[YouTube] The trailer for Alex Garland‘s anticipated action movie “Civil War,” has dropped, set in the near future and depicting the U.S. amid a new civil war . Military historian Victor Davis Hanson, author of, “The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation,” joins “On Balance With Leland Vittert” to discuss the premise of the movie, saying, “We are having a pre-Civil War geographical force multiplier."
#1
Vice went Tango Uniform this morning. Once valued at $5.7 billion (by someone, certainly not me). You have to wonder what happens when everyone figures out that the far left is a very nich market and that fact has long-term implications for the health of the country (mostly good implications, I hope).
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/23/2024 9:44 Comments ||
Top||
#2
...unfortunately, business 'leaders' are more interested in virtue strokes from their peers than in the bottom line of the company. Any company that is lead by a third generation from its founder is run by suits without any real knowledge of their product or services or for that matter what their real market target audience is.
#3
America has always had a lot of churn in the economy, as old, stodgy companies led by self-satisfied management are pushed out of the way by entrepreneurs paying close attention to what customers need and want.. and often inventing new things or more efficient ways of doing old things.
WalMart replaced Sears and Kmart as well as a variety of small businesses. Amazon has replaced a great many businesses, but WalMart seems to have figured out the on-line market despite being second gen. owners. I didn't expect them to be able to make the change, honestly, since Sam Walton’s innovations were mostly in how he worked directly with key manufacturers to drive down his costs, mostly without reducing manufacturer profits.
[Nexstar via The Hill] The most streamed show last year wasn’t the latest Netflix reality TV show craze. Nor was it the highly anticipated final season of "Succession" or the debut of "The Last of Us."
According to Nielsen, the most minutes last year — more than 57 billion — were spent watching "Suits," a legal drama that premiered 12 years prior.
The show, which is available to stream on Netflix and Peacock, stars the former actress Meghan Markle, now the Duchess of Sussex, and likely has her to thank for its second life. But "Suits" isn’t the exception.
Old shows, which debuted over a decade ago, dominated the top streamed list of 2023. Several of the programs, including "Suits," "Gilmore Girls," and "Friends" have been off the air for years.
According to Nielsen, the most streamed acquired shows of 2023 were:
#6
When I was young, we had 3 TV stations, and there was maybe 3-4 watchable hours of programming in a typical week.
Now we have 500 or so TV stations, and maybe 3-4 watchable hours a week.
I'm sensing a theme here...
Posted by: ed in texas ||
02/23/2024 12:24 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Sometimes I see Gunsmoke as I'm running through the cable channels and I can't imagine that I'd want to watch it but then can't find anything else that I'd want to watch either. So I tune in to Gunsmoke and then I find out why it's still on television. I'm not the only one who enjoys it. No profanity. No nudity. No uncomfortable sexual situations. The violence is actually minimal for a show with that kind of a name. It feels like putting on a comfortable old sweater. Yeah, but I watch the old movies on TCM too for all of those same reasons. Sometimes I come across original episodes of Star Trek with Kirk, Spock, Bones and Scotty. Sometimes I find reruns of the The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson who was always funny as he skewered both Republican and Democrat politicians without being nasty. Can't find that kind of humor anywhere these days.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/23/2024 12:42 Comments ||
Top||
#8
The article is talking about old shows I never watched - like 20 years 'old'.
Shows we watched, like Gunsmoke, are prehistorical.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/23/2024 12:43 Comments ||
Top||
#9
When 'Friends' is superior to your work.
But 'Suits', nobody watches that except maybe the 50yo's at The Hill who smell like cat pee.
I found Lisa Simpson insufferable, so eventually the show was too as it seemed like 20 minutes of setting up a 1 minute Lisa monologue lecture.
Today's shows are so focused on The Message, its nearly an Inverse Lisa, with 20 minutes of focus lecture to set up an unfunny 1 minute gag.
#10
The disproportionate insertion of blacks in all the historic settings is really offensive and dishonest, and the "stupid white male" stereotype is embedded in everything.
#13
Everyone I'm sure is aware of DIEsney and Amazon's lack of quality.
What Apple TV did to Foundation was criminal.
I forget which cleveland streamer did it, but it was supposed to be a literal take on The Iliad. I was sort of able to get past Black Zeus. The casting was so diverse it was distracting. But my godman, the acting was horrid. The writing was shit. Production was loose.
Not even going to mention anything about The Doctor Who Christmas Special. I'll leave that to the curious cats.
#14
It was suggested to me that because I like Battlestar Galactica, give The Expanse a try.
Sure. Enjoyed season 1 even if they killed my favorite character, realistic action scenes, interesting points made.
Season 2. Uggg. Somebody must have noted its popularity and got their woke team inserted. They inserted a white grrrrl boss, and of course is lesbi@ned up with a black chick, and of course they have a child. Fine. Then on her way to tell president daddy what's what, she gets absolutely punched by an athletic adult male and just fkn tanks it - then proceeds on a lecture.
#16
Speaking of sussed-me TV and poets lariat and whatnot... world's sure gotten weird when defense of lampooned religious falls to your humble tumbleweed, but here we are...
Post-Code or Post-coda? Or, Miss Bennett Runs for Senate?
New-dead to me: Jennifer Ehle
Of best Pride and Prejudice. Really!
"You're racists and rapists
And worse! [curses] Papists!
It's true, honest Injun!" [eyes steely]
[American Thinker] Every once in a while, Big Government globalists inadvertently tell the truth. It’s usually not because they’re dumb, but because they’re so entombed inside their own dystopian cocoons that they forget how crazy they might sound to reasonable, well adjusted people. The World Economic Forum is filled with giddy zealots who have no idea how insane their plans for global domination sound to the wider population because the WEF’s psychopathic members are universally eager to depopulate the planet; cage the survivors; and drip-feed their human pets with a cocktail of drugs, bugs, and propaganda. Ordinary people look at Klaus Schwab and see Dr. Evil. WEF-fers see Commie Klaus as a shiny-headed (perhaps reflecting so much bright light as to be downright Luciferian) globalist god. While Davos devotees yearn for a "new world order," prudent Westerners are thinking about how to end the WEF’s madness before it abruptly ends them.
There was a time when Americans would look at some of the eccentric cult behavior taking place in Europe, shake their heads, and dismiss it as the kind of kookiness that happens when Old World aristocrats and commie-curious "elites" get together to drown their sorrows in cognac and regale each other with tales of lost colonies and mighty empires. Then American politicians began sounding a lot like their European cousins, who speak of common people as a farmer would a sounder of smelly pigs. When then-senator Barack Obama was yukking it up on the campaign trail with Nancy Pelosi’s friends in San Francisco, he complained about "bitter" blue-collar voters who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them." Even Hillary Clinton cackled at that mask-slipping moment, when she denounced Obama’s remarks as "elitist and out of touch." She was lying, of course, because eight years later, she told an audience in New York City that half of Donald Trump’s voters are "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it" and deserve to be relegated to a "basket of deplorables." Those moments of candor — delivered in front of adulatory audiences who shared Obama’s and Clinton’s cloistered worldview — crystallized for tens of millions of Americans that the political "elites" occupying D.C. have more in common with Dr. Evil’s communist club of aspiring tyrants in Davos than with the hardworking, God-fearing, patriotic citizens who have always sacrificed so much to make America great.
Ever since Obama’s election, the effort to bulldoze America and rebuild on its rubble a compliant nexus point for the WEF’s coercive Borg to dominate the West has picked up speed. Unaccountable bureaucrats and politicians in Washington don’t even pretend to respect the will of voters anymore. Strong majorities of Americans have said resoundingly: close and secure the borders, stop spending money that you do not have, end widespread warrantless surveillance, stop censoring public debate, stop distorting the law to punish dissenting voices, safeguard elections from mail-in ballot fraud, and stop funneling money to foreign regimes that use that money to attack the United States. The hive-mind Borg in D.C. has told the American people to go suck an egg. The federal government’s targeted abuse of Americans has been an eye-opening experience for many.
Consider this question: when is the last time you can remember an Establishment politician trying to unite Americans behind common history and principles, irrespective of background or race? It’s been many years, has it not? Why is that? Because the current power structure of the U.S. government depends upon keeping Americans fiercely divided.
The moment a large coalition of Americans come together to tackle common obstacles is the moment that the small "ruling class" of political elites (across all three branches and the vast, unconstitutional administrative State) get tossed to the curb. From D.C.’s point of view, the scariest thing about Donald Trump is that his policies make sense to an amazingly diverse cross-section of the American people. In his wake, the political class’s usual attempt to pour salt in old racial wounds has become less effective. That’s why we now hear so much about the scourge of "Christian nationalism." The attempt to use religious discrimination as a new wedge to divide society is an admission that the Deep State is desperate for a new boogeyman.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Vladimir Kornilov
[RIA] So ten years have passed. Ten years after the victory of the coup d'etat in Ukraine, nicknamed there "Euromaidan" and even the "revolution of dignity." Everything that Ukrainians are experiencing now is a direct consequence of this coup, carried out under the auspices of the United States and its European satellites.
Like all classic coups, Maidan began with beautiful slogans and completely empty promises, not backed up by anything. It started with the promise of “tea, coffee and good mood” and ended in bloodshed. Let us remember how the leaders of the “revolution” shouted from the rostrum: “So that every person in this country saves his life! So that our country is preserved as a single power! So that our children do not cry for their fathers! So that our fathers do not cry for their children!”
Now all Western media articles about the situation in Ukraine are accompanied by photographs of countless graves in military cemeteries. In fact, an entire generation of young people in this country has been lost. When The Times correspondent, who recently traveled through Ukraine to communicate with the youth there, decided to ask two 18-year-old teenagers about their plans for the future, they answered briefly: “There is no future. <…> With this corrupt government. <…>.”
But remember, the fight against corruption was the main theme of the Maidan ten years ago! On all the leaflets distributed there, this point was number one. First, Petro Poroshenko knocked off the “corrupt” Viktor Yanukovych, then Vladimir Zelensky knocked off the “corrupt” Petro Poroshenko. Now even senior employees of Zelensky’s office admit in private conversations with Western correspondents : “People steal as if tomorrow does not exist.” This is it - achieving a revolution!
A lot was said on Maidan about the heavenly life that Ukrainians would live in immediately after the victory of the “revolution of dignity.” The lion's share of the agitation came down to "calculations of benefits" from the upcoming association with the European Union. The organizers of the coup included a sharp decline in prices for the population, a significant increase in Ukrainian exports and an increase in industrial production as “guaranteed consequences”.
Here it will be useful to remember that before the Maidan, this country’s exports reached $70 billion, and at the end of last year it earned exactly half as much. Former Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov, summing up the results of this decade, recalled that the country once produced 54 million tons of steel per year, and now - six million. And no matter what sector of the economy you take, the indicators will be similar. It’s all the more fun to hear Zelensky’s tales about plans to establish his own production of anything.
The promises of Maidan ten years ago were particularly primitivistic. For example, one of the DJs at the rallies, TV presenter Natalya Sokolenko, joyfully promised from the podium: “Ukrainian men will live much longer. Women will also live longer. But men - much longer!” Now the main task for Ukrainian men is to hide, to escape from the military registration and enlistment offices, that is, to survive! And another Maidan DJ, Sergei Leshchenko, who was standing next to Sokolenko on the podium at that moment, is now calling on Europe to deport the Ukrainian men who managed to escape back in order to use them as cannon fodder at the front. So much for “visa-free”!
In such cases, it is customary in Ukraine to ask: “Did the Maidan really stand for this?” But in fact, this is what Maidan stood for! This, of course, was not understood by many naive people who joyfully jumped in the cold with wild cries of “Whoever doesn’t jump is a Muscovite!” But these are the inevitable laws of any coups, riots, putschs and revolutions!
Lenin once wrote that the driving force of any successful revolution must be “the lower classes who do not want to live in the old way.”
But honestly, we must admit: a prerequisite for any successful revolution must be the deception of these “lower classes”, the promise of an unrealizable heavenly life. However, immediately after the coup, the opposite inevitably occurs: blood, dirt, darkness, devastation, a sharp deterioration in life, victims. Thus, Ukraine, having chosen the path outlined by it in the US State Department, was simply doomed to further degradation.
It is clear that in Ukraine it is now customary to blame Russia for everything : if it weren’t for the “occupation,” we would now live like in Europe! This is usually said by those who, at best, “did not notice” how Ukrainian Nazis burned oppositionists in Odessa and bombed the cities of Donbass, and at worst, ardently supported these actions.
For a long time, Russia tried to resolve the issue peacefully, admonished various Kyiv regimes, and called on the West to implement the Minsk agreements. But the West did not stage a coup in Kiev so that peace and prosperity would come. The original goal was to weaken Russia. Let it be at the cost of the lives and future of the Ukrainians themselves.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, summing up the decade of Maidan, said : “There is no doubt that the West has declared war against us. They do not hide it. <…> In war, the main thing is strategy, and it is not in Kiev, but far". And this strategy comes down to sacrificing Ukraine. So, having gone to the Maidan for a “good mood” and “lace panties,” the people of Kiev buried their country.
Because the main result of the Maidan was a complete renunciation of sovereignty. Now it is not in Kyiv that decides how many more Ukrainians must die in order to realize the unrealizable dream of the West: “to defeat Russia on the battlefield.” What will remain of Ukraine and whether anything will remain, the true organizers of the Kyiv putsch, who still run the State Department, do not care at all! From their point of view, the end justifies the means.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Gevorg Mirzayan
[REGNUM] The other day, President Vladimir Putin met with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. And in the open part of the conversation with him, he spoke about his vision of negotiations with the United States on issues of strategic stability, that is, on ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
“We have never refused dialogue. But, of course, to pretend that the United States and the West, on the one hand, are calling for the strategic defeat of Russia, and on the other hand, allegedly intend and want to negotiate with us on strategic stability, believing that one issue is in no way connected with the other, this will not be possible. If they seek to inflict a strategic defeat on us, then we must think about what strategic stability means for our country."
And in these proposals the president carries out two most important thoughts. Firstly, about what kind of negotiations should take place with the United States, and secondly, about what strategic stability is for Russia in the world after February 2022.
As for negotiations, Vladimir Putin fundamentally rejects the so-called buffet principle, when the parties take from the bilateral agenda only those topics on which they can agree. And it would seem that the president’s position is ambiguous. Even during the Cold War—especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis—Russia and the United States enjoyed a buffet. Even despite the bilateral confrontation, they negotiated on the same strategic stability, as well as on other issues of mutual interest. As responsible world powers who did not want their conflict to spill over into a global nuclear war.
However, the problem is that the current confrontation is very different from that of the Cold War. Now Russia has fewer resources than the Union. Now the American leadership is different, possessing much less knowledge and strategic thinking than in the days of Kissinger or even Brzezinski. Now the rules of the game are different, or rather, their practical absence, as can be seen in the example of the same attack by the United States on the Nord Stream and its supply of weapons to the Ukrainian Armed Forces attacking Russian territory. Finally, now the stakes are different: what is at stake is not the competition of the two systems, but the fate of a unipolar world in which Moscow does not and cannot have a worthy place.
And in this situation, the Swedish diplomatic table becomes impossible.
Firstly, due to a lack of trust between the parties.
Secondly, due to the unwillingness of the United States to negotiate, Washington does not and cannot consider Russia an equal partner. He is fundamentally not ready to go with her to any “New Yalta”.
Thirdly, Moscow is fundamentally not ready to legitimize the American approach towards Russia, that is, to transform it into some kind of new normality in bilateral relations, when in order to cooperate with Moscow, America does not need to abandon the course of inflicting strategic defeat on it.
And finally, fourthly, a buffet is impossible because Russia is now developing a new concept of strategic stability.
Yes, ideal stability is a situation when all the great powers play their concert strictly according to the rules. If there are wars, then only on the periphery, in other countries. If there are conflicts, then only within the red lines that are prohibited to be crossed. If there are agreements, then those that must be observed. And a huge number of common strategic goals, including the principles of indivisible security, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, arms reduction and the search for common denominators in everything and everywhere. That is, what is called, if not good neighborliness, then at least the principles of decent coexistence.
Now this stability is impossible. It was made so by the United States, whose authorities are now ready to fight to preserve their unipolar world at any cost. Regardless of the rules, or the interests of others, or even the principles of national security of the United States itself.
The new stability rules are now different. And it's not just about giving up the diplomatic buffet. We are also talking about demonstrative freedom of hands. Moscow must have every opportunity to respond to escalation with escalation. Taking out from the Pandora's box opened by the Americans what was previously unacceptable. That is why Russia does not particularly object to the spread of rumors in the West that it allegedly has weapons to destroy the Western satellite constellation and is supposedly ready to use them.
The next rule is “fortress Russia,” as Sergei Karaganov called it. Not autarky or Juche, but still self-reliance. And above all, on the emerging Russian patriotic society. The one that volunteers, helps the front and is ready to endure Western pressure without selling the country for jeans and chewing gum. The one thanks to which Russia survived the period of sanctions, but at the same time, the one with which the authorities must comply. Including our actions on the international stage.
Finally, another rule is collectivity. Russia is betting on the formation of a multipolar world, which means its strategic stability must be built on broad compromises with non-Western great powers. If you like, a kind of “board of directors” of the multipolar world - China, India, Iran and other representatives of the “global south”.
Yes, it is impossible to exclude the United States and Europe from global stability, but in conditions where they themselves are not ready to participate in the process, new contours can and should be formed without them. With those who are ready to seriously negotiate and who take a responsible approach to issues of global security.
And if (or when) the moment comes and the United States and Europe change their attitude, then it will be possible to negotiate with them. But not at the buffet, but at the common table.
When Google changed its Chatbot to Gemini, I saw there was a bias problem. I use Gemini and ChatGPT to streamline descriptions of my wargame/after action videos, and to slightly lesser extent, improve a narrative. Whenever it does insert its Kommie views, I just cut that shit out and move on.
Dunno what I would do if the AI bots pulled shit like this.
[Hot Air] I must admit that I am fascinated by the sudden uptick in talk about a European war with Russia.
Not fascinated in the "I would love to see what happens" way, but rather "I never expected to hear the mostly pacifist European governments openly discuss the possibility of World War III."
Nobody, I think, is expecting the kind of apocalypse that we imagined during the Cold War. Tanks will not be rolling through the Fulda Gap, and the chance that nuclear weapons will begin flying isn't exactly high, whatever the idiots at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists blather on about.
But it's clear that many politicians and most European military leaders are genuinely concerned that some form of armed conflict could erupt between a Western European country and Russia.
I wrote a post on why this prospect is not as absurd as it seems. In a direct, military-on-military confrontation, Russia would get its clock cleaned and Putin knows that, but there are conflicts short of a major war in which bullets and bombs might be exchanged, and that would be a Very Bad Thing.
#5
sanity in germany. legalization and availability will end the cartels cash flow also that of the fbi and cia. . usage advice should be available and if one chooses to ignore it so what?
#6
. legalization and availability will end the cartels cash flow
Wrong. When California legalized pot the cartels switched to fentanyl and now they're making more money than ever.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
02/23/2024 13:18 Comments ||
Top||
#7
^ If the now in retreat total drug legalization free-for-all in places like Portland hasn't changed a "leagalizer's" mindset, nothing will.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
02/23/2024 13:21 Comments ||
Top||
#8
When it became available in Oklahoma, that stretch of interstate south of OKC was saturated with dispensary ad billboards. Now they are all Narcon Ads and Addiction Helplines.
I heard it put something like, "I'm all for (MJ) legalization, I think its crazy it isn't. That being said, I can't help but notice that the places which have legalize it have gone to shit."
I think its fair to argue that it is democrat policies in general which turn places into shitholes, of which legal MJ is a small piece. I found it interesting that an absolute Bob Marley legalize it guy was like, "yeah, but.."
[American Thinker] Imagine a crime committed right on the floor of the United States Senate. "Will my colleague from New York agree," asks the senator from California, "that at five o’clock next Saturday, we will shoot the president in the middle of Fifth Avenue?"
"I agree," replies the senator from New York. "To help us accomplish our end, I will now vote to disband the Secret Service."
After the senators commit criminal conspiracy live on C-SPAN -- that’s agreeing to a crime and taking one act to accomplish it -- nothing happens. Neither get so much as much as a ticket. That’s because the senators are absolutely immune from criminal prosecution under the Constitution.
The Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause provides that a congressman may not be put on trial for any "legislative act." Hence Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska could commit a grave felony in 1971 when he disclosed the top-secret Pentagon Papers. He did so at a hearing of the Senate’s Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, so no prosecutor could touch him. Had he released the papers in the hallway outside the hearing room, he’d have been in handcuffs.
A president has it harder, according to Special Counsel Jack Smith. In the Justice Department’s prosecution of President Trump for contesting the 2020 election results, Smith argues that he may put Trump on trial for official presidential acts. All that’s required to arrest Trump, says Smith, is that just over half of a biased Washington, D.C., grand jury conclude that his words or deeds fall within the vague wording of a rarely charged criminal statute. In Smith’s telling, he may put a president on trial for standing in the Speaker’s Lobby off the House floor to urge congressmen to vote against certifying an election -- but because voting is a legislative act, not the congressmen who stand three feet away and actually cast the votes as urged.
Smith admits that a president must be protected by at least a qualified immunity from criminal prosecution -- but he refuses to spell out exactly what that immunity is. Smith could propose an immunity covering only acts that double as political speech or petition or permitting prosecution only for clear crimes. Smith instead just swings his bat at a baseball he cannot see and declares a home run: whatever immunity a president has, he asserts, it cannot cover President Trump.
#4
One difference. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters just gave the Trump campaign the largest donation permissible by law for the first time since 2000 for a Republican candidate.
[PJ] It's not like the people paying millions of illegal aliens to come to the U.S. for some social experiment don't know that what they're doing is national suicide; it's that they don't care that it's national suicide. That's a feature, not a bug.
They don't like the colonial power that the U.S. was way back when, and this is the payback. They know only what their woke teachers cribbed from Howard Zinn, and now they're "making a difference!" by ruining their own country because it deserves to be a Third World hell-hole.
You can't have complete strangers from entirely different cultures come to the United States in numbers that eclipse the populations of 36 states and expect unity and kumbaya. No, what you'll get is a new caste system. What you'll get are no-go zones featuring Muslim men raping "infidel" women on New Year's, more "honor" killings, and a complete disruption again in undereducated American men chasing fewer jobs for less money.
Parents will worry, if they don't already, about their kids going to the same school as kids who cannot read and write in their own language much less English, and knowing that their child's advancement will go at the speed of the slowest kid. More kids means less spending per pupil. Where are all those teachers' union swells crying about smaller classroom sizes? Oh, that's right. They got their COVID raises and are keeping calm until it's time for the next contract negotiation.
The NGOs and government adjacent activists are being given money by the feds and the U.N. to pay these chaos tourists $372 million of mostly our money with an eye toward increasing that amount in 2024. Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies says these payments are made by credit cards, vouchers, and envelopes of cold cash to people who just days before were counting their money in rubles or yuan.
These people are given free health care, housing, and rent support, depending on their background and gender. It's all part of the plan. And you? You're not. You, my friend, are collateral damage.
"If you build it they will come," goes the "Field of Dreams" quote. And if you pay them they will come, too.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[PJ] It's not like the people paying millions of illegal aliens to come to the U.S. for some social experiment don't know that what they're doing is national suicide; it's that they don't care that it's national suicide. That's a feature, not a bug. 
