The folks who made the new GI Joe movie have not made their masterwork available for critic's screenings. Movie buffs love to chuckle over such naked displays of authorial guilt - hey, they must know it sucks, too, right? - but, frankly what's the point of having the W$J's movie critic spend 2 hours watching a movie inspired by a toy line? The review practically writes itself, and the W$J's readers are not likely to have watched the movie anyway. Still, the W$J's Joe Morganstern cares enough to try to write a review based on nothing more than the trailer: GI Joe The Rise of Cobra

The first thing that happens in the trailer involves the Eiffel Tower, which is hit by a missile and makes a splash by falling into the Seine. I don’t like movies that trash the Eiffel Tower, although I loved “The Lavender Hill Mob,” in which Alec Guinness’s mild-mannered bank clerk smuggles gold bars out of England by turning them into Eiffel Tower paperweights.

The second thing involves an ­actor intoning, voice-over: “We have never faced a threat like this. A team is being assembled. They’re the best operatives in the world. When all else fails, we don’t.” Even apart from the actor pronouncing “assembled” as “assimbled,” the speech suggests a sound clip from an early rehearsal of a junior-high-school pageant. I don’t like movies with bad actors reading dumb lines.

Like, I said, the review practically writes itself. A better focus may have been to ask why the producers of "GI Joe," the original "real American hero," felt compelled to assemble "the best operatives in the world," rather than an all-American crew of stock archetypes and ethnic stereotypes like Hollywood used to do for B-17 bomber crews.

Morganstern likes to declare that movies based on toys are a sign of cultural decline, but surely the de-patriating of an American icon - even if in toy form - is a much more potent symbol of such decline.

To add insult to injury, Detroit is losing not just its status as the "Motor City," it is also losing some of the basic accoutrements of urban living, like grocery stores: Retailers Head For Exits In Detroit

They call this the Motor City, but you have to leave town to buy a Chrysler or a Jeep.

Borders Inc. was founded 40 miles away, but the only one of the chain's bookstores here closed this month. And Starbucks Corp., famous for saturating U.S. cities with its storefronts, has only four left in this city of 900,000 after closures last summer.

There was a time early in the decade when downtown Detroit was sprouting new cafes and shops, and residents began to nurture hopes of a rebound. But lately, they are finding it increasingly tough to buy groceries or get a cup of fresh-roast coffee as the 11th largest U.S. city struggles with the recession and the auto-industry crisis.

No national grocery chain operates a store here. A lack of outlets that sell fresh produce and meat has led the United Food and Commercial Workers union and a community group to think about building a grocery store of its own.

Frankly, a union based solution is hardly what Detroit needs. Unions have dominated Detroit's politics and economy since the Thirties. While there might have been short term benefits for a couple lucky generations of workers, the host has been sucked dry, leaving a dry husk.

Detroit's woes are largely rooted in the collapse of the auto industry. General Motors Corp., one of downtown's largest employers and the last of the Big Three auto makers with its headquarters here, has drastically cut white-collar workers and been offered incentives to move to the suburbs. Other local businesses that serviced the auto maker, from ad agencies and accounting firms to newsstands and shoe-shine outlets, also have been hurt.

The city's 22.8% unemployment rate is among the highest in the U.S.; 30% of residents are on food stamps

Those are not what you would call Demographics of Destiny

While all of southeast Michigan is hurting because of the auto-industry's troubles, Detroit's problems are compounded by decades of flight to the suburbs.

Hundreds of buildings were left vacant by the nearly one million residents who have left. Thousands of businesses have closed since the city's population peaked six decades ago.

Navigating zoning rules and other red tape to develop land for big-box stores that might cater to a low-income clientele is daunting.

I have it on good authority that journalistic trade craft requires that any reporter writing about Detroit must mention "decades of flight to the suburbs" - the dreaded "White Flight" - as if people left for the suburbs in a dastardly plot to destroy Detroit. It is apparently journalistically incorrect to mention decades of inner-city dysfunction, which reached its apogee with the corrupt "hip-hop mayor" Kwame Kilpatrick, in searching for the source of Detroit's ills.

In fact, there is very little effort to look at what really killed Detroit and other formerly prosperous cities in the Rust Belt. These were Democratic strongholds, dominated by corrupt Machine politics, overweening unions, and tax-happy politicians. They are beset with welfare dependents, drugs, slums, and crime. This did not happen overnight. But, slowly but surely, the economically productive portions of the economy funded all of government inertia that ruined the manufacturing heartland of the US until the money-makers were finally bled dry.

If the stock market falls, then there is a rush to the podium to declare the failure of the free market and an end to "illusory GOP growth." But when government policy fails, it seems there is never anyone wlling to demand less government, rather than more, as a solution to the destruction of a once-vibrant economic region. That last bit about retailers having difficulty navigating red tape might be the most ridiculous symbol of uselessly destructive government. What is the point of zoning laws and red tape when the city has been economically decimated? Where is the condemnation when a political philosophy ruins a region like this? Who is left to lift the shackles off of Detroit and its brethren?

The great divide in American political life was on display during the dueling Cheney-Obama speeches. The Left was in raptures over Obama's rhetoric and "nuance." The Right was delighted that someone had finally issued a comprehensive defense of Bush-era War on Terror policy, complete with attacks on the NY Times (where was this 4 years ago?). Michael Ledeen is the lonely voice saying "You're both wrong." Cheney and Obama: The Great Evasion

For some years now, I have been concerned that the great national debate over the terror war has been systematically misguided. Instead of a discussion of the strategic issue, our leaders and pundits have dealt with tactical questions. And so it goes, most recently in Thursday’s speeches from former Vice President Dick Cheney and President Barack Obama. The strategic questions are finessed in favor of single pieces of the issue.

Ledeen is, of course, correct, not that this will do him any good.

American politics has always had a tendency towards reducing the great issues of the day to heated controversies over seemingly minor points, whether over the guilt of Alger Hiss, the propriety of Iran-Contra, or the definition of "is."

Thus, the "Guantanamo Question" is not really about civil liberties or the "tragic fall" of American morality. It has become a proxy battle for Leftist resentments against the Bush Administration, which reacted to 9/11 by repudiating the Left's carefully constructed civil liberties regime, after it had proven a deadly millstone around our national security. Rather than attack the Bush policies themselves (which were popular and necessary in the wake of 9/11), the Left has attacked them indirectly through wild claims about flushed Korans, "torture," and Abu Ghraib. Like a defense attorney chipping away at a beat cop's credibility on the witness stand, these attacks have been effective, but that doesn't change the fact that their clients are guilty as hell.

The problem with these proxy battles is the way in which they obscure the big picture issues for which they are a substitute. And, Republicans enable this by playing along, trying to match wits with Leftists arguing in bad faith, rather than keeping things on the simple plain level that the Cheney speech managed. But, even Cheney nods:

Neither asked, let alone answered, the big question: what are we facing? Who is our enemy? So neither had an answer: what should our overall strategy be? How will we win? How do we measure our progress?

From the beginning we have dealt with each theatre—whether Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Europe, the homeland—as a thing in itself, something requiring its own distinct approach. At no time, save for some general statements shortly after the 9/11 attacks, has any leader discussed the fact that we are involved in a big war, in which specific enemies are engaged against us. We have debated military tactics, ideological imperatives (from winning hearts and minds to challenging radical Islam, todeconstructing Islam itself), nation building, methods of interrogation, the use of one sort of court or another. But we have yet to face the central fact of the broad war, the big war, what I insist is the real war, the one that has been waged against us for decades, in which our enemies aim at our domination or destruction.

The problem for Ledeen is that no one really wants to confront a world-wide conspiracy. And yet, no one - especially on the Left - wants to be the one to say to the American public that he intends to stand down from the War on Terror. Thus, we are left with these proxy battles until the real one is joined again.

Lots of commentary from outsiders regarding the defeat of the budget propositions on Tuesday. "Ungovernable" comes up a lot, but I consider the phrase "feckless Big Government political class refusing to put the state on a politically or fiscally sustainable path" to be a better descriptor.

There's also a lot of commentary supporting the convening of a constitutional convention to reform or amend the many procedural hoops that make CA governance so unwieldy. This article in The Economist is typical: California: the Ungovernable State

Many others, however, now believe that California needs to start from scratch, with a fully-fledged constitutional convention. California’s current constitution rivals India’s and Alabama’s for being the longest and most convoluted in the world, and is several times longer than America’s. It has been amended or revised more than 500 times and now, with the cumulative dross of past voter initiatives incorporated, is a document that assures chaos.

Calls for a new constitution have resurfaced throughout the past century, but never went far. That changed last August, as the budget negotiations were once again going off the rails, when Mr Wunderman of the Bay Area Council renewed the call for a convention and received an astonishing outpouring of support. Mr Schwarzenegger has called a constitutional convention “a brilliant idea” and thinks it is “the right way to go”. (The new constitution would take effect well after he leaves office.) Most encouragingly, says Mr Wunderman, nobody, not even the so-called special interests, has yet come out against a convention

This may or may not be a good idea, but I have to say I am not aware of any popular groundswell for a state consitutional convention, Mr. Wunderman's claims notwithstanding. The problem with a constitutional convention is that it could just as easily become yet another staging ground for progressive activists to capture favors and $$. Wunderman has some convuluted scheme whereby the conventioneers would be drawn from county jury pools, but that would do no more good than convening a Frank Luntz focus group. No, this is an initiative that needs to start with a narrowly focused political movement similar to the one that gave us the Recall Election. It started, you will remember, with wealthy political pro Darrell Issa funding a petition drive and directing the campaign message, not a "let a 100 flowers bloom"style direct democracy. A constitutonal convention requires leadership, not political buck passing to The People.

Just as a thought experiment, we have convened the Free Will California Constitutional Convention in an effort to work through some of the issues presented. While we were not able do a comprehensive job (we lost our quorum when the Senate Pro Tem became fussy from gas), we did get a good start:

1. just as a preliminary matter, cancellation of the last, say, 5 years worth of boondoggles, starting with the $75 billion high speed rail project. We can't afford them. If CA is going to get a new Constitution, it should also free itself from as much budget weight as possible.

2. take the drawing of legislative districts away from the Legislature.

3. end the use of propositions to pass bonds and spending measures. Those are properly the subject of our representatives. Let them vote on this stuff.

4. Make it a lot harder to get propositions on the ballot. No more legislative propositions, for one thing. And increase the signature requirement for petitions to 2 million. Any proposition that passes can be voided by the legislature. Any proposition requiring any public expenditures must contain sunset clauses.

5. In fact, make the following trade: in exchange for giving up the 2/3 rule for passing tax increases and budgets, create mandatory sunset provisions 10 years out for everything.

6. return CA to its core competence: education, law enforcement, prisons, running elections, etc. no more duplicating the work of the feds. That means, for example, no more Air Resources Board.

7. Protect Prop. 13, but also take away all of the things that cause property values to artificially skyrocket - overly restrictive zoning rules, environmental set asides, rent control, etc.

Grunt. Someone has remade the B movie classic "The Taking of Pelham 123" into a slam-bang Travolta-Denzel summer tentpole. Manhatten Transfer: The Remaking of Pelham 123

Mr. Scott admitted that before working on the movie — a retelling of John Godey’s best-selling New York City subway hostage thriller, made into a classic 1974 movie — he had never been in the subway. “Well, when I say never, I mean maybe once or twice quite drunk at night, when I couldn’t find a taxi,” said Mr. Scott, who was born in England and lives in Los Angeles. But he had been adamant from the time he oined the project that he would do it only if he could film as much of it as possible inside the actual New York subway system, which never stops running, not even for John Travolta, who plays an angry, neck-tattooed hijacker, or Denzel Washington, who plays a doughy, good-guy train dispatcher. (A 1998 television remake, filmed in Toronto, used subway cars that looked suspiciously Canadian.)

Jesus, what's next? A remake of "Breakheart Pass," starring Johnnie Depp? A "grittier" "Horse Soldiers," starring Russell Crowe? (Actually, both of those would kick ass. Cancel my lunch and get Robert Zemekis on the line!)

The real question is whether the new movie will have everything that made the original so good: gratuitious New Yawk attitudes, prodigous cursing, politically incorrect humor about women and minorities, the earnest depiction of transit people going about their business, and the near perfect blend of comedy and violence (the original has a lot of very funny lines, and the occasional violence is brutal and matter-of-fact). Somehow, I doubt any of this will be present.

There was one funny thing in the linked article. For all the talk of Our Crumbling Infrastructure, it is not crumbling fast enough. In fact, efforts to modernize the NYC subways proved ... inconvenient for Les Artistes:

Chris Seagers, the movie’s production designer, said transit officials even allowed the moviemakers to photograph inside the subway’s top-secret new control room in Midtown Manhattan, the largest rail control center in the world, so that they could recreate it — though the actual center was so sleek that Mr. Seagers ended up giving the set a rougher, more municipal patina.

“It was almost like the British Library in there, it was so beautiful,” he said of the real control center. “It seemed almost too Hollywood

Your movie ticket dollars at work.

The NY Times has two excellent pieces on the efforts of individuals and local gov't to deal with a post-crash environment wherein hundreds if not thousands of properties lie vacant and unused in many of America's largest municipalities. 

The Indispensable Man has apparently solved all of the other problems on his desk and has moved on to dealing with Global Warming: US Treasury secretary is attacking oil, gas tax breaks

A massive fire destroyed a luxury hotel in Beijing yesterday. And the gov't says the cause was ... errant fireworks?!