BUT THE NARRATIVE: How the U.S. Squandered Its Steel Superiority. “Spoiler alert: Unfair trade practices of foreign nations had nothing to do with it.”
I was raised in the steel industry, and every detail in this column rings true. What it leaves out is the innovation-killing and anticompetitive union contracts which the steel giants succumbed to in the 1950s.
MICHAEL GRAHAM: OSCARS’ #METOO SHOW MIGHTY FISHY.
When the guy who hosted the breast-obsessed ‘Man Show’ appears onstage with an NBA player once accused of rape to give awards to people who spent decades doing business with Harvey Weinstein — you know Hollywood has gotten serious about sexual harassment.
I have no comment about the crop of overrated movies honored by the Academy Sunday night — other than to note that giving the Best Picture nod to ‘Handicapped Woman Has Sex With Fish Man, Is Saved By Communists’ may be the most #Oscars! moment ever. What is worthy of notice is the nonstop self-congratulations from society’s most notoriously corrupt class, the Hollywood Left.
Elsewhere, Jonah Goldberg writes:
[M]ost people don’t see the movies that the Oscars honor — only two of the nominees for Best Picture grossed more than $100 million — Jimmy Kimmel said that making money isn’t the point. ‘We don’t make films like Call Me By Your Name for money. We make them to upset Mike Pence.’
Hah hah and all that. But Kimmel’s right (though probably not literally). Hollywood does make a lot of movies to be transgressive. In one sense, that’s fine; self-styled artistes are allowed to make the movies they want. And as I said, some of them are great. But no one should be surprised when the ratings for the Oscars are lousy, given that they mostly celebrate movies that are hostile — or simply unappealing — to vast swathes of the movie-going and TV-watching audience. Particularly when those honored are so liable to preen about how clever and brave they are.
Speaking of Call Me By Your Name, over the weekend, the New York Times asked “How Do You Solve a Problem Like ‘Manhattan’?”, exploring how problematic Woody Allen’s 1979 film, once considered a stylish modern classic, has become post-Weinstein:
[As] Lisa Schwarzbaum, the former movie critic for Entertainment Weekly, pointed out in an email interview, ‘‘Manhattan’ was always about a middle-aged man with a high school girlfriend. Back then, ‘Manhattan’ was made by Woody the Lovable Neurotic Nebbish, and now it has been made by Allen the Monster. And it’s the same movie.”
Call Me By Your Name also concerns a relationship between a 17 year old and an adult, except this time around they’re both of the same gender. Other than to troll Mike Pence, why isn’t this film considered equally problematic among today’s allegedly reformed denizens of Hollywood?
Update: Post was slightly reformatted for ease of readability.
NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL FLYING: The Airlines with the Best Craft Beer, Ranked.
REVIEW: 2018 Cadillac CT6.
ROGER KIMBALL: Robert Mueller and His ‘Vacuum-Activities.’
NAME THAT PARTY: Before Her Resignation, AP Was 1-for-10 in Labeling Nashville’s Mayor As a Democrat.
Just think of the media as Democratic activists with bylines, and it all makes sense.
SABER-RATTLING: The Flawed Logic of Russia’s New Weapon Systems.
The four strategic weapons announced by Putin are well placed to counter this perceived threat, as emphasised in the videos accompanying his speech showing the systems targeting the U.S.. The first two are the Sarmat super-heavy ICBM, and the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, basically a super-manoeuvrable ICBM warhead, many of which would fit on the enormous Sarmat missile. Also there is the Kanyon long-ranged unmanned submarine, which clearly cannot be targeted by BMD interceptors, although it can attack U.S. coastal areas, including where Aegis-equipped ships would patrol. Finally there is an as-yet unnamed nuclear-powered cruise missile that would fly at too low a level to be affected by U.S. defences.
Yet in reality the new weapons represent complex and expensive solutions to a problem that largely doesn’t exist. The U.S. has not shown the least interest in degrading Russian defences wholesale since the long-abandoned “Star Wars” program of the 1980s. This is reinforced by the limited numbers of interceptors so far deployed: the U.S. could afford to install more, but it simply chooses not to.
Moscow tried once before to outspend their way to victory against the West, but the results were not to their liking.
I GUESS THIS IS WHAT YOU GRADUATE TO, WHEN YOU’RE TOO OLD TO EAT TIDE PODS: These Are The 911 Calls of Apple Employees Who Walked Into The Glass Walls of Their “Spaceship.”
BEGUN, THE TRADE WARS HAVE: Seoul all out to counter US 25% tariff on steel imports.
WELL, THIS IS ENCOURAGING: Even more bugs in LTE networks allow eavesdropping, fake emergency messages.
XI JINPING, ANIMAL FARM, STEVE MARTIN, AND HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS: All Chinese are equal, but some are more equal than others.
FBI’S AUSSIE TIPPER LINKED TO CHINESE FIRM LONG DISTRUSTED BY U.S. INTEL: So the FBI’s two chief sources for probing allegations of Trump-Russia collusion against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign includes Christopher Steele, a former British spy obsessed with beating Trump, and Alexander Downer, the Australian politico closely tied to Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications firm all six U.S. intelligence chiefs just warned Congress about last month.
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Also, shop the Pressure Washer Buying Guide.
VIDEO: Seven House Democrats Have Direct Ties To Notorious Anti-Semite.
If they were Republicans this would be front-page news, all week long.
PODCAST: Glenn Harlan Reynolds on the Judiciary’s Progressive Elitism.
It’s me talking about The Judiciary’s Class War.
WRONG PSYCHOLOGY: Christian Life In Exile: An English Vicar Prepares His Flock For Life As A Despised Minority.
I’m not a very good Christian, probably, but I’d emulate the Muslims and prepare to live as a feared-and-placated minority.
SURVEILLANCE STATE: The FBI’s secret warrant to surveil Carter Page should scare all Americans and spur reform. “A secret, non-adversarial system of judicial review is an insufficient check to our intelligence agencies and law enforcement.”
When a physical search occurs in accordance with American criminal law, law enforcement must show probable cause and obtain permission from a judge, and then present a given suspect with a warrant, and a receipt for the items removed. When law enforcement wants to obtain a criminal wiretap, they similarly have to show probable cause to obtain a warrant, carefully collect information related to potential crimes, and then disclose that information if charges are wrought. The key difference, is that with the latter, the suspect will only discover they’ve had their privacy violated after they’ve been indicted. With a FISC warrant, it’s possible a suspect will never find out, even if charges are eventually filed.
In the case of Carter Page, his private life was monitored, for almost a year, without his knowledge, and then placed on display for strangers at the FBI to peruse, all based on a suspicion that he was colluding with Russia. On the basis of hearsay, business associations, and possibly Page’s political opinions, the FBI received a classified surveillance warrant and then renewed it three times. And yet, Page was never officially charged — suggesting that, even given the ability to surveil him in ways that might make the general public cringe, the FBI was never able to find enough evidence for a single crime.
Read the whole thing.
SOUTHCOM COMMANDER: Terror Networks ‘Reach Deep Into Our Hemisphere’ in ‘New and Surprising Ways.’
THE OTHER HALF HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION: Poll: Nearly half of New Yorkers think Cuomo is part of the state’s corruption culture.
THE BEST LAID PLANS OF MIES AND MEN: Here are 911 Transcripts of some of the Times that Apple Employees Walked Directly into the Glass Walls of their “flying saucer” Cupertino campus.
As one wag tweeted yesterday, “It turns out that Apple isn’t compatible with windows.” Heh, indeed.™
(Classical allusion in headline.)
AN AMAZING THREAD ON the students who attacked Christina Hoff Sommers’ speech at Lewis & Clark Law. I remember when the National Lawyers Guild was all-in for free speech. Of course, back then it was free speech for commies.
On the protesters, Ann Althouse comments: “Notice that they’re at their best when they create an atmosphere of unreason. When some people try to reason with them and invite them into a middle position of engaging in debate — which really isn’t fair to the speaker — they look baffled and — like so many law students in so many law school classrooms throughout the ages — woefully unprepared.”
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