Pun Salad

So this got me wondering about movie titles. Shockproof? Who's supposed to be shockproof here? What happens over the course of the movie could (I suppose) be shocking to some of the characters. But they all seem to be appropriately shocked. So I don't know about the title. I suppose it's better than Parole Officer Temptress?

It's the story of Jenny Marsh (played by Patricia Knight), fresh out of the slammer where she's spent a measly five years for murder. She buys some new duds, gets a bleach job for her hair, and is off to meet with her new parole officer, Griff (Cornell Wilde). He's no-nonsense, at least at first: here are the rules (which are pretty strict by modern standards), break them and I'll send you back to the pen. He's particularly adamant that Jenny not associate with previous boyfriend, Harry. Harry's a dapper well-to-do semi-criminal, still has the hots for Jenny. And he's very persistent in his affections.

To complicate matters, Griff gets the hots for Jenny himself. And he fulfills his duty to find her a job… by setting her up in his house, taking care of his blind (but oh-so-wise and saintly) mother.

So it's a volatile situation, and it rapidly moves toward the inevitable gunplay.

The Netflix DVD is a disk out of "The Samuel Fuller Film Collection"; he co-wrote the movie. Apparently his ending was very much a downer; it was rewritten to … semi-spoiler coming … provide a much sappier and less believable conclusion.

• Help from Your Federal Government is on the way! Also: New COVID-19 Relief Bill Also Creates 2 New Museums and a Library, References Dalai Lama Controversy. From Robby Soave at Reason:

  For instance, one section of spending the bill also instructs the Smithsonian Institution to create two new identity-based museums: one for women, and one for Latinos. (The legislation refrains from using the phrase "Latinx.") The bill also takes a position on the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, expressing that in the view of the U.S. government, "the wishes of the 14th Dalai Lama, including any written instructions, should play a key role in the selection, education, and veneration of a future Dalai Lama." The bill includes a provision prohibiting any federal funds from being used by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an activist group that no longer exists in the United States. It attempts to normalize U.S. foreign relations with Sudan, criminalizes illegal streaming, and creates a plan for building a Theodore Roosevelt presidential library in North Dakota.

  Safe bet: Robby spent more time reading the bill than will the CongressCritters voting on it.

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• Lefty-but-honest Glenn Greenwald notes a belated 1984-like effort at the Memory Hole: Instagram is Using False “Fact-Checking” to Protect Joe Biden’s Crime Record From Criticisms. Specifically, his push for the 1994 crime bill used to be fair game. Now…

  While that debate over the damage done by Biden’s crime bill has long raged in Democratic Party politics and the criminal justice reform movement, it is now barred from being aired on the Facebook-owned social media giant Instagram, or at least is formally denounced as disinformation. With Joe Biden about to enter the White House — one that will exercise significant influence in determining Silicon Valley’s interests, will be filled with tech executives, and was made possible in large part by Silicon Valley’s largesse poured into the Biden/Harris campaign — Instagram has arrogated unto itself the power to declare these well-established criticisms of Biden and his crime bill to be “False” and having “no basis in fact.”

  I can't help but wonder if the antitrust noise against Facebook will magically disappear around … oh, say, January 21 or so. (For the record, that would be fine with me, except it should be done for honest reasons.)

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• Man, what is with Ted Cruz these days. Apparently he thinks things like this will help his 2024 Presidential bid? Ted Cruz’s Terrible Case for Keeping out Hong Kong Refugees. Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy:

  On Friday, GOP Senator Ted Cruz blocked a bipartisan bill that would have granted political asylum to residents of Hong Kong fleeing China's increasingly oppressive rule there. Reason writer Eric Boehm has an excellent article critiquing Cruz's lame rationale for his actions. Among other things, he points out that the same theory would have justified keeping out Cruz's own father (who came to the US as a refugee from Cuba) […]

  Maybe he's thinking: "Gee, Trump got to be President by playing on voter's irrational fears about Mexicans. Maybe it will work for Chinese too."

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• John McTiernan has made some great movies! Well, two: Die Hard (1988) and The Hunt for Red October (1990). In the thirty years since… eh, not so much.

  Maybe this explains why. Die Hard director: Of course it's a Christmas movie -- an anti-capitalism Christmas movie. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

  Puts a whole different spin on “Welcome to the party, pal,” doesn’t it? Kidding! I kid, I kid. Having argued for years that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie, as most Christmas movies don’t usually have that much blood on the screen, I owe everyone a chance to see this rebuttal from director John McTiernan. He didn’t set out to make a Christmas movie, McTiernan explains in this lengthy monologue for the American Film Institute. He set out to make an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian movie that just became infused with the Christmas spirit, or something.

  You know what would be really anti-capitalist? Repeal intellectual property rights for movies. See how the Hollywood commies like that!

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• Mark Steyn has some Christmas thoughts on the parade of pols getting their Covid shots: Veinglory in the Highest.

  So it turns out that, like clean elections, mass vaccination campaigns is just another thing America can no longer do.

  Across the pond, my old editor Boris Johnson is a complete arse busily destroying those few remnants of British Conservatism that managed to escape Theresa May and David Cameron. But, granted all that, he knew enough to ensure that the first person on the planet to receive the vaccine was an actual member of the public - an appealing nonagenarian lady ("Patient 1A") - and that the second or thereabouts was some old coot from Warwickshire who chanced to bear the name William Shakespeare, which allowed the tabloids to rise to the occasion with "Patient 2B or Not 2B" and "The Taming of the Flu".

  Here all is cronyism. So the twelve-year-old congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has now received the vaccine, while any actual nonagenarian citizens will be centenarians by the time they get it. Because members of America's decadent pseudo-legislature are "essential". You know they're "essential" because they've spent the last six months hammering out a Corona "relief" package that ensures that citizens whose businesses have been destroyed by state fiat will receive a Treasury check for $600 to cover the last eight months. That's seventy-five bucks a month - or rather less than the average congressman's kid's allowance. But now we've vaccinated them our indispensable legislators can get on to hammering out a new Corona "relief" package that will guarantee Americans get a check for $400 to cover the next eighteen months.

  I'm happy to wait for as long as it takes.

  Our local pols vaccination status is chronicled here by the Union Leader. My own CongressCritter, Chris Pappas says he's going to wait. Good for him, but I'm still voting for someone else in 2022.