot of a possibly dying man. We feel an instant pang of fear: what if Don is dying???

It turns out our concern is misplaced. It's just the doorman.

Misplaced concern was a major theme of this premiere episode. Almost every character was guilty of it.

Don's got a gorgeous, tv star wife that everybody ogles over: but he's more interested in sleeping with his new buddy's spouse.

Roger just lost a mother who has loved him unconditionally his entire life: he cries over the shoe shine guy. He seeks a connection with his daughter free his Mom's funeral, but there's no acknowledgement of his child with Joan.

Betty's got a daughter, Sally, to whom she's always been cold and distant: she leaves her child at home (while on winter break) to go find Sally's friend instead, and play the mother role for a bunch of east village squatters. She helps them make dinner, while her doting husband eats chicken salad alone.

A woman has Don give her away at her Hawaiian wedding instead of her own father.

Peggy has long late night phone calls with Stan while practically ignoring her boyfriend, Abe.

About the only person who seems to care about the right thing is Peggy's new boss, Ted, who ignores work to spend time with his wife and urges her to let her coworkers go home for new years.

These characters have people who need them, people who care about them, people who can fill the roles they're looking to fill. But their eyes are elsewhere. It's an interesting theme: people who have it all right there, but who are incapable of recognizing it.

"What's it like to have someones life in your hands?"

It's a privilege, and a responsibility.

It makes you wonder what will happen if those ignored constants, those people they've taken for granted, should disappear. Last season, Layne Pryce took his own life. With all the death symbolism in this episode, it may be time to speculate on who will die next.

Who should we be concerned about?

(and... Who was Roger on the phone with when he was interrupted by the news of his mother's death? Who was Sally talking to when she shut the door in her mother's face? Those moments stuck out to me. My guesses? Rogers is having liaisons with Megan's mom... And Sally is still chatting it up with Glen).