ARE YOU TIRED OF WINNING YET? Paul Bedard: Weekly Trump Report Card: ‘Dizzying,’ with wins on border wall and deregulation.
Archive for 2020
January 12, 2020
THE REAL REASON REPORTERS TRASHED RICKY GERVAIS’ MONOLOGUE, as spotted by Christian Toto:
Reporters want stars to make voters accept draconian green policies that will stagger their personal incomes. So every time Leonardo DiCaprio cheers on environmental activism it’s a huge win for them – while they ignore the Oscar winner’s staggering eco-hypocrisy.
More importantly, these stars say the things that reporters dare not admit. Derek Hunter’s book, “Outrage, Inc.” explains why.
Major media reporters can’t come out and say, “We believe in socialist policies, open borders and Medicare for All.” What they can do, though, is uncritically repeat those positions when celebrities espouse them.
That lets them have it both ways. They promote the causes they hold so dear, and they don’t jeopardize their journalist bona fides in the process.
That dovetails well with John Hinderaker of Power Line’s observation that the core audience of today’s incarnation of NBC’s Saturday Night Live is the DNC-MSM: “Democratic Party news outlets report on Saturday Night Live skits because they want to amplify SNL’s anti-Trump message. ‘Respectable’ news outlets like the AP can’t publish absurd comedy skits ripping President Trump, much as they might like to. But by covering Saturday Night Live, they turn such meaningless attacks into fake “news.”
WELL, THAT WOULD BE MY PREFERENCE TOO: Polling Experts: Democrats More Likely to Nominate ‘No One’ Than Elizabeth Warren.
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): NBC News looks beyond the physical to examine all the pains felt by men having their periods.
THE COURAGE OF THEIR CONVICTIONS: Kentucky Dem Praises McConnell-Backed Jobs Program, Then Deletes Tweet.
A UNITER, NOT A DIVIDER! Trump tweet in Farsi ‘the most liked Persian tweet’ in history of Twitter.
THE DISMAL TRUMP ECONOMY: Trump’s average unemployment rate is the lowest in recorded history.
#JOURNALISM: Matt Taibbi: 2019: A Year the News Media Would Rather Forget. Corrections went out of style, bombshells fizzled, and too much of what we watched and read felt like insider propaganda. Well, only because it was. Plus: “By almost any measure this was one of the worst years in the history of commercial news media.”
January 11, 2020
AT AMAZON, save in Blu-Ray and DVD.
MIKE BLOOMBERG: “The U.S. economy is working just fine for people like me. But it is badly broken for the vast majority of Americans.”
The truth: Wages Soar Fastest among Those with the Least. “Never mind the liberal lies. Hard data reveal this reality. The Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank’s monthly Wage Growth Tracker shows that Americans are making more money, particularly those who have been forgotten for decades. Between November 2018 and November 2019, overall median wage growth climbed 3.6 percent, a healthy pace that should lift spirits, too. Those in the bottom 25 percent saw wages advance 4.5 percent, while the top 25 percent lagged, with pay rising just 2.9 percent. This is the 180-degree exact opposite of what Democrats relentlessly bellow. They have equal access to the Atlanta Fed’s website. This confirms their rank dishonesty.”
HUH. HOW ABOUT THAT? High-level pro-Iran militia commander is assassinated in Iraq by unknown gunmen.
NEWS YOU CAN USE, SOONER OR LATER: A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death. I hope much later, but you never know.
OPEN THREAD: Are you tired of winning yet?
TREATING CHRONIC HEART FAILURE IN WOMEN WITH TESTOSTERONE: “Testosterone supplementation improves functional capacity, insulin resistance, and muscle strength in women with advanced CHF. Testosterone seems to be an effective and safe therapy for elderly women with CHF.”
JOHN NOLTE’S 1917 REVIEW: Technically Dazzling, Emotionally Lacking.
The movie’s central conceit is that it’s supposed to look like it was filmed in a single take, a single shot (two, actually). There’s good reason behind this. The idea, I assume, is that this approach will make we the viewers feel like the third man on the mission. And in a few scenes this works, especially a shocking turning point at a deserted farm.
Overall, though, with the camera whopping and swooping, sometimes self-consciously (but nowhere near as self-consciously as that dreadful Oscar-winner Birdman), it feels like we lose something, primarily any sense of intimacy with the characters.
Close-ups were invented for a reason, and when the camera behaves like a voyeur instead of a lover, or the attempt to hold that single tracking shot is so strained you can’t help but notice, it takes you out of the movie. Sometimes in frustration. There’s a scene in a dark basement that lacks the intimacy and longing director Sam Mendes is obviously going for. The potential was all there. It’s poignantly written and performed. Unfortunately, the gimmick keeps us at arm’s length.
Part of the problem might be mine. While I never read reviews before seeing a film, I can’t avoid the hype, and 1917 is a critically-acclaimed frontrunner for Best Picture. For this reason I walked in assuming I was about to see something along the lines of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) or Paths of Glory (1957), two World War I masterpieces you can never quite shake.
Performance-wise and technically, 1917 beats the band. The problem is the lack of an undertow. Beyond War is a terrible and obscene waste of young lives, 1917 doesn’t have much to say. Near the end, by way of Benedict Cumberbatch, who has a small role, this is unnecessarily spoken out loud.
Read the whole thing, which jibes with my take. As I wrote on Christmas Day, after seeing it on a Texas-sized movie screen in Dallas, 1917 is certainly worth seeing in a theater for the full impact of Mendes’ bravura stunt effect of a “non-edited single camera film,” (actually loads of edits brilliantly disguised through digital trickery) but don’t look for much of a message beyond “war, what is good for?”
Related: Salon writer would recommend 1917 but is uncomfortable doing so when Donald Trump is president. “Keep in mind: This is the same site that published a piece on how the Hallmark Channel’s Christmas movies were ‘fascist propaganda.’”
LIKE ELON MUSK, THEY’RE TURNING OUT TO BE BRIGHTER THAN EXPECTED: Why SpaceX’s Starlink satellites caught astronomers off guard. I feel sorry for astronomers, but they need to put their telescopes in orbit where they belong. Or on the far side of the moon. Elon will make that possible soon enough.
SUPER GAFFE-O-MATIC ’76: Confused Joe Biden claims there’s a border between Venezuela and Bolivia, which is 700 miles away.
BRINGING FOX SOME COMPETITION: Trump allies looking to purchase One America News Network: WSJ.
BLUE ON BLUE: McDonald’s sued for ‘systematic but covert’ discrimination against black employees.
Flashback: In 2015, then-McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook viewed to transform the business into a ‘modern, progressive burger company.’ Based upon recent headlines, his plan is succeeding beyond his wildest dreams.
TRUMP STANDS WITH THE PROTESTERS:
You know, Iran says they’ve bribed a lot of Western government officials. If the mullahs fall, a lot of people are going to be sweating bullets regarding the files that come out.
HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? Why trouble in the Middle East no longer means an oil price hike.
“SOCIAL JUSTICE” ISN’T A MIRAGE, IT’S A SCAM. F.A. Hayek & Social Justice: A Missed Opportunity and a Challenge. The Catholic variety may be marginally preferable to the communist variety, but if you actually want to help poor people it’s capitalism all the way.