1) Don’t trust a state that gathers secrets on everyone.

2) Really don’t trust a state that has remote killing powers and gathers secrets on everyone.

3) And really, really don’t trust a state that thinks killing people without due process is OK if the national security machine says so.

Some of the movie-biz trade coverage seems faintly surprised that “Captain America” was still a gigantic worldwide blockbuster after its first 10 days:

“Captain America which stays at the Top of the box office world and continues to rack up dollars; it’s total cume domestically will be about $158M after its second weekend. The Winter Soldier, which had A CinemaScores across the board, dropped less than the first Captain America did in 2011, which was 61%. And, because of its equally strong presence in international markets (about $60M more from this past weekend), Captain America: The Winter Soldier now stands tall with a $476.1M worldwide cume with one more territory to open – Japan. It’s 163% ahead of the first Cap which made, all in, $370.5M worldwide.”

That’s from Deadline Hollywood. Its author shouldn’t have been surprised. In the movie, the U.S. is depicted as being borderline-fascistic because of Total Information Awareness-style info-gathering and a much-more sophisticated version of the present U.S. programs which kill perceived enemies with pilotless drones.

Worldwide popularity reflects anti-Americanism

That depiction tracks semi-precisely with the low opinion of America held by much of the world over the past decade, at least after the Obama honeymoon ended overseas. (Will it ever end here?)

The Bush 43-Obama zeitgeist is in trouble if pop culture sides with “Captain America” the movie and the superhero. Pop culture is very much like the domestic version of “soft power” — as the Obama team showed when it actually got tons of traction for its insane argument that Romney’s 2012 comment about “binders full of women” was somehow a sexist “Mein Kampf.”

Don’t trust the government is a powerful argument to many of the people who pay close attention to how the world works. If it becomes a message that pop culture explains and amplifies to those who pay less attention, hallelujah.

And it seems unlikely that “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is an outlier in the ever-growing Marvel cinematic empire. “The Avengers” certainly brought up the don’t-trust-the-government theme.

More more more!

Can governments kill their citizens without a trial?

A final note: When Sen. Rand Paul demanded a year ago that Attorney General Eric Holder say American citizens couldn’t be killed unilaterally by government drones, it was widely derided as a stunt. A few more movies like “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” and that question will become a staple of press conferences involving presidential candidates for the rest of time.

Good.

By Katy Grimes

Is it any surprise that sports, weather and traffic now account for 40 percent of the content on television newscasts? “In 2012, a continued erosion of news reporting resources converged with growing opportunities for those in politics, government agencies, companies and others to take their messages directly to the public,” reports a new study from the Pew Research Center’s project for excellence in journalism.

Most interesting however, is who is leaving news outlets: “People who said they had forsaken a news outlet were more likely to be men than women, older than younger, richer than poorer and Republican or independent rather than Democratic. While about one-third of Republicans and independents stopped turning to a news outlet, just one-quarter of Democrats did,” the report found.

“The primary concern for people who gave up on an outlet seems to be quality,” the report found.

Surprise, surprise.

“When asked which they noticed more, fewer stories or less complete stories, far more people said the latter (24 percent to 61 percent). While reduced thoroughness in stories was the more prevalent response among adults overall who were aware of the struggles, the split was not nearly as wide – 48 percent versus 31 percent.”

The report found that thoroughness in the stories was the biggest problem. People want complete stories and are fed up with media not asking questions.” 61 percent of them said stories were less complete than they had been versus just 24 percent who complained there were too few stories,” the study found.

This is what I rail on constantly. Too many members of the dwindling media are skilled stenographers, and don’t bother to ask “who, what, when, where, why, and how?” The questions not asked are apparently what has so many Americans leaving news broadcasts in search of thorough content.

Take a look at the report – share your thoughts.

The State of the News Media 2013

By Joseph Perkins

I imagine that Jeremy Potash, executive director of the California-Asia Business Council, winced this week while watching the foreign policy debate between President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney.

Her group is trying to increase trade between California, the world’s ninth-largest economy, and China, the world’s second-largest economy.

And it certainly did not help that the president and the governor spent the last 15 minutes of their debate bashing China, each trying to persuade protectionist voters that they’d be tougher on Beijing than his opponent.

The pandering by both Obama and Romney was no doubt driven by polls showing that Americans view China as a threat to their economic well being.

For instance, a survey this past spring by Pew Research Center found that 78 percent of respondents said the large amount of U.S. debt held by China is a “very serious problem” for this country; 71 percent said the same of U.S. job losses China; and 61 percent about our trade deficit with China.

Yet, while our indebtedness to Beijing, our trade deficit with China and our real or imagined job losses to the People’s Republic are legitimate concerns, the very last thing California needs is beef with China and its 1.4 billion consumers.

California exports

Indeed, California exports to Mainland China increased to $14.2 billion in 2011 from $9.7 billion in 2009, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. That’s nearly a 50 percent increase in sales of California goods and services to China in just a three year span. And it was especially welcome during a time the state was recovering from the Great Recession.

California even benefits from all the Chinese-made goods that flow into this country, including the low-priced Chinese-made tires Obama railed against during his meet up with Romney in Boca Raton, Fla.

That’s because the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland handle, among them, 45 percent of the waterborne containerized cargo shipped to the United States. Those Chinese imports support tens of thousands of port-related jobs, including wholesale trade, warehousing and transportation.

Chinese imports also are a boon to California consumers, who are able to save a considerable amount of their disposable incomes by purchasing goods “made in China” for American companies.

That includes California-based companies Apple, whose iPhone is made in China; Gap, which outsources some its clothing manufacturing to China; and Mattel, which entrusts much of its toy making to Chinese elves.

All told, Chinese imports make up less than 3 percent of total U.S. personal consumption, according to a report last year by the Federal Reserve of San Francisco, authored by senior economist Galina Hale and senior research advisor Bart Hobijn.

And of that amount, more than half the value of those “made in China” consumer goods actually redounds to U.S. companies (and their workers). Like Apple and Gap and Mattel.

No state profits as much from trade with China as California.  And no state stands to lose as much if the protectionist banter this week between Obama and Romney is translated into actual trade policy by whichever man the voters elect.