Now That We Know - S5E1 - THE WARS TO COME

Now that all of season 5 of Game of Thrones has finished assaulting our sense of decency, lets review all the episodes and see if knowing the entire picture makes the individual episodes any better or worse.

 "The Wars to Come" - *SPOILERS, BOOK AND SHOW*

OPENING: The opening credits and previously on last roughly half my life. Cersei flashback doesn't play a role in the rest of the season unless I'm missing something. Does clue us in to Myrcella's fate though. No need to cut your thumb that deep for a psychic reading either, just a prick will do.

KINGS LANDING: Jaime seems oddly ambitious about the family legacy he previously gave away. Does support his motivation for sneaking into Dorne, I guess. Relationship with Cersei is pretty much gone at this point. P90Lancel makes an appearance and pretty much announces that he's going to tell everyone about Cersei's crimes at some point. This makes Cersei's cavalier attitude with the Loras/Margarey/High Sparrow situation more baffling. Chekovs birthmark gets put on the shelf and the ham-fisted way its compared to Dorne foreshadows perfectly the nightmare that is the Dorne plot.

PENTOS: The Tyrion and Varys banter is a nice light touch in a dark season. Glad it came back at the end. Not sure why Illyrio Mopatis isn't in the episode. Did the actor die? I'm not googling it. Varys speech about how he supports Daenerys is longer than the amount of time Tyrion and Daenerys spent together in Mereen. I feel like this is the first of the power=cruelty speeches we get this year.

MEREEN: The CGI for tearing down that harpy looks expensive. I think we could've lost that scene and paid for a Strong Belwas, no? Stalwart Shield getting killed by a harpy are our first signs that the Sons of the Harpy are a killing machine (with popular support) and that the Unsullied are not near as good as advertised. I was originally annoyed by the Grey Worm/Missandei stuff but knowing that Grey Worm disappears after getting stabbed makes it more palatable. Boring speech on fighting pits. One of many. I didn't realize until now that Daario is the smartest person in Mereen. The dragons seem wild in this episode yet pretty under control when they get fed a noble later in the season. Maybe Quentyn has been doing some secret training.

THE WALL: Ah Snow, why did you train Olly so well? Its bizarre that it takes 10 episodes to get Sam and Gilly on the road. She's actually pleading not to be sent away after explaining that everyone hates her. Just odd. Melisandre has that smug look rocking and asks about Jons virginity. Maybe shes just nuts. I forgot Stannis was trying to get the wildlings to fight for him all the way in ep. 1. Without the Mance glamouring/Rattleshirt plot, the whole Mance plot is meaningless. I wonder how many people Stannis burns alive before Shireen? THE COUNT: 1. (Mance)

THE VALE: Sweetrobin fighting is the best part of the season. He would have died of seizures though. This Dark Sansa ploy is complete nonsense knowing how she ends up. Brienne makes it clear that she considers her debt to the Stark girls paid and wants no more to do with it. I believe she changes her mind but ultimately she does in fact give up that duty. Littlefinger doesn't give us much but his plan makes no sense.

 DOES ANY ONE SAY THE TITULAR LINE? Yes! Mance says it to Stannis right before he burns. "I wish you luck in the wars to come."

 ATROCITIES? One. Burning Mance. Although book readers know Cersei kills her friend in a well shortly after the flashback. Not on screen, so it doesn't count.

ANYONE SEE A GREYJOY? Nope.

 RESULT: About what I remember but it is surprising to see how many plot points dragged on the full 10 episodes. Also, the Tyrell/Littlefinger plots go unresolved.

Can't-or

Mid-term elections are so much more fun than Presidential year elections. Occasionally you see incumbents really have to work to not get ousted in primaries or the general election.

Eric Cantor found out the hard way just how special mid-terms can be as he pulled off a feat few people think is possible.

He got fired for being a shifty, rat-faced liar.

That's pretty hard to do in Washington but somehow Cantor managed to take the lofty position of House Majority Leader and alienate everyone so badly that a college professor, of all people, and a wave of sickly/horny South American child refugees were enough to get him his ass kicked by someone named Dave Brat.

Its hard to believe that just a few years ago Cantor was a Tea Party favorite that some people (including me) thought might be good for the White House. Then Cantor, as well as the no good disgrace that is Kevin McCarthy, dedicated his life to becoming John Boehner's acolyte. Out went the small government, tea party ideals. All he did was push for amnesty and make excuses as to why they can't stop President Obama's obvious constitutional power violations.

Those are bad enough but his biggest flaw, in my mind, is that he went along with Boehner in trying to stifle dissent.They supported any incumbent who was on their team no matter how liberal they were. Along the way they spiked some good conservatives who could have really helped a moribund Congress make some real changes. His decided to be John McCain to Boehner's Mitch McConnell.

Luckily for all of us, the good people of Virginia took the weak minded impostor out behind the woodshed with the family shotgun. Hopefully the sound will reverberate all the way out to California, Ohio and Wisconsin (yes, Paul Ryan, you) in time to motivate a significant attitude change in leadership. Obama still has two years left to wreak even more havoc like he's done along the border. The least you guys could do is try and stop him.

The Crazy World of Vic Ortiz

Victor Ortiz had himself another fight this weekend and did some pretty Victor like things.

The fight seemed to be going his way, despite being penalized for trying to bludgeon Josesito Lopez's brainstem while he was down. Then, in a way that must have made Money Mayweather smile, Lopez broke Ortiz's jaw in two places leaving Ortiz unable to close his mouth or even stop the river of blood that spewed forth from it. Ortiz ended the fight by quitting on the stool.

On the surface, it seems like Ortiz pulled a coward's move. Then you look at his jaw and the forgiveness sets in. Had Ortiz not caved in to Chino Maidana I doubt that this would be seen in such as harsh light.

It does make you wonder what exactly to make of Ortiz. Sure he's quit on the stool twice. But when he's in the ring he seems to have no trouble with getting hit repeatedly. The popular consensus on the web today is that Ortiz is just nuts and that may be true. His propensity for violence and uncontrolled rage in the ring are striking, especially when compared to his Spicolli-esque, laid back attitude out of the ring.

I think most people are over-thinking the subject. I think Ortiz is just as nuts as any other fighter but not any more so. Maybe less so given his ability to accurately judge what the end result of the Maidana fight would be (him going blind) and acting accordingly. He has two problems that amplify each other. The first one is that he doesn't know how not to get hit. Lopez, drilled him repeatedly with power shots as did Mayweather before him, and Berto before him, and Maidana before him. His second, and more troubling issue is that his only response to adversity is escalating violence. Hit him hard and he tries to hit you harder, if he can't and you keep hitting him he starts to go a little nuts out of frustration and begins rabbit punching, wild hooks and if none of that works he'll just try and break your jaw with the top of his head.

He's not totally unlike another ring-nut, Andrew Golota. Both of them are fighters who have no ability to adjust and reattack in the face of adversity. They both only know how to escalate what they are already trying until it reaches its predictably ridiculous apex. It's tempting to classify Golota as a more dirty fighter but punching a guy in the nuts repeatedly is probably less dangerous than flying headbutts and vicious hits to the back of the head.

I suspect that if Ortiz fought Lopez 10 times he would win 9 of them and the discussed rematch will probably go Ortiz's way. That won't change the fact that he's just an incomplete fighter right now. I don't think the coward label will stick to him just because the Berto fight was so brutal and his jaw was broken so badly against Lopez that it doesn't compare to the Maidana fight. If he doesn't defend any better or learn how to set up combinations though, Ortiz will always be a victim of his own limitations and frustrations which will no doubt lead to more and more bizarre incidents.

Of Mice and Milbanks

Dana Milbank chose to chime in on Indiana's GOP Senate primary yesterday and the argument presented is as logically unsound as I've seen in quite some time. Clearly Milbank is distraught over the prospect of incumbent Dick Lugar losing his primary to challenger Richard Murdock. That's not too surprising, Milbank is a liberal and Lugar is an old school moderate Republlican while Murdock is a tea party backed, fiscally conservative state treasurer. It's such an ill-argued perspective that it needs to broken down a bit, argument by argument.

1. Voting for Mourdock in Unpatriotic
Milbank's biggest argument is that Lugar has worked for years to end nuclear proliferation, recently working with president Obama to update his signature Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act which uses American money to pay for the removal of nuclear weapons agreed to in other treaties, like all the SALT treaties. The problem with this is twofold. First of all, the idea that supporting nuclear nonproliferation means you should go unopposed for your life is asinine. I'm sure Mourdock is against other nations nuking up as well, perhaps just by other methods. The second problem is that Lugar is working to enforce Obama's ludicrous nuclear policies. The President has made it a point to cut defense spending an unilaterally slashing our own nuclear stockpiles while the Russians do nothing. He is also allowing Iran to arm up and doing nothing to help solve the issue of potentially rouge nuclear weapons in failing states in Pakistan and North Korea. Lugar is simply enabling Obama to score public relations points for a horribly flawed foreign policy. Did Lugar receive anything for working with the President? Tougher stances on Russia, Korea or Iran? Less cuts to our own stockpile? Nope.

2. Dick Lugar is a Conservative. No! He really, Really IS!
No sir, he is not. The 77% conservative rating from the American Conservative Union that Milbank touts as proof is really not very good. Combine that with Lugar's approval of the START Treaty, the assault weapons ban and the Dream Act show that Lugar is not opposed in any way to a big spending, massive federal government. Milbank also cites Lugar's opposition to Obama's massive stimulus programs as proof of his conservatism but he fails to mention Lugar's support for President Bush's massive failure of a stimulus program the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. This shows Lugar to be more of a political opportunist than a principled politician who sticks to his guns. If Milbank wants to make the argument that Lugar should stay because moderates are good then that's a different argument. He should not be making the patently false argument that Lugar is a conservative while Mourdock is a nut. Mourdock is a conservative while Lugar is a moderate.

3. Mourdocks is Playing Dirty Politics While Lugar Is Pure as Fresh Snow
Give me a break. Politics is a rough business and Lugar knows that full well in his three decades in office. Milbank dislikes Mourdock ads which shows Obama praising Lugar because it cuts off the end where it says that the praise was for the Nunn-Lugar Act. This is irrelevant. Being Obama's favorite Republican senator is bad under any context. The President's policies have been so detrimental to the economy that no Republican senator should work with him on anything until some of the more pressing issues are addressed. To leave off the end isn't a lie or dirty in any way. if Lugar doesn't want things like this showing up in commercials then he shouldn't take photo ops with a deeply unpopular president that he is enabling. Milbank goes further down the rabbit hole by using a Lugar press release bragging about the Nunn-Lugar act as proof that Lugar is committed to substance while Mourdock's support from Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Grover Norquist is proof that he isn't. Right. Using Lugar's own words against him and accepting support from popular conservatives is shady business indeed. What Milbank does unintentionally is show why Lugar needs to go. Lugar is such an entrenched, D.C. establishment Republican that he hasn't even lived in Indiana for over 30 years. Yet during all that time in the Senate all Milbank or Lugar can tout is the Nunn-Lugar Act from 1992 and revised in 2006. In this long and convoluted argument Milbank points to no other legislation or action that would give a person reason to vote for Lugar. Lugar himself seems not to be able to produce anything other than that as well. In a political season where the number one issue is undoubtedly the economy, a person would think that a seasoned politician like Lugar would be bringing out the long list of his accomplishment that stimulated the economy instead of his "protecting the world from nukes" portfolio. I suspect the reason for this is that Lugar doesn't really have a pro-growth platform to show off.

I would personally argue that the fact that a vacuous, vapid thinker like Milbank came to Lugar's defense is proof positive that Lugar needs to go. It's not dirty politics or even particularly sad. President Obama, supported by people like Milbank, has taken the country in such a radically left direction that the people are revolting and going further right in response. This creates a climate where people like Dick Lugar,Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett can no longer pretend to be conservative while voting like a liberal. You see the same thing in the Democratic party where Nancy Pelosi has done her best to drum out all the Blue Dog Democrats in favor of far left candidates. All of this is simple politics and nothing else. Milbank is just a simple mind who sees the tides changing against his team and is lashing out.

Stick It To The Ma'am

There is a real irony in how liberal pundits are critizing Ann Romney and other stay at home Moms because they supposedly don't interact with the economy in the same way that working women do.

The irony is that stay at home Moms are uniquely qualified to observe two elements of the economy that the Obama administration would rather not be observed; inflation and oil prices.

Inflation has been tricky so far. The numbers haven't been terrible and the rise seems slow. But where does inflation show up first? The supermarket. Anyone who has seen the rising prices and/or shrinking packages at the grocery store knows that inflation has already come and with some punch. Anyone, female or not, who doesn't regularly shop for a family sized bunch might not see inflation at work as readily apparent as the stereotypical homemaker does.

The second economic indicator that housewives might have more concern to notice is gas prices. People who work for a straight 8 hours a day usually have 2 trips in a regular day, to and from work. Stay at home Moms often have numerous small trips to make. More stop and go, drop offs and wear and tear. This kind of driving really blows through gas quick. In addition to the singularly upsetting nature of paying more at the pump, rising gas prices always correlate with rising food costs so there is always an amplifier effect as the two rising costs reinforce each other.

The problem, for Obama, is that these minor cost pains are frequent in nature. The administration is trying to project the sense that the recession has ended and that things are starting to turn around yet on a weekly basis homemakers are given undeniable proof that this just isn't so. When you pile bad job numbers, etc. on top of this always present uneasy feeling it creates a very skeptical segment of society.

This is why the bogus war on women has been ginned up by liberals in media and government. There is no way to defend what's happening economically. The various stimulus projects enacted have done nothing but make a bad deficit worse. As a result of this Obama is losing working class whites in droves, Hispanics noticeably so and enthusiasm across the board. All they can do is try and scare women, traditionally Democrat leaning, by telling stories about how Romney/Santorum would outlaw abortion (impossible given the Supreme Court) or somehow make it impossible for women to buy contraceptives (never been proposed by a Republican ever.). I find it hard to believe that any women outside of those that are already true believers in Obama could be taken in by this ruse. Why should they? Over the last number of years birth control has been as easy to come by as ever. Yet food, utilities and energy have been steadily rising. No theoretical fear of Republican bogeyman can replace actual pain in the real world. Money talks and the stay at home Mom hears it first.

Consequences of Freedom

Ozzie Guillen has made news again recently by proclaiming that he loved Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for staying in power so long. Being that Guillen is the manager of the Miami Marlins, the remark was taken none too well by the millions of displaced Cuban refugees living in Miami.

Guillen was subsequently suspended for 5 games and forced to make the apology rounds up and down Calle Ocho.

Predictably yet sadly this has led to the cries of censorship from Jen Engel, among others. The basic point of this poorly thought out offering is that by suspending Guillen, the Marlins are undermining the Constitution, the First Amendment, democracy, journalism and the fate of the civilized world.

She hits the usual liberal talking points specifically mentioning the Citizens United case and remarking that censorship by corporations is far more dangerous than government censorship. A quick recap of atrocities committed by governments compared to corporations throughout history debunk that second point out of hand.

The first point about Citizens United case just underscores the problem with the way most journalists and liberals view freedoms. They see them as belonging solely to the individual and being completely repercussionless.

In the present scenario, nobody has ever censored Ozzie Guillen. He said what he felt. He can continue to say as he feels everyday until the end of time. No police will ever arrest him, no entity can ever forcibly prevent him from speaking whatever he wants to whomever he wants, fire in a movie theater notwithstanding. But what about the Marlins? Do they not have any speech? They service a specific community that will absolutely judge then based on how they respond to one of their employees comments. In Jen Engel's world where all speech is absolutely protected, how can the team respond without committing the grave sin of "corporate censorship"? Say nothing? A sternly worded note? Might that action be construed as "the man" trying to censor someone?

The truth is that the 5 games suspension of Guillen is speech in that it conveys a a message to a target audience. The Marlins are completely protected by the First Amendment as well as Guillen is. Just because a person has the right to exercise a certain freedom does not insulate them from other entities exercising their freedoms in response. This isn't censorship it's societal interaction. To believe that somehow freedom of speech exists in a repercussion-less vacuum defies logic at every turn. The Marlins needed to convey to their fans that they in no way condone loving feelings for Castro. Suspension issued, problem solved, case closed.

The great P.J. O'Rourke said it best when he observed that "There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." By making the arguments that Engel, and others, have made about the nature of free speech what they are really saying to the world is that while they are unwilling or unable to deal with the consequences of their decisions, they would still like to enjoy the ability to make them unfettered.

Sadly this is a reality that only exists in a wishful mind. If someone truly would like to live in a judgment free zone they could easily move to Guillen's beloved Cuba or Venezuela. After all, if all you decisions are made for you you can't be judged harshly for your actions. If you want to continue living under the freedoms our founding fathers laid out, then put on your big boy pants, take your medicine and learn to own up to your freely arrived at decisions. For better or worse.

February Surprise?

I'm not sure what to make of this story that claims that the United States is going to set up an "aerial" blockade of Syria outside of the United Nations.

I understand that some kind of buffer is needed for the humanitarian aid to be distributed to refugees but two problems strike me.

The first is unilateral action on the part of the U.S. I personally don't have a problem ignoring the UN, it's a bunch of thugs and dictators for the most part, but Obama and the rest of the worlds liberal internationalists constantly scream to all the world the need for the "international community" to act as one in these kinds of endeavors. Has Obama realized that that point of view is childish an unsustainable? I doubt it. Some kind of election year warmongering? Wouldn't be the first time but seems unlikely for Obama.

While trying to understand the mind set of a socialist megalomaniac is a pointless venture, trying to understand how an aerial blockade would even work here isn't. To the best of my knowledge the entire conflict is contained inside Syria. I don't believe the Syrian air force, if it exists, is participating in the slaughter. Knowing that, how does an aerial blockade work? Are our planes going to fly around and target Syrian military forces that seem to be engaging civilians? Are we just protecting aid workers? How does this stop the Syrian government from killing people?

When we had the fighters securing Iraq after the first Gulf War, it made sense. Iraq had some planes and were moving heavy military around that we could target and destroy. If we are going to destroy Syrian military in a city environment while they are engaged with civilians, that seems like a recipe for disaster. We may very well destroy large percentages of active Syrian military but can't help but kill high numbers of civilians as well. On the other hand, if that's not what we are trying to do with the aerial blockade, then what are we doing? Nothing else will save any lives.

This smells faintly like Vietnam-era decision making where Washington theorists are trying to determine the most mathematical way to get this done. If we are willing to bomb cities in an attempt to keep the Syrian government from killing them why not just invade with the goal of regime change? We did it in Afghanistan, Iraq and virtually in Libya so why not here as well. Seems like a hell of a lot better than an indefinite bombing campaign with hazy objectives and limited possibilities for success.