WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LISTEN TO GREENS: EU bans imports of products linked to deforestation, freezing Europeans cut down forests to survive.
Archive for 2022
December 27, 2022
The most glaring omission is the old-fashioned, feel-good blockbuster – “Top Gun: Maverick.” Why would snooty cinéastes laud a film that not only got Americans back into theaters after a devastating pandemic but also grossed over $1.4 billion globally?
Why would they want to include a film that got two Golden Globe nominations, as well as the selection of “best film” by the National Board of Review, the non-profit group of New York City area film buffs whose awards are often a harbinger of films that will take home Oscars?
Why would they mention a movie whose box-office superstar, Tom Cruise, insisted that it open in theaters, saying that a streaming-only premiere was “never going to happen”? Cruise prevailed, though the film’s debut was postponed four times before finally arriving in theaters last May.
The Times was not the only major newspaper to diss the year’s top-grossing film. TG:M did not make the top ten lists of critics at The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and New Yorker. (Atlantic magazine gave it “honorable mention.”) But among the nation’s leading newspapers, only the Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday chose it as the year’s best film. Calling it “a blockbuster in the best sense of the word,” Hornaday wrote that it is a “big, old-fashioned movie-movie that outclassed the first movie in its smart writing, canny casting, authentic emotion (still crying, Iceman) and bold, beautiful production values.”
As Sonny Bunch writes: ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Should Win Best Picture. “Some will argue that Top Gun: Maverick doesn’t ‘deserve’ the Oscar, that it wasn’t the ‘best’ movie of the year. I’d, frankly, agree with that. It’s not even at the top of my own list, and it’s likely to be up against the movie I do think is the best of the year (“Tár) in the best picture category. But to quote another Oscar favorite: Deserve’s got nothing to do with it. This is a moment for self-preservation, pure and simple, not just for a Hollywood struggling to retain relevance in an increasingly niche-ified entertainment universe but also for The Academy Awards themselves, which have seen ratings decline year after year and can’t expect the rousing triumph of Coda to remind people that, hey, the Oscars are a thing.”
QUESTION ASKED: What’s behind Southwest Airlines’s nightmare meltdown?
USDOT says it’ll review Southwest’s “unacceptable rate of cancellations and delays.” People in the front of this SW cancellation line Monday in Milwaukee said they were waiting 5 hours. A woman on hold with the airline showed a 6-hour call in progress.
Fortunately, Biden’s secretary of transportation is on the case: Buttigieg speaks with Southwest Airlines CEO amid mass cancellations.
“This afternoon, Secretary Buttigieg spoke with the CEO of Southwest Airlines and conveyed that he expects the airline to live up to the commitments it has made to passengers, including providing meal vouchers, refunds and hotel accommodations for those experiencing significant delays or cancellations that came about as a result of Southwest’s decisions and actions,” the department said. “Southwest, as all airlines, is also obligated to provide a cash refund for passengers whose flights were cancelled and decided not to travel.”
Buttigieg also spoke to union leaders who represent Southwest pilots and flight attendants, some of whom were also stranded and forced to book hotel rooms after cancellations.
“He also conveyed to Southwest CEO that he expects Southwest to do right by their pilots and flight attendants — and all their workers — in these situations,” the department said in a statement.
Do right by their pilots? A Buttigieg divided against itself cannot stand!
HMM: Experiments Show Women Can Sniff Out Single And Married Men. “A study in 2010, for instance, found that single males have higher testosterone levels than partnered males. Not only could this make them more competitive in the dating arena, but the natural scent of their high-testosterone bodies could also signal fitness, viability, and sexual availability to others in an inexplicit way. . . . But there is another explanation, and it’s far less appealing: It’s been suggested that married men have better health and hygiene than single men.”
AUTO DEALERS behaving badly.
REPORT: THE STRUGGLE IS REAL FOR CNN’S NEW YEAR’S EVE HOSTS. “CNN Plans to Sober Up Boozy New Year’s Eve Coverage.”
FASTER, PLEASE: Dressing ‘revolution’ seeks artificial skin for burn victims.
WILLIE SUTTON WOULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD: Why do colleges and universities march in lockstep when it comes to race-preferential admissions? Because that’s where the money is.
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: FDA grants priority review for over-the-counter opioid overdose drug.
THEN I HAVE TO ASSUME IT’S YET ANOTHER HATE CRIME HOAX: UCincinnati officials silent about racist letter investigation. “The College Fix has reached out to the alleged victim, Professor Antar Tichavakunda, campus police, the university’s media team and a student who published the photo and all have remained silent about the message that contained racially charged language and used the n-word repeatedly.”
READER FAVORITE: MyPillow Premium Bed Pillow 2 Pack. #CommissionEarned
LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: Five Teens Charged With Murder In Christmas Weekend Shooting At ‘Gun-Free’ Mall of America.
A MILLION HERE AND A MILLION THERE…: Adidas Sits On Half Billion Dollars Of Unsold Yeezys After Terminating Deal With Kayne West.
A SWEDISH WAY THE AMERICAN LEFT WON’T WANT TO EMULATE: Sweden Ditches Barbaric ‘Gender-Affirming’ Care for Kids.
READER FAVORITE: 40X60 Monocular Telescope High Power Monocular for Adults. #CommissionEarned
WOEING: After years of KC-46 vision system troubles, Boeing thinks its finally cracked the code.
In May 2018, a group of defense reporters visited Boeing’s KC-46 manufacturing plant here in Everett, Wash., just months after the Air Force disclosed a major problem with a critical system that provides imagery to boom operators during the refueling process.
The message imparted by Boeing officials then was simple: A software fix, which would be available in months, was all that was needed to right the system.
At the time Air Force officials vehemently and publicly disagreed, and, it turned out, Boeing was wrong. The issue was more severe and would take far longer to rectify. After two more years of sometimes heated disputes with the Air Force, including a stern letter from the service’s top general to Boeing’s chief executive, the company agreed in May 2020 to completely redesign the KC-46’s Remote Vision System on its own dime.
Now, the company is ready to show off an early prototype of what it’s calling the Remote Vision System 2.0.
More than four years to prototype a new tracking system that should have worked the first time.
Plus: “Although the agreement on RVS 2.0 appears to have healed the rift between Boeing and the Air Force, the new system has already hit some snags and has a long road ahead of it.”
What a mess.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Californians Brace For Deadly 50-Degree Cold Front.
THE MARCH OF PROGRESS: A new kind of quinoa flour may be coming to a sugar cookie near you.
WHOOPI GOLDBERG REITERATES FALSE CLAIM THAT HOLOCAUST “WASN’T ORIGINALLY” ABOUT RACE:
Whoopi Goldberg is again receiving criticism for her false claims about the Holocaust. In an interview published with The Sunday Times of London on Saturday – the sixth day of the Jewish holiday Hanukkah – the actor and “The View” co-host reiterated her claims that the Holocaust “wasn’t originally” about race.
Goldberg first made the public statements on an episode of “The View” about 10 months ago, saying at the time that “the Holocaust isn’t about race,” but rather, “inhumanity to man.”
She later apologized and was suspended from the show for two weeks for her comments.
But she is now sticking to her claims.
In the interview with The Sunday Times, Goldberg – whose real name is Caryn Johnson and goes by a self-given name she has said comes from a Jewish relative – said there is division about whether Judaism is a race or a religion. That’s when the interviewer noted that to the Nazis, it was a race, hence the Holocaust, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated 6 million Jews.
“That’s the killer, isn’t it” Goldberg responded. “The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?”
The interview then mentioned the Nazi-era laws that specifically targeted Jewish people. According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime issued more than 400 decrees and regulations against Jewish people in the first six years of his rule. The legislative actions started with limiting Jewish people’s participation in public life and within a few years, the Jewish population was segregated from other Germans and forced to identify themselves as Jewish.
And it wasn’t just forced upon those who practiced the religion. According to the Memorial Museum, it was also those who had Jewish grandparents, even those who had converted to Christianity.
Despite this, Goldberg insisted the Holocaust “wasn’t originally about race.”
Astonishingly, Fleet Street pulled its punches to salvage what’s left of Goldberg’s reputation:
LINCOLN BROWN: Utah’s Most Famous RINO May Fall Off the Fence. “If you couldn’t stand a political version of a time-share pitch, let me summarize it for you.”
LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: In Manhattan, grand larcenies are up as thieves are confident they can get away with it. “Another group of thieves operating in New York City has been murdering people by putting fatal doses of drugs into their drinks before robbing them.”
CHRIS BRAY: The Twitter Files Are a Business Problem.
State and local governments also expect Twitter to act on their content concerns and complaints about disinformation, which means fifty governors and attorneys general and state directors of public health and state police commanders picking up the phone, and 3,243 sheriffs and district attorneys and public health directors expecting to be able to reach out to their partners at Twitter, and close to 20,000 mayors and police chiefs, and thousands of state legislators and tens of thousands of city councilmembers, and on and on and on. “You tell this Jack Dorsey that I’m the damn mayor pro tem here in Glendale, and I want my concerns to be dealt with.”
And so, if we accept the premise that governments have special rights to demand content moderation, if the staff director of a legislative committee in the Arkansas state legislature and a sheriff in Maryland and the flag officers at all the MACOMS and Jen Psaki’s deputy assistant and a member of a county board of supervisors in Oregon and the chief of staff to the governor of Rhode Island, being Very Important People, all expect to by God get a direct meeting with Twitter executives because @buttchug623 is saying some things that they do not like at all, and oh by the way the prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is holding on line 6 and he’s pissed and when can you pencil in a half-hour with Turkmenistan’s finance minister, then how much does it cost to manage all of those relationships?
Elon Musk has fired so many people, that it looks like he doesn’t expect Twitter to be jumping through hoops for all those Very Important People any longer.
SO WAIT, ARE WE TALKING ABOUT BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEXES AGAIN? Females on average perform better than males on a ‘theory of mind’ test across 57 countries.