FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: The Florida Grinch Who Saved Christmas. “Florida Man Friday is your much-needed break from the serious news and this week is HUGE with two new records set.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
December 22, 2023
SAD, I REALLY WANTED TO RIDE ON ONE: High-speed train company Hyperloop One shuts down.
CRISIS BY DESIGN: Biden’s Illegal Alien Flood Results in 7 Year Court Date Wait.
I’M REALLY ENJOYING KRUISER’S NEW WEEKLY FEATURE: Trump Derangement Syndrome Meltdown of the Week — New Year’s Resolution Liberal Tears Edition.
I USED TO DISMISS CONSPIRACY THEORIES LIKE THESE OUT OF HAND, BUT…: Are Dems and Republicans Working Together to Clear the Presidential Slate for the Young Turks?
GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: When Hollywood Did It Right: THE FIRM turns 30.
Unlike so much modern “content”, what we used to call “movies” before we decided to deconstruct an entire creative industry and turn it into just another tech business controlled by the almighty algorithm, THE FIRM does not have a “message”… at least, not in the current Year Zero political sense of the word. The movie’s only “message” is an entirely uncontroversial one… that corruption and murder are bad and we should avoid them both.
In that sense, THE FIRM is an “old fashioned” movie, one composed of black hats and white hats, good guys and bad guys, and the innocents caught between them. It has not had its story twisted and pretzled into some kind of allegory meant to evoke the Emmanuel Goldstein villains of our current moment… Donald Trump, perhaps, or the Murdoch family. To create movies that are morality plays meant to overtly deconstruct our own political current events is an unfortunate modern habit which, I believe, fatally anchors a movie in the time in which it was made and mortally wounds its chances of ever becoming a timeless classic.
THE FIRM exists in defiance of this unfortunate modern cliche. It is not about the specific problems or the politics of the early 1990’s, but about human nature and the eternal battle between good and evil. It was made, not to teach us a lesson, but to entertain us… to tell us a story… to thrill us… to surprise us… to make us laugh in a darkened theater on a Friday night, and to send us home smiling.
This is how it used to be, both in Hollywood and in movie theaters across the fruited plain… it is, perhaps, the way things ought to be.
And here are related thoughts from The Critical Drinker on the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
DEMS: Don’t Let Grampa Joe Near the Senate Negotiations. “This is where things get completely Byzantine. Democrat sabotage against Biden is also coming from inside the house — the White House, that is.”
CHANGE: Angola Leaves OPEC in Blow to Oil Producer Group. “Angola’s Oil Minister Diamantino Azevedo said the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries no longer served the country’s interests. It joins other mid-sized producers Ecuador and Qatar that have left OPEC in the last decade.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Signs From the Far Left That the Colorado Supremes Stepped in It. “There were a couple of interesting developments in the skeptic camp yesterday, and they didn’t come from where one might expect.”
BLUE STATE BLUES: California faces a record $68 billion deficit — here’s what is eating away at the Golden State’s coffers.
California has also lost residents and businesses — and therefore, tax revenue — in recent years.
The Golden State’s population declined for the first time in 2021, as it lost around 281,000 residents, according to the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). In 2022, the population dropped again by around 211,000 residents — with many moving to other states like Texas, Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona.
“Housing costs loom large in this dynamic,” according to the PPIC, which found through a survey that 34% of Californians are considering moving out of the state due to housing costs.
Other factors such as the post-pandemic remote work trend — which has resulted in empty office towers in California’s downtown cores — have also played a role in migration out of the state.
There’s also this: “Total income tax collections were down 25% in 2022-23, according to the LAO — a decline compared to those seen during the Great Recession and dot-com bust.”
Losing 200,000 or so residents wouldn’t hit income tax revenues that hard — so either a lot of Sacramento’s taxpaying whales left the state, the state’s economy is in much worse shape than it appears, or some combination of the two.
Whatever the case, Californians will continue to get it good and hard.
I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT: Economist: 2024 Will See ‘Biggest Single Crash’ of Our Lifetime.
STALINGRAD WOULD LIKE A WORD: Israel’s military campaign in Gaza seen as among the most destructive in history, experts say.
I’m all in favor of the IDF making the rubble bounce and then bounce some more but I’m not in favor of scare stories that quote Hamas casualty figures.
NOT SO CHILL: Is Netflix About to Get the ‘Bud Light Treatment’? “A new animated children’s show on the popular streaming platform, called ‘CoComelon Lane,’ features a young boy with two dads. Of course, showing a gay couple on a show targeting kids between the ages of two to six years old wasn’t enough; the show also makes no attempt to hide its transgender grooming efforts.”
December 21, 2023
NEVER ATTEMPT TO TEACH A PIG TO SING: Speaker Johnson Dares Biden to Finally Do Something About the Border.
Jain told Reuters part of his electric vehicle’s suspension broke when he was driving with his family the day after he’d received delivery of the Model Y. He said the car had 115 miles on its odometer when the suspension issue caused portions of the vehicle to come in contact with the road and Jain to lose steering capabilities.
The Reuters investigation — which cited interviews with more than 20 customers and 9 Tesla workers, as well as thousands of internal documents — found that Jain was one of thousands of Tesla owners to face issues with the company’s suspension or steering over the past six years. The publication reported that while Tesla had publicly denied some of the issues and attempted to put the onus on owners, the automaker was more aware of the issues than it had indicated publicly.
Tesla, which disbanded its press department years ago, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Elon Musk has admitted in the past that the carmaker has faced some quality issues, especially during production ramps.
“When you go faster, you just discover these things,” he told the auto expert Sandy Munro in 2021. “If we knew them in advance, we’d fix them in advance.”
Jain told Reuters that his family went from “over the moon” to “absolutely petrified” when the car they had paid about $55,000 to buy broke down on the road.
Reuters reported that after Jain took the vehicle into a Tesla service center, a worker initially told Jain that they’d found “no evidence of an external damage” and suggested the electric-car maker would pay for the car to be fixed. But Jain later learned he was expected to pay the $14,000 repair bill after Tesla sent him a letter indicating the issue was the result of “prior” damage, the publication reported.
The former Tesla owner told Reuters he ended up paying an insurance deductible of about $1,250 and faced a higher insurance premium going forward. The suspension issue took three months for Tesla to fix, and Jain resold the vehicle at a loss of about $10,000, Reuters reported.
Scaling up from a boutique manufacturer to a mass manufacturer was never going to be easy, but Tesla should be more accommodating of its customers suffering from Tesla’s growing pains.
KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Yes, Americans, We’re Being Replaced — ALL of Us.
WHICH MAKE HAD THE HIGHEST RATE OF HOGGING THE PASSING LANE AT EXACTLY THE LIMIT? Tesla drivers had highest accident rate, BMW drivers highest DUI rate, study finds.
THIS HAS BEEN A LONG TIME COMING, WITH PLENTY OF BLAME TO GO AROUND WASHINGTON, THE PENTAGON, AND THE NAVY ITSELF: U.S. Naval Deterrence Is Going, Going, Maybe Even Gone.
This was only one of several recent assaults on American naval assets in the region. They have happened despite the presence of the Ford carrier strike group in the eastern Mediterranean and the Eisenhower strike group in the Gulf of Aden—a conventional level of naval deterrence that should have reduced aggressive activities by U.S. enemies. Instead, Iran attacked American ships and allies.
These events show that American naval deterrence is failing, and a recent report from the Sagamore Institute concludes that it could soon evaporate.
The report, “Measuring and Modeling Naval Presence,” models the effect of various ships and combinations of ships across a mix of maritime regions. The model pitted an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the U.S. Navy’s current utility platform of choice, against a People’s Liberation Army Navy Luyang III destroyer in several locations ranging from the high seas to the waters approaching the Taiwan Strait. It suggested that the deterrent value of American Navy ships operating in close proximity to a determined adversary has recently declined.
While the report said the American Navy currently maintains “presence dominance,” the ability to maintain its values and interests upon the high seas, it also indicates that the U.S. margin of naval leadership is shrinking and America could swiftly lose its ability to maintain mare liberum, the free sea. This would have huge negative implications for the global economic system, which depends on open seas to move 80% of the volume of the world’s $100 trillion global domestic product.
Read the whole thing.
OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD: These Are the Soldiers Who Are Going to Defend America if We Go to War?
THIS IS NOT A POINT OF PRIDE: Colorado’s grade on gun control improves to A minus, says Giffords center. “Colorado earned its A- because it imposed waiting periods, banned “ghost” guns, enacted legislation on victims’ legal access, increased the minimum age to purchase firearms, and invested $1 million in community violence intervention.”
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: Biden’s Latest Mangle-Pander Must Be Seen to Be Believed “Sometimes, the word salad is so thoroughly tossed that you’d swear somebody put his brain on Shuffle.”