Go see latest Mission Impossible movie
You should go see the latest Mission Impossible movie. You will not regret it.
About once per year I get to see a Hollywood movie. Not because of limitations on time, or money, but because 99% of what Hollywood produces is dreck, garbage, stupid, juvenile, destructive amoral nonsense. So sifting through the many no-go movies usually results in one that I will see, per year, and this year I went and saw the latest, and supposedly the last, Mission Impossible movie, starring Tom Cruise.
About Tom Cruise: I like him, because I like the values he showcases and promotes in his movies. His movies have plenty of action, and also pit good vs. evil, honesty vs. dishonesty, tradition vs. popular modernization, etc. Very few of Hollywood’s actors or movies are about good values. Most Hollywood movies are about silly, superficial entertainment, performed by actors who in their private lives lead silly, vacuous, superficial lives full of ridiculous childish drama and bad decisions. They make their money doing dress-up and make-believe. Then these same people are quick to tell working Americans how to live, what to value, and so on. They are disbelievable.
Tom Cruise is the complete opposite of 99% of the Hollywood goofs. He communicates his values and beliefs through his movies, and rare interviews, and leaves us peons (who are also his paying audience) alone the rest of the month.
For example, his movie The Last Samurai is the improbable but beautifully done story of a white dude roundeye who is captured by racist Samurai during the quite real Satsuma Rebellion. It all comes down to Captain Algren (Cruise) talking with Lord Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe) around a campfire after escaping a false arrest (please accept my dialogue paraphrase that is close to the actual script):
Algren: “So That’s it. You will now just end it all, by your own hand, because of some supposed failure?”
Katsumoto: “Yes. It is our way of keeping our honor.”
Algren: “Honor? What better way to show honor than to live a life of service and sacrifice, as you have done your whole life?”
Instead of beating us over the head with political speeches on X Twitter, in just a little bit of movie dialogue, Tom Cruise shows us he values tradition, service, sacrifice, and personal honor. For all the people who dislike Cruise’s association with Scientology, why can’t you just accept him for who he actually is, and not what you merely suspect him of thinking? Based on what we see, the guy is A+ material.
His Mission Impossible series never failed to entertain, not the least reason being that Cruise does most of his own incredible stunts. Reportedly, he routinely breaks ribs, fingers, and damages all kinds of other parts of his body doing these stunts. How many other Hollywood actors do any stunts, much less real stunts that are really dangerous?
Ummmmmm… probably none.
And, how many other Hollywood actors bother to stay in great enough physical shape that they could do their own stunts, if they wanted to?
Ummmmmm.. probably a small handful. So I give Tom Cruise all of the credit he deserves for all of the rare stuff he does. He gives his all to his movie audience, which is much more than can be said for most actors who just stand in front of a green screen and pretend to fight an imaginary foe.
This last Mission Impossible ties together all the past ones. Kind of a high-tech version of the Sherlock Holmes movies mixed with James Bond. But also give Tom Cruise real credit for taking a huge risk with his pro-America, physical adventure-loving audience: His movie cast is a racial- and gender-diverse mix of people, who do not simply appear on screen because they have a certain skin color or boobs. Rather, Cruise has selected exemplars of each: The reliable old black guy sidekick is a tech genius, who goes down fighting, and whose genius level tech work saves the world. The lady SEAL looks like the unique lady SEAL would have to look, very muscular and tough. And so on.
Cruise’s movie-wide racial & gender diversity is not painfully unrealistic and crammed down our throats. Rather, it is realistic enough for us not to have to suspend belief. This is exactly the kind of diversity that Cruise’s audience can accept, because we see it to some degree in our every day lives (not that any of us see world-saving superhero acrobatics play out, ever, but rather we see people like us doing exceptional things sometimes).
For example, I found myself alternately painfully gripping the poor Princess of Patience’s thigh, arm, and hand at different points in the underwater scene. Because in my youth I was a Water Safety Instructor, waterfront lifeguard, and very active SCUBA diver, I had experienced quite a few saves as well as close encounters. On one night dive in the Florida Keys in the mid 1980s, I had to tow my exhausted dive partner to the surface and back to the boat, which was marked only by a single underwater strobe light in the pitch blackness. Leaving my spear back on the bottom, and using an adapted rescue maneuver, I fought the same strong current that had caused him to run out of air in his dive tank, and run out of energy to do anything but slowly drown as a limp rag. Eventually I reached the boat just as I too was running out of energy, weighed down as I was by a tank, regulator, wetsuit, buoyancy compensator, and various kit.
It was a very close call that was suddenly brought back to life by watching Tom Cruise’s realistic near-drowning scene in the sunken nuclear submarine. With the jumbled torpedos laying and falling all about. As he is running out of air and time and body heat. Swim, Tom, swim up!
Anyhow, a bunch of Cruise’s acrobatic stunts in this unbelievably entertaining movie have gotten him Guiness Book of World record recognition, as well as Most Dangerous Stunt Ever, Most Ridiculous Stunt Ever, Stupidest But Coolest Stunt Ever, Most Incredible Stunt Ever…especially for a sixty year old white guy.
You gotta go see this movie, even if the rogue computer / rogue Artificial Intelligence plot has played out at least since War Games (1983), Dune (1984, based on the 1960s book), Terminator movies from 1984 to 2019, and many others, where humankind is almost the fatal victim of our own ridiculous curiosity. Mission Impossible is so good that we forget all that and buy deeply into the premise that our AI foe “The Entity” is about to destroy humanity, and so we must engage in or at least tag along on an impossible mission to destroy it and save humanity.
And one more thing about Tom Cruise: If he is actually deeply into Scientology, then it is treating him really well. Everything about the guy looks like success and contented happiness. We hear no stories about poor choices or destructve behavior. Most of Hollywood is a-religious or non-religious, and most of Hollywood’s people are morally relativistic and quite lost on this planet. Their private lives are a complete mess, and very few of them have any sort of moral compass or true north. Scientology may sound weird, but I think all religions and belief systems sound weird to some degree. Even if it is weird, wow, is it ever working for this super successful, happy guy, Tom Cruise….one of the few real working actors left on our entire planet.
Seriously, Trump vs. Musk?!
Like so many supporters of President Donald Trump, I am unhappy, shocked even, at the unhappy falling out between the president and Elon Musk. Not only is the disagreement about policy, which happens every day in politics and which grown ups take in stride, without fracturing their relationship, because our relationships are more important than being “right” on one policy issue or another, but both men are not showing their best sides.
Why are both men acting like this in public? Because they are both high-T prominent businessmen who have built successful businesses and they are both used to giving orders and being in charge.
But it does not matter why they are publicly fighting with each other. It matters only that they are fighting, because it is personally and professionally bad for each of them, bad for America, bad for the Trump Administration, bad for public morale. Trump looks too easily upset and unappreciative, and Musk looks thin skinned, disloyal, and vindictive. All bad, no upside.
What I would like is for President Trump to say “Elon, I am sorry I lost my temper. You have been an incredible asset to this administration and a good friend to me personally. Thank you for all of the sacrifices you made to start DOGE and get American government back on track to serve The People. Let’s stay in touch.”
And just leave it at that. Showing good, strong character and taking the high road. For the good of America, which President Trump has always done. And let’s be honest: Elon Musk has sacrificed a TON for his work to bring the federal bureaucracy to heel. We all owe Elon a huge thank you for that.
Edit: Today is the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the Allied storming of Nazi Europe. At huge cost and sacrifice, in the cause of freedom. America was the leader. This is true leadership, and the kind of thing that actually matters in life.
June is Proud To Be Me month
June is the Proud To Be Me month.
Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever your skin color or who you sleep with, nothing says more about you than who you are by how you treat others, how hard you work, how honest you are. In other words, skin color, sexual behavior, gender, etc have really nothing to do with anything, and there is no reason to be “proud” of things you can’t change about yourself.
Want to feel proud of yourself, for good reason? Donate time to a real non-profit organization engaged in directly improving people’s lives. The Bethesda Mission here in Harrisburg feeds and clothes homeless people, discarded military Veterans, abused mothers with their children in tow. When you help these down-on-their-luck people, you should feel proud, because you have made the world a better place, at your own expense, and yet you know you have come out richer.
On the other end of the spectrum are ridiculous things of which to be proud, like skin color and sexual behavior. Yes, skin color was once something for James Brown to sing about, but that was then, and this is now. We are not still living in 1968, or 1958. Black people run most of America’s cultural institutions, and they are well represented in every nook and cranny of professional life.
And sexuality? Isn’t this a private matter? I think so. No one needs to know what you are doing, and only destructive perverts in essence rape those around them by sexually forcing themselves on us. What a shallow thing to be “proud” of, this raunchy and gross physical behavior. In this time of wide acceptance, acting like yesterday was the Stonewall Riot is just as silly as pretending Americans are still living in 1968 racial tensions.
If anything, we should each be proud of ourselves for being our best selves in ways that show we have choice and agency. For example, I always always always hold doors open for women. Occasionally a woman will either object to it, or more commonly, thank me and acknowledge the less and less common favor. My response to everyone who comments is this: “If I don’t hold this door open for you, I know my mother will leap out from behind that shrub over there and kick my butt.”
Meaning, I am proud of living the old fashioned civilization-sustaining values and behaviors that my mother and father instilled in me. Living this way and making other people’s lives better as a result makes me proud to be myself, my best self, my good self. You can easily do the same. All this other nonsense, you can give it a pass.
Anatomy of a primary election
On May 20th, Pennsylvania held its primary election. Mostly local seats and judgeships were on the ballot, which are definitely important, but the real prizes were the PA Commonwealth Court and the PA Superior Court. As has come to be usual here and in many other states, the conservative/ independent-minded grass roots fielded their candidates and the state Republican Party fielded its candidates.
And as usual, the PA Republican Party was directly involved in the selection of the primary election candidates, their endorsements, their negative attacks, funding, etc. When a political party gets in between The People and their choice of candidate, the party always loses in the long run. When The People believe the party does not share their views or values, and is only pursuing the selection of certain candidates who will be malleable and loyal to the party, then The People lose faith in the party.
Here in PA there is real animosity between grass roots conservatives and the PA GOP establishment.
This election we had grass roots candidate Maria Battista vs. PAGOP candidate political establishment-endorsed Ann Marie Wheatcraft for Superior Court judge. Battista had run before as the GOP endorsed candidate, and had lost to the grass roots candidate. This time around, for whatever reason, she was on the outs with the PAGOP and on the in with the grass roots groups, like Lycoming Patriots. Wheatcraft had the PAGOP endorsement and money.
For the Commonwealth Court we had well known Second Amendment attorney Josh Prince vs. unknown state bureaucrat attorney Matt Wolford. Bureaucrat Wolford was mysteriously endorsed by the PAGOP, even though he has worked most of his career at the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection, an agency that no matter which incarnation it embodies, and regardless of which political party is running it, nonetheless is associated with heavy-handed regulations and lawless bureaucrats who routinely beat up on private landowners and businesses. Not exactly a likely place to give birth to a solid Republican candidate for any office, much less a judgeship.
The long and short of these two races is that Battista the outsider defeated Wheatcraft the moneyed insider, and Wolford the party endorsed yet unknown bureaucrat and mystery “Republican” defeated grass roots favorite Prince. Moreover, Prince was endorsed by numerous organizations, like Gun Owners of America, Firearms Owners Against Crime, etc.
These are strange results.
Normally voters align with outsiders or insiders, but not with one candidate here and not that one over there. And yet that is what happened in this election. Normally, big endorsements gain big traction for candidates, but we saw no evidence of that in the Prince vs Wolford race. Despite his many big endorsements, Prince was utterly crushed even in very conservative rural counties, like Lycoming and Elk, where he was known, liked, and should have won handily. And yet, in these same counties, Battista blew off Wheatcraft’s doors.
Aside from a crooked vote tallying scheme, I have no explanation for this odd outcome that defies all odds and conventional thinking. Except for one possible variable that tends to get overlooked these days, and that is ballot position. That is, where does the candidate’s name fall on the ballot – top, middle, or last.
Studies have shown that ballot position does matter, or it can matter, but much less so when voters feel compelled to look up candidates on the internet. With its easy information access, the internet has been the great leveler of campaigns everywhere. Big campaign money cannot always defend a candidate’s bad record, which will be all over the internet, visible to the voters who but follow a few clicks on a search engine.
Battista had top and Prince had bottom on their respective ballots. Meaning that the 3/4-4/4 super voters who make up the primary election electorate, were unsure of who to vote for and simply and superficially chose the first name they saw for each position. That could explain the opposite results we got for both candidates, Battista and Prince.
As we see here, the voters have to want to know something about the people they are voting for in order to defeat the ballot position factor, as well as overcome often superficial campaign advertising. And so we learned a hard lesson here: The vaunted and lauded super voters did not necessarily do super research into the candidates. They apparently did not bother to look up the candidates before walking into the voting booth. They simply saw a name at the top and made their choice.
And that is the gory anatomy of Pennsylvania’s 2025 primary election, God help us all.

Does ballot position really determine who a lot of primary election super voters choose? From this election, it would seem so.

Elk County is a very conservative rural place where DEP bureaucrats are hated like poison ivy. The 2025 results there make no sense, unless ballot position is the primary factor.

Doesn’t it seem mean spirited to not even mention candidate Josh Prince? Doesn’t it further alienate his supporters? What is that all about?

I have never seen election results like this. If conservative rural Lycoming County super voters feel so strongly about conservative candidate Battista, they for sure would have felt just as strongly about conservative candidate Prince. And yet…the results seem to prove that ballot position is the most important determinant
Memorial Day thank you
Thank you to the Armed Services personnel living and passed who have risked and sacrificed for all of us free American citizens today.
Isn’t it strange that there are so many heroic acts of bravery and valor on the battlefield, and yet almost none found in politics?
South Africa 2025 > racism than South Africa 1985
The South Africa of 2025 is a far more racist, more violent, more evil place than the South Africa of 1985. The Apartheid of South Africa 2025 is much greater, much worse, than the South Africa Apartheid of 1985. The South Africa that we see today is a failed state, a leper among nations, and I do not suggest that I know how it can get better. My role is to simply call it what it is: Racist evil.
Like all inveterate racists, today’s South African “leaders” have to want to get better, they have to want to repent, and they have to actually make substantive policy changes, before they are actually better people with a more representative democratic government. Right now, President Ramaphosa and his many associates are only in the early stage of being confronted about their evil racism, and they are trying to put up a fight. Not that Ramaphosa et al are in denial about their racism, no, they are simply telling us all to talk about something else. At least their racist White predecessors acknowledged their own racism. These current people are just bad liars.
Very well do I recall watching the Super 8 camera footage and nascent video footage of uniformed South African police (of all skin colors) beating black South Africans with rubber truncheons in 1985. My dad and I were watching the evening news on television, and the violent images were highly disturbing. Peaceful, non-violent protestors were being beaten badly, sent to the hospital, so that a racist and race-based government in Praetoria could maintain control. It was awful, about as a bad as any government could be. It motivated me to participate in the construction of our own student “shanty town” in front of Old Main at Penn State, and to hold many demonstrations there.
Those violent images did not stop until several years later, when the Whites-only South African regime stepped down and turned political power over to everyone else who lived in South Africa – black, brown, Asian Indian, Muslim, Hindu, white, Christian, etc. You name it, the entire ethnic and religious melting pot that the original South Africa had attracted to live there from across Africa and Europe and Asia since its founding in the early 1700s.
But then new South African images began to enter the nightly TV news: Black South Africans burning each other alive with gasoline and car tires. Butchering one another with machetes. Dragging one another behind vehicles until only a bundle of bloody rags with some bones and tattered meat remained at the end of the rope. Entire shanty towns burned, with poor mothers and children running pell-mell to escape. Such is the cost of political turmoil, one supposes. Perhaps when democracy and self-rule emerges from this turmoil, everyone involved will step back and call it quits.
Nope.
South Africa may have given up the original Apartheid of roughly 1947-1987, but it has only exchanged it for an Apartheid of Black-on-Brown and Black-on-White oppression. Racial oppression is evil, regardless of who is doing it, and the current South African leaders are a bunch of evil racist bastards, who use butchery, rape, and torture to hold on to political power. Don’t try to explain this away. Evil is evil, racism is racism, oppression is oppression, regardless of who is doing it.
And I think one of the lessons we have learned about the current Apartheid South Africa is that they will tell everyone that their oppression and racism is not oppression and racism. That the images of whites being beaten to death on their farms (which I have seen and will not re-post here), and white women being gang raped (which the perpetrators enjoy filming because they are not held accountable, and they are in fact encouraged by President Ramaphosa) before being be-headed, are not violence.
Today President Trump hosted President Ramaphosa at the White House. Ramaphosa wanted to talk about trade and getting more free money from hard working White American taxpayers, but Trump forced him to sit through about five minutes of horrible video showing Black-on-White political activity and hate speech from South Africa, including white-owned farms being gleefully ransacked by racist assholes. Trump also had some White refugees from South Africa talk about being ethnically cleansed from the land their families had called home for over 300 years. Three hundred years anywhere makes you a native.
And yes, let’s talk about human migration a bit, because that seems to be at the heart of all this Apartheid-reverse-Apartheid stuff going on. Fact is, humans migrate across this planet. They all do.
Asians especially have migrated a lot to then-empty lands, occupied them, called them home. Blacks have migrated to Europe in huge masses, seeking economic opportunity unavailable in their home sh*thole countries run into the ground by racist people like Ramaphosa. Whites have migrated out of Europe, Arabs and Asians have violently migrated into Europe over the past thousand years (Ghengis Khan, the Ottoman Turks, the Muslim Arabs).
There has been a non-stop human migration around the planet, but when white Europeans do it, it is oddly decried as Colonialism. Even when the white Europeans founded incrediblly developed, wealthy nations like South Africa, which in turn attracted even more human migration, because of the unprecedented opportunity in the region, and which formed the basis for the modern day Apartheid South Africa that is now run by people like Ramaphosa, corruptly lapping up the last dregs of civilized development and wealth that remain, and creating none to replace what is taken.
Yes, white refugees from South Africa are a reality that breaks the racist narrative that only White people can be racist. Fact is, everyone can be racist – Blacks, Browns, Whites, Yellows, Reds, and all shades in between. Everyone of all skin colors can hog power, and use it unjustly. We are seeing these simple truths with Hamas and Hizb’alla, with the race-mocking Ramaphosa, and with the poorly mis-named International Court of Injustice and Official Discrimination that has sought to finish what master racist Adolph Hitler tried against the Jews.
Only here in America, it appears, do we have an opportunity to create a non-racial society, a racially blind society, where the quality of your character is the sole basis for judgment and measure. I am proud of President Trump for starting a conversation about racism that is looooooong overdue. The fact that the South Africa of 2025 is much worse than the South Africa of 1985 – more racist, more Apartheid-y, more cruel and violent, shows how much work needs to be done. Ramaphosa is a useful foil.
I am looking forward to the honest discussion about it, and in the meantime to helping the refugees from today’s racist South African Apartheid.
Vote for Josh Prince on Tuesday
This coming Tuesday is Primary Election Day 2025 here in Pennsylvania, and if there is one person you vote for, it should be Josh Prince, candidate for Commonwealth Court.
Josh has an incredible career as an attorney. Remarkable for someone his age. He has amassed a lot of wins in court by dint of his hard work and intelligence. I know from my own personal experience as a co-client of his, here in Harrisburg, where he successfully represented FOAC, me, and another person, in challenging Harrisburg City’s illegal anti-gun ordinances.
This is why Josh Prince has been endorsed by so many state-wide and national organizations, like FOAC and Gun Owners of America.
Josh’s opponent is the exact opposite of Josh: Matt Wolford is a dreary, inexperienced state government attorney, from an agency known for beating up on innocent people, and who has an interesting criminal history of his own.
Yes, the PAGOP selected Matt Wolford and endorsed him, despite the fact that he is far less qualified than Josh Prince. This strange choice is par for the course and SOP for the PAGOP, which always always endorses weak candidates who then go on to almost always lose in the general election. Probably because the PAGOP wants weak people they can control, instead of strong independent-minded people like Josh Prince.
The PAGOP always prefers to lose elections to Democrats than to have independent-minded conservatives win.
But you, the Pennsylvania voter, do not have to follow the PAGOP. You have agency, your own ability to act on your own, to act in your own best interest, to see your own ideas and values through at the voting booth. If you want the best possible person to be elected to the Commonwealth Court, then vote for Josh Prince on Tuesday.
Also, vote NO on all PA supreme court retentions later this year. Send a strong message. Tell the Uniparty political establishment that you, We, The People, want qualified citizens sitting in judgment of us and our claims. Not spineless political hacks picked from the bottom of the barrel.
You can learn more about Josh Prince at https://www.princeforjustice.com/.
Trump storms the Middle East
Awful lot of hand-wringing and anxiety over President Trump’s un-orthodox approach to the Middle East this week. Understandably. A lot is at risk if the president fails, and he is jumping head-first into a region that is already steeped in failure.
From the Sunna-Shia conflict that most recently showed up in Syria, where Sunni jihadists massacred thousands of Alawite (Shi’ite/Shia) men, women, and children, to the perilous position of all minorities (Jews, Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Coptic Christians) in a now overwhelmingly violent Islamic area, it just seems like the Middle East is a gigantic minefield where no matter where a person steps, the likelihood is high that an explosion will follow.
Into this minefield runs head-first our president, Donald Trump. His approach is probably completely different than anything done before by the West. It appears that Trump is forcefully grabbing everyone there into one gigantic bear hug, full of economic prosperity and political legitimacy. So long as they all participate on his terms.
Judging by the openly amazed smiles of the Saudi, Qatari, and Syrian leaders, as they stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump, they are indeed surprised and also willing to be hugged. It remains to be seen if they truly understand what Trump wants from them, or if they think they can outwit him and get what they want, without having to give.
Yes, there is real risk with Trump’s approach, but if nothing is risked, nothing is gained. Qatar is funding a great deal of the pro-terrorism unrest on American college campuses right now, as Qatar has also been the source of most Sunni-oriented terrorism around the planet. Home to Islamic propaganda outlet Al-Jazeera and Hamas leaders living in luxury, Qatar has never been a huge friend of the West, but rather an antagonist who has used the West’s openness against it. So, accepting an airplane from Qatar to serve as a government-owned makeshift Air Force One, as Trump has done, and standing with the emir of Qatar as chums, has blurry optics, let alone the probability the plane is loaded with Chinese spying devices that will undermine American security.
But…what if Qatar can be turned from its evil ways? Huuuuge win for world peace!
And Trump trusts American security personnel to sweep the Qatari Trojan Horse gift plane for spy devices, of course, and any that are found will probably be held quietly in reserve, in the event that Trump needs to reverse course with Qatar. Which is a real possibility, as Trump’s tariff negotiations have revealed: Today you are in like flint, tomorrow you are out in the cold, but the following day you are allowed back in the house because you did the right thing. Thus far, Trump has masterfully played tariff and international trade policy like a maestro conducting a symphony orchestra.
Let’s hope Trump can do the same magic in the Middle East, because recognizing as legitimate the bloodthirsty, murderous jihadis in Syria (who most recently axe murdered a bunch of Druze), and negotiating a doomed-from-the-start nuclear deal with ever-lying Iran, carries enormous risk, as does having all kinds of separate American relationships with the Saudis et al that do not include Israel. If Israel sees Iran gearing up for nuclear blackmail or all-out war, then Israel will have no choice but to strike hard.
So, it appears that suddenly Israel is the wild card here, not the evil nuke-happy Iran or jihadist Syria or terrorism-enabling Qatar. And yet, everyone knows Trump is already in like flint with Israel….
What a strange pattern we have here, as President Trump weaves a creative new web to capture and finally hold stable the most difficult and unstable region on the planet. Let’s hope he is successful, and that a Pax Trumpica can finally happen.