Mar212023

Episode 692 – It’s Only a Statue!

Joe Biden uses the veto for the first time in his Presidency.

And, better late than never, let’s talk about some of the controversy of the Oscars.

 

News

Here is some news:

  • Joe Biden struck his first veto of his Presidency.
    • Biden tweeted: “I just vetoed my first bill. This bill would risk your retirement savings by making it illegal to consider risk factors MAGA House Republicans don’t like. Your plan manager should be able to protect your hard-earned savings — whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likes it or not.”
    • The bill was sent by the House and banned the government for investing in only companies that follow the ESG standard.
    • Republicans said that the government should invest in companies that will make money for the 401Ks of government employees and not invest in weaker companies because they follow a woke standard.
  • President Joe Biden announced this week that he will be declassifying intelligence related to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, just days after Congress unanimously passed legislation forcing the issue.
    • Both houses in Congress passed the request unanimously. This would have been a bad look if he didn’t sign the bill.
    • But Old Joe doesn’t want to bite the hand the feeds him. He delayed this for three weeks.
  • Xi Jinping went to visit Vlad Putin of Russia yesterday.
    •  Vladimir Putin hosted his “dear friend” Xi Jinping for dinner at the Kremlin on Monday.
    • The White House said the affection between the two is fake.
    • Some think Xi is trying to get a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, putting China in the role of peacemaker. Xi is set to visit Ukraine right after his trip to Russia.
    • Some think Vlad is requesting weapons from China.
    • Either way, this alliance is not good news for the U.S. and the rest of Europe.
  • 35,000 teachers in Los Angeles voted to go on strike for three days next week.
    • They want, wait for it, more money.
    • LAUSD has one of the worst educations systems in the country.
    • They care so much about the kids, have received billions of dollars from the pandemic and had two years off of teaching.
  • Apparently, Donald Trump will not be indicted this week so we’ll have to wait until next week for the perp walk.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-issues-first-veto-presidency-influence-maga-republicans
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-welcome-xi-moscow-under-shadow-ukraine-war-2023-03-20/
https://www.foxnews.com/media/los-angeles-schools-brace-possible-shutdown-union-announces-3-day-strike-demands-equitable-wages
https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-releases-statement-about-declassifying-intelligence-on-origins-of-covid-19-pandemic

 

Just Leave the Country

The Oscars were last weak. I didn’t talk about any of it because I only saw one more. That was Top Gun: Maverick. It was the only more that interested me. I thought it was pretty awesome. I’ve seen at three times. I wasn’t the only one who liked it. It was the second highest earning mouses of the year.

There is a guy from MSNBC named Zeeshan Aleem who thinks that Top Guns Maverick is a real problem. You’ll never guess why. Let’s take a little look at his article.

“Top Gun: Maverick,” an action flick, a summer blockbuster and a sequel, is not the kind of movie that tends to win accolades at award shows. Yet it’s received six Oscar nominations, including, remarkably, best picture. “Top Gun” has secured an air of gravitas, and could be poised to become canonized as a highly decorated film. 

The unusual cultural cachet of “Top Gun” is tied to how it fulfills a certain yearning felt across the world of film lovers. In a cinematic climate in which superhero and CGI-animated films have saturated the silver screen, it was a breath of fresh air to see dazzling live-action aerial combat scenes involving real actors (trained to withstand G forces by real pilots) and (mostly) real planes. Although movie theaters are dying and streaming is thriving, this old school thrill attracted huge crowds of all ages to the theaters to make “Top Gun” the second-highest grossing film in 2022 behind James Cameron’s “Avatar: the Way of Water.” 

Alright, not so bad so far. Let’s continue.

But “Top Gun” is as insidious as it is entertaining. It does not merely revive a forgotten human-centered spectacle; it also beckons for a return to accepting the American war machine as a beacon of virtue and excitement. It’s a poisonous kind of nostalgia, one that smuggles love of endless war into a celebration of live action.

The United State military is a beacon of virtue and excitement. Ask Afghanistan.

“Top Gun” is literal propaganda: In exchange for access to military aircraft, the producers of the movie agreed to allow the Defense Department to include its own “key talking points” in the script. Perhaps equally important, the script had to be written in a manner that flatters the military in order to secure the buy-in of the Pentagon. (Even then, defense officials requested “revisions” to the characters and their actions.) This collaboration in jingoism is evident throughout the script. The minor rebellions of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, played by Cruise, against his higher-ups in the military are minor diversions from his obedience to the logic of empire. It should be no surprise that just like with the first “Top Gun” movie, released in 1986, the military viewed the sequel as a promising recruitment tool, and ran U.S. Air Force ads before showings of the movie with imperialistic lines like “the entire sky belongs to us.” While the first movie helped rehab the military’s poor reputation in the wake of the Vietnam War, this one diverts from the failed war on terror, and comes as defense officials eye the rise of China.

Yeah, and so it goes. The rather long article continued to destroy the concept of American being a good country and the military being a good thing. In this rather long article, Aleem also added:

  • The movies was “piming Americans for war” against China.
    • There won’t be a war if China doesn’t attack anyone.
    • There wouldn’t have been a proxy war with Russia if Biden was strong and Russia didn’t attack Ukraine.
  • He points out that the military industrial complex has a bloated budget and is testing weapons that we don’t need.
    • He doesn’t mention anything about the enemy at the end of the movie having more advanced aircraft protecting the nuclear development complex of a tyrannical country.
  • He defends Iran’s sovereignty since the movie is mostly based on Iran’s nuclear research program
    • That’s right, the United States is bad for destroying the nuclear program of a country that wants to wipe another country completely off the face of the Earth.
    • Oh, yeah, and us too.
  • He continues to push the Iran Nuclear Agreement, which would have not stopped Iran from making a nuclear bomb.
  • He says: War is portrayed purely as a source of glory and camaraderie for Maverick and his colleagues, who are all attractive people and manage to pull off their daring mission with zero casualties.
    • It’s a feel-good movie with a happy ending!
    • It’s the way movies used to be made. Exciting, patriotic and with happy ending.

He concludes the article:

Back in 1990, four years after the first “Top Gun” came out, Playboy magazine grilled Cruise by challenging him on whether the original “Top Gun” movie was dangerous war propaganda. Playboy’s interviewer described the movie as “war by Nintendo game and a paean to blind patriotism.” Cruise defended the movie as a “an amusement park ride, a fun film with a PG-13 rating that was not supposed to be reality.” But he also seemed to acknowledge that there were still dangers to using a war movie as a form of mindless entertainment. He continued: “That’s why I didn’t go on and make Top Gun II and III and IV and V. That would have been irresponsible.”

Here’s the thing with guys like this, nothing about America can be good. Our country is bad, our military is bad and all our intentions are bad. We are a bad country. Iran, good country and we should let them do what they want. China, good country and we should let them do what they want. He does not consider, for one second, that these other countries that he mentions may have insideous intentions and are being a lot more agressive than us.

Finally, to hear MSNBC talk about this film being propaganda for the military industrial complex is rich. MSNBC is known for being part of the press wing for the Democratic party, supporting Black Lives Matter and Antifa, stoking racial division and pushing doctors to drugging and mutilating kids through gender affirming care.

What do you expect from a pig but a grunt.

https://nypost.com/2023/03/11/top-gun-maverick-is-insidious-for-portraying-virtue-of-us-military-msnbc-editor/?utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow&utm_campaign=SocialFlow
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/top-gun-maverick-oscars-2023-rcna73773

 

Just Cringe-Worthy

Speaking of stupid Hollywood stories, here’s Jamie Lee Curtis.

Now, she’s a strange bird. She has a son who became a girl. So there’s that. She also won an Oscar for some movie a couple of weeks ago. Here she is, on a Zoom call, introducing her Oscar:

That’s right, her Oscar has they/them pronouns.

How tiring this whole thing is.