"Hangmen Also Die" (Dir: Fritz Lang, 1943)

This is a very entertaining film set in Czechoslovakia during the 1942 Nazi occupation. The Nazi in charge of the occupation, Reinhard Heydrich (known as the Hangman for his brutality), is assassinated, and the Nazis are trying to locate the killer. They round up 400 hostages and vow to kill 40 of them every few hours until someone comes forward to identify the killer. The Czech underground resists, showing extraordinary bravery.

Some of the Nazis are portrayed in a semi-comic way, but this adds to the entertainment value of the film, without detracting from the serious nature of the effort to identify the killer. Over two hours long, but worth every minute. Filmed in stunning black and white, as befits the grim subject matter it is depicting.

Mencken Gets It Right on Lincoln

Commenting on the Gettysburg Address in 1920, H. L. Mencken wrote this.

"It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburgh sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination--that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth.

"It is difficult to imgine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision of the rest of the country--and for neearly twenty years that veto was so efficient that they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary."

MLB Predictions for 2025

I was 26 positions off last year, two better than the year before. The AL West was again my best with only two off (I flip-flopped the A's and Angels). The AL Central was the worst with eight off, with the Guardians surprisingly finishing first, the Tigers and Royals tying for second, and the Twins dropping down to fourth. The White Sox were dismal, setting a record with 121 losses. The other divisons were four off.

And now we turn the page to a new year.

AL East: Yankees, Blue Jays, Red Sox, Orioles, Rays

The Yankees have been beset with Spring Training injuries, but I can't find another team to pick for first. The Rays have really gone downhill, and will be playing in a minor league park in 2025. I can't see a future for them in Tampa Bay, a city which refuses to support them.

AL Central: Guardians, Tigers, Royals, Twins, White Sox

I really don't think the Guardians are going to win their division again, but I don't know which team, the Royals or the Tigers, is going to edge them out for first. The Twins made no offseason moves to improve, and may even sink to last place, as the White Sox will surely be better than last year (they could hardly do worse!).

AL West: Astros, Rangers, Mariners, Angels, Athletics

The Astros burst into the upper echelon in 2017, and Jose Altuve became my favorite player. But then the cheating scandal hit, and now they are universally hated. But they probably have one more year left at the top of their division. Like the Rays, the A's will be playing in a minor league park in 2025, and this has to be demoralizing to their players.

NL East: Phillies, Mets, Braves, Nationals, Marlins

I have a strange fascination with the Phillies. Their owner has tried hard to build a championship team, and I applaud his efforts. Their fans, while notoriously rowdy (they once booed Mike Schmidt!), at least care about their team. Either the Mets or the Braves could win the divison, but I'm going with the Phils as a sentimental pick.

Like Tampa Bay and Oakland, Miami refuses to support its team. I don't know why MLB doesn't move these sick franchises. Florida has proven that it won't support MLB, and MLB needs to pay attention to this reality and proceed accordingly.

In 2003, a year the Marlins won the World Series, their average home attendance was only 16K, the third lowest in MLB, ahead of only the Rays and the Expos. The next year, as reigning World Series champions, it went up to 21.5K; better, but still the fifth-lowest in MLB. In 2012 the Marlins got a new stadium, and attendance per game went up to 27.4K, still only 18th out of the 30 teams. By last year, attendance fell back down to 13.4K, ahead of only the woeful A's.

NL Central: Cubs, Reds, Brewers, Pirates, Cardinals

The Cubs and the Reds have improved, while the Brewers have not, and hence I pick the Brew Crew to fall to third. The Cubs and Reds have two of the best managers in MLB, with Craig Counsell and Terry Francona, and I think these two fine managers will get the most out of their players.

The Cardinals have made no efforts to improve from last year. They have historically been the best-run franchise in baseball, so I give them the benefit of the doubt that they know what they are doing in deciding to build for the future rather than going after free agents. But that does not augur well for the coming year.

NL West: Dodgers, Padres, Diamondbacks, Giants, Rockies

The Padres are one of my favorite teams, playing in the best baseball city in the country. Hence I am picking them over the D-Backs for second as a sentimental pick. The Rockies have not improved, and surely will again finish last.

"The Real Lincoln", by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

This important book seeks to set the record straight regarding Lincoln's presidency. Historians tend to revere Lincoln as a great president, a view that DiLorenco exposes as totally ignorant.

After an introductory chapter, Chapter Two documents Lincoln's opposition to racial equality. Lincoln consistently argued that blacks were inferior to whites, and his opposition to allowing slavery into the new territories was based on his desire to keep the territories free of blacks. As a member of the Illinois legislature, Lincoln supported removing all of the free blacks from the state, and he supported a Constitutional amendment prohibiting free blacks from migrating into the state. A Republican U.S. Senator who Lincoln was close to explained that "We, the Republican Party, are the white man's party. We are for the free white man, and for making white labor acceptable and honorable, which it can never be when Negro slave labor is brought into competition with it".

The author debunks the idea that people in the North were friendly to blacks. He says that 'The overwhelming majority of white Northerners cared little about the welfare of the slaves and treated the blacks who lived among them with contempt, ridicule, discrimination, and sometimes violence." He quotes Tocqueville in "Democracy in America" as observing that "the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known".

In the third chapter DiLorenzo writes about peaceful emancipation. He stresses that only in the U.S. was a war needed to free the slaves. In every other country, "slavery ended through either manumission or some form of compensated emancipation". He points out that slaveowners could have been compensated for their lost slaves, plus each emancipated slave given forty acres and a mule, for less cost than the horrific Civil War that Lincoln presided over.

In Chapter four the author writes about 'Lincoln's Real Agenda". From the time he entered politics in 1832 when he first ran for public office, Lincoln was always a Whig. DiLornezo writes that Lincoln was "almost single-mindedly devoted to the Whig agenda--protectionism, government control of the money supply through a nationalized banking system, and government subsidies for railroad, shipping and canal-building businesses."

The tariff issue is still relevant today, with Trump's policies currently under discussion. DiLornzo writes that "Convincing consumers that higher prices are in their best interest is an absurd proposition on its face, but clever protectionist propagandists have always taken advantage of the public's ignorance of economics to pull the wool over its eyes." Certainly apropos of what Trump is doing today.

In Chapter Five the author talks about the myth of secession as "treason". He points out that our country was born with an act of secession when we separated from Britain. The Declaration of Independence was based on the idea that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and that whenever government becomes destructive of the peoples' rights, the people have the right to secede and form a new government.

The author describes how there was a strong secessionist movement in New England during the entire Jefferson administration and most of the Madison administration (1801-1814). I had previously known that opposition to the War of 1812 had led to a serious secesionist movement in New England, but the length of the movement was a surprise to me. The main point here is that all during this vigorous debate about secession in New England, the wisdom of secession was debated, but never was the inherent right of secession questioned.

The author describes how there were strong secesionist movements in the "middle states"--New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. These states contained three types of secessionists: those who wanted to join the Southern Confederacy, those who wished to form their own "Central Confederacy", and those who wanted to alliow the South to go in peace.

An analysis of 495 editorials from Northern newspapers during the late 1860 to mid-1861 time period shows overwhelming support for the right of the Southern states to secede. Horace Greeley aptly summed up the sentiment when he wrote that "We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets". Here again, duirng this whole secssion debate, never was the right to secede questioned. Lincoln's idea that secession was treason was something he made up out of whole cloth.

In Chapter Six DiLorenzo exmaines the question of whether Lincoln was a dictator. Certainly he was, as he shredded the Constitution, and committed all of the same abuses that King George III was accused of in the Declaration of Independence. He declared martial law and suspended habeas corpus, and ordered the arrest and imprisonment of virtually everyone who disagreed with his expreme views of presidential war powers. Chief Justice Roger Taney issued an opinion that the presidenrt had no lawful power to suspend habeas corpus, but Lincoln simply ignored it.

In May of 1961 a special election was held in Maryland to fill ten empty seats in the House of Delegates. Suspecting them of harboring secessionist sympathies, Lincoln had the candidates arrested and sent, without being charged with any crime, to military prison. Lincoln conitnued to interfere in Maryland poiltics, sending soldiers into the state to arrest and detain anyone opposing his war policies durng the regular November election.

Lincoln's suppression of the press was eqally despicable. When a list of more than a hundred Northern newspapers that had editorialized against going to war was published, Lincoln orderd his Postmaster General to deny mail delivery to those papers. His Secretary of State Seward had his own goon squad of secret police, which "scoured the countryside for the editors of any newspaper, large and small, that did not support the Lincoln administration's war policy and had them arrested and imprisoned."

In sum, nothing the current Trump administration is doing comes close to the evils perpetrated by Abrham Lincoln during his brutal presidency.

Chaper Seven documents the atrocities against civilians committed by Lincoln's soldiers, against all laws of war. The remaining chapters discuss the centralization of power in the national executive that Lincoln was responsible for. The author's Libertarian views cause him to give undue attention to this part of the story. I would have preferred more info on the evils of the war itself. He had already established in Chapter Four that Lincoln was a dyed-in-the-wool Whig who favored increased federal power at the expense of the states. And in Chapter Six he had already established Lincoln's dictatorial inclinations.

"In a Lonely Place" (dir: Nicholas Ray, 1950)

This film noir has Humphrey Bogart playing a Hollywood screenwriter, an unusual role for him. The characters are fairly one-dimensional, and we never really get to know any of them well enough to care about them.

Bogart brings a hat check girl home so she can tell him about a book he is supposed to read so that he can write the screenplay, but he is too lazy to read it himself. The girl then gets murdered on her way home from his apartment.

The police suspect him of murdering her, and in the process of the police investigation he gets to know, and falls in love, with a beautiful neighbor. It turns out Bogart has a Jeckyll and Hyde personality, capable of flying into uncontrollable rages.

The ending is rather unsatisfactory and unimaginative. I can't recommend the movie, though Bogart and his love interest, played by Gloria Grahame, are worth watching.

The Upheaval in TV News

Both CNN and MSNBC lost 50% of their audience during the first month after the November election, but in January they bounced back somewhat. Still, massive layoffs are taking place and both networks are reworking their lineup of daily shows.

Thankfully, MSNBC got rid of Joy Reid, who I found to be unwatchable due to her abrasive nature. It almost made me sick watching the other MSNBC hosts slobbering all over themselves last night expresing how tragic they thought losing Reid was. Give me a break!

Alex Wagner will still be with MSNBC as an analyst, but she won't be hosting at 9 PM anymore. Rachel Maddox bemoaned the loss of the two primetime anchors of color, an obnoxious example of political correctness which I could have done without. The fact that Wagner is more white than black adds to the ridiculousness of this whole over-emphasis on race.

CNN has really shot itself in the foot with their use of the idiot Scott Jennings as a Trump apologist. The problem isn't that he's pro-Trump, but rather that he comes across as totally obnoxious, constantly interrupting anyone he doesn't agree with, and never having a friendly word or smile for anyone else. Abby Philip, who I really love, is forced to have him on her nightly panel, which totally ruins the show for me. What a shame.

CBS made a drastic change to its evening news show, with disastrous results. Ratings have continued to plummet, and critics have universally panned the new format. A sad plight for the once-great CBS news department.

NBC, which took over from CBS as number one after the retirement of Walter Cronkite in 1981, has faced a decline in its flagship program, "Meet the Press", after the sudden death of popular host Tim Russert in 2008. There were disastrous replacements tried in David Gregory and Chuck Todd, until the network finally found a winner, Kristen Welker, in 2023.

The market is changing, and TV will never again be the primary place where people get their news in this country. Neither will newspapers, unfortunately.

Roberta Flack

I heard an interesting backstory this morning from Joe Scarborough on "Morning Joe" about Roberta Flack's great song, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face". Her producer wanted her to do it faster and she insisted on doing the slow version.

The song went nowhere, but three years later Clint Eastwood heard the song and chose it to be part of his 1971 movie "Play Misty for Me". The song then took off and charted.

To me Roberta Flack represented the best of music in the 70s, the last decade in which pop music was special, before the depressing slide into country, disco, and rap. R.I.P. Roberta Flack (1937-2025).