Category: Current Events

Disney Has Some ‘Splainin’ to Do. To Their Shareholders.

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This is an incredibly boring document written in corporate double-speak.  But in PART I, ITEM 1A.;
Risk Factors, it says

“We face risks relating to misalignment with public and consumer tastes and preferences for entertainment, travel and consumer products, which impact demand for our entertainment offerings and products and the profitability of any of our businesses.”

And further down in this section they state:
“Further, consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brands.”
“Misalignment with public and consumer taste.”  Hmm.  “Achieve certain of our environmental and social goals.”  Well, well.
So when five or six of your movies are duds and you lose a billion or a billion and half dollars, it turns out your shareholders start to notice.  Imagine that!  How judgmental!  How crassly materialistic!  So uncool!
Well, I guess they’ll have to figure out how they can align with these philistine parents who don’t want their kids groomed.  They must strive to prevent perceptions of their efforts to achieve certain of their environmental and social goals from presenting risks their reputation and brands.
So on one side you have all this blah-blah couching what they do in double-speak.
And then you have South Park cutting to the chase and making it perfectly clear.
I think for the sake of transparency it would be reasonable for Disney to include the South Park Panderverse episode as part of their annual report.  After all the public’s opinion is much closer to the South Park opinion than it is to the double-speak version.
Or maybe losing a couple more billion dollars is the preferred route.  Time will tell.

After Thanksgiving Thoughts

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Two days of food!  Oh, the pain, the pain.  But it was worth it.  Camera Girl was pleased with her feast and her guests.  She said it was the best Thanksgiving ever.  And I have to agree.  It was untroubled.  The food was excellent.  The guests were merry and amiable and the activities and conversation were enjoyable.  In all ways it was excellent.  And now we have the holiday season.  From now till Christmas time will fly.

So, while we’re enjoying (or cursing) the orgy of buying and preparation, we can reflect a little on the year that is just about over.  What did 2023 entail?

Maybe the most surprising thing about it was just how lousy it was for Joe Biden.  Regardless of whether the powers-that-be, by hook or by crook, can pull him over the finish line in November, it is pretty obvious that even his “voters” think he is garbage.  His approval rating is somewhere between thirty and forty percent.  And the first thirty percent would vote for Jack the Ripper if he has that “D” before his name.  That’s pretty amazing.

Of course, I think part of this has to do with the Democrat constituency.  The current situation with the Gaza War is a good example.  A good chunk of the Democrat voters is squarely on the side of Hamas and little things like Hamas followers disemboweling pregnant women or beheading infants aren’t going to change that.  So, if Joe Biden is seen to help the Israelis, he loses these folks.  These are what are known as one-issue-voters.  And although Jewish voters by and large vote Democrat, sharing a coalition with the Hamas-lovers surely must give many Jewish Democrats pause.  And that is good.  It’s important for people to confront the compromises that they make in their lives.  Watching videos of middle-easterners in Brooklyn screaming about burning Jews must be clarifying for Jewish New Yorkers who have defended the Moslems in America since 9-11-2001.  It might even lead them to question the validity of their political identity.

I think we all should be as realistic as possible about the choices we make.  I know that I’ve been thinking lately about where the line is drawn between acceptable and unacceptable positions by “my side.”  Hate for the sake of hate is a pretty ugly thing.  All of the talk about the incompatibility of different ethnic groups and identities gets overblown.  And most of the blame for that is on the Left for sure.  Once you start treating “protected groups” differently and encouraging criminal behavior, a reaction is bound to happen.

But the cure for discrimination isn’t reverse discrimination as has been amply demonstrated by the failures of affirmative action.  It’s scrupulous adherence to just laws and the basic decencies that a Christian society already provides for the less able.  I don’t see any clash between racial harmony and strict compliance with law and order.  In fact, I think it’s only by eliminating criminal behavior in the inner city that you provide the possibility of lessening poverty.  Before 2008 and Obama’s attempts to create race hatred, crime statistics in the urban areas were at a generational low.  The property values in places like Harlem were astronomical.  The only problem is that this could only exist with a Republican mayor and a law-and-order police commissioner.

But I digress.

As I was saying, Joe Biden is not a popular fellow and I think that gives us something to think about going into 2024.  Is the Democrat voting machine so “reinforced for democracy” that it can get even a stink bomb like Biden elected or will something else happen.  Will they replace him?  Can they replace him?  Will he lose?

Something to think about.

What Could Be Achieved in the Netherlands

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In yesterday’s election, Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) were able to get the largest number of seats in the Dutch House of Representatives.  Current estimate with 94% of the vote counted is 37 out of 150 seats.  Of course, they’ll need at least 76 seats to form a governing coalition.  So where does that leave them?

The PVV is at heart an anti-immigrant party.  Their stated goal is to prevent the influx of Islamic immigrants and their culture and religion.  But in general, they are a nationalist party.  Wilders would love to pull the Netherlands out of the EU but knows that isn’t going to happen in his lifetime.  In terms of domestic policy, they are not libertarian but sort of average euro-socialist.  And from what I’ve read they don’t buy into the green agenda.

I went on-line and did some check into the orientation of the various parties that were likely to share at least some agenda with the PVV and found these numbers.

Party Orientation Seats
PVV Center-right 37
VVD center-right 24
CDA far-right 5
BBB Right-wing 7
FvD far-right 3
SGP Right-wing 3
JA21 Right-wing 1
BVNL Right-wing 0
Total 80

So, there is a bare minimum for a coalition on the “right.”

 

Up until the election the next largest party on “the right” VVD had expressly ruled out working with the PVV.  Of course, after the results of yesterday’s election, the leader of that party, Dilan Yeşilgöz has backed off that sentiment and sounds like there might be something to talk about.

Now this is interesting.  Up until now, major European political organizations have been consistent in refusing to form coalitions with “far-right” parties.  Specifically, France and Germany have been adamant on this point.  But the PVV is now the largest party in terms of representation in the Dutch House of Representatives.  We may finally have reached the tipping point, where ostracizing the right no longer works.  That’s what’s about to come out.  If Wilders can convince the other non-leftist parties that he is pragmatic he might just break the blockade that has kept the “far-right” out of the kitchen.

Well, well, well.  Seems to me that if Wilders is willing to rule by only reaching for what everyone in his coalition can agree to, he can at least prevent any more damage from being done.  And I’m guessing if he is shrewd and willing to do a lot of horse-trading, he can reverse some of the craziest things that have been done lately.  The greatest good would be to reverse all this insane attack on the farming industry in the name of not offending the gods of greenhouse gas emissions.

From what I know of the Dutch, which isn’t much, they have a goodly share of crazed enviro-warriors who are willing to empty the world of human beings in order to please Gaia.  So, I assume Wilders has his work cut out for him.  But between the immigration problems and the green nightmare it’s good to see that a goodly 25% of the Dutch are starting to wake up from the woke trance and realize they need to start facing reality.

So, it wouldn’t be realistic to think that this election is some kind of panacea for all the ills that this small European nation suffers from.  Like our election of Donald Trump in 2016 it’s just the first spasm of the drowning body politic in its attempt to reach the surface and breath fresh air.  It will take a lot more to finally swim back to dry land.  How’s that for a tortured metaphor!

Thanksgiving 2023

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So, we’re hosting most of the family this year.  Camera Girl has outdone herself with five different pies and a twenty-five-pound turkey.  I predict that by the end of the feast I’ll be almost immobile.  But I’ll try to keep the grandkids amused with various holiday traditions.  At some point I will break out the “March of the Wooden Soldiers” and maybe “Gulliver’s Travels.”  Of course, both of these are 1930s vintage versions.

Hopefully we’ll head down to the first floor to play some pool and later on will come the pie and ice cream and coffee and some penny ante poker.  And I’ll ask my grandsons what’s going on at school and what’s happening around town.  I’m sure I’ll be brought up to date on whatever Pokémon acquisitions the youngest one has negotiated.  I’ve never really figured out what Pokémon actually is.  I assume it’s similar in intent to how we collected baseball cards as kids.  All I know is that there are thousands of different cards and some are “worth” thousands of dollars.  But to whom?

We’ve had our first dusting of snow.  It changed into rain in the morning and I went out with the shovel and cleared the slop off of the driveway.  And that’s necessary.  It freezes at night now and that slushy mess would have turned my driveways into skating rinks by tomorrow morning and that is something I don’t need on Thanksgiving.  So, we’ve broken the ice, so to speak, and have now transitioned into winter.  Of course, I’m way behind on my yard work.  And this makes it worse.  But it’s Thanksgiving so I’ve absolved myself of all blame and won’t think about it until Monday (or Tuesday).

It’s interesting.  Two recent international elections seem to be indicating a deep dissatisfaction with the Left’s incompetent economic and social programs.  Maybe 2024 will be more than just an American protest year.  Maybe the genie is out of the bottle and a whole lot of people are fed up with dysfunctional, incompetent, delusional Leftist ideas in general.  If it is we’ll see much more in the way of signs in the coming months.

Biden’s minions keep popping up in the Times and the Post announcing how the economy is turning a corner and how wonderful everything is becoming.  The latest hype is that inflation is reversing and now they have to be careful not to cause deflation.  The delusional nature of this nonsense is absurd.  It flies in the face of everyone’s knowledge of the cost of commodities in the recent past.  Everyone who has to run a household knows that everything is now vastly more expensive.  Things like cold-cuts have now become prohibitively expensive for many families.  Even staples like bread and vegetables have to be purchased with an eye out for sales.  But the Biden evangelists keep up the happy talk hoping that the stupid will buy into the lie.  As jaded as I’ve become with fraudulent elections, I’m still curious to see if a point might be reached where even the people faking the elections might think it was in their interest to get the Democrats out of power, if only out of fear that the economy might completely collapse under the weight of complete incompetence.

Well, for one day we won’t worry about the cost of food.  There are going to be pumpkin, apple, coconut custard, sweet potato and chocolate pudding pies with whipped cream and ice cream and who knows what other desserts.  There’s going to be turkey and sausage stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy.  And another whole list of side dishes that I can’t even remember, but I know there will be candied yams and two kinds of buttered rolls.  So, I have a lot to be thankful for.  I hope your holiday goes well and I will check in from time to time.

Trad-Wife, Schmad-Wife, Get Out of My Kitchen!

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It is at this most festive time of the rolling year that I find portion control at the dining room table most challenging.  This morning Camera Girl is making apple, pumpkin and coconut custard pies for the Thanksgiving Day feast.  And so, I find myself standing over her shoulder watching the process with the sense of ownership and the pride that entails.  I asked her if she’d ever heard the term trad-wife and she responded with a scowl that I could almost feel in my own face.  She shook her head and told me to get the hell out of the kitchen until the pies were out of the oven.  I think she feared that my comments would have an unhealthy effect on the flavor of her desserts.  Not wishing to cause her undue stress at this very delicate point in the holiday preparations I forbore to grant her somewhat rude request and left with incredible dignity and obvious grace.  Noblesse oblige you know.

It’s interesting to note that the rapid degeneration of female culture now forces the invention of a new label for what used to be the normal skill set of an adult married woman.  Well, maybe rapid is just my perspective as an old guy.  What I think of as normal has been under attack since the 1960’s.  And now their granddaughters wouldn’t know a rolling pin from a road flare.  And so, we’ve reached a stage where a “trad-wife” has become a commodity so valuable that to quote the Bible:

“Proverbs 31:10-31

King James Version

10 Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.

11 The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.

12 She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.

13 She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.

14 She is like the merchants’ ships; she bringeth her food from afar.

15 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.

16 She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.

17 She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.

18 She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night.

19 She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.

20 She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.

21 She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet.

22 She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.

23 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land.

24 She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.

25 Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.

26 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.

27 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.

28 Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.

29 Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.

30 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.

31 Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.”

 

To be fair, I’ve never seen her producing any tapestries or linen.  And I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even know what a distaff is.  But she did sew the seam on the change pocket in my jeans last week so maybe that’s close to rubies or at least emeralds, I think.  And she does get up really early to walk the dogs.  As far as sitting with the elders, I was hanging out with the duffers at the Grange during the election meeting and some of them recognized me so I’ll give her that.  But I definitely don’t think that part about, “She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness” is way off.  I think the law of sarcasm is closer to the actual situation.

But she has transferred some of these skills like cooking and household economy to her daughters so that’s very praiseworthy but honestly, I don’t think either I or my daughters have used the term “blessed” for Camera Girl.  Annoying is the term that trips off my tongue because she accompanies all her accomplishments with a decidedly critical eye for comparison with my own efforts.

And in this she is obviously very unfair.  I may not cook the feast but I often carry the grocery bags from the car to the kitchen.  Surely the Bible has something good to say for the husband who does stuff.  So, what am I wood?  Maybe rubies aren’t the correct and gender specific analogy of my value.  How about austenitic stainless steel or even Hastelloy 276 or some other corrosion resistant metal.  Maybe even platinum!  That’s even better than boring rubies.  You’d think God being a man would have given us a few choice proverbs of our own to put these women in their place.  Am I wrong?  But I digress.

So, despite the annoyingness of the traditional wife, it is undeniable that she is the foundation of the family and of all functional human existence.  Without a doubt the destruction of our society has been programmed with the elimination of good women and their replacement by career women defined by their barrenness, lack of domestic instincts and their proclivity for collecting cats.  Without a doubt the males of this generation also bear a heavy responsibility for the current degeneracy of our culture.  But I’ll save that for a different rant.

Today I’ll just end with praise for Camera Girl.  Well done Camera Girl.  And save that little extra portion of coconut custard pie for the two o’clock coffee bread today.  I feel I need it.

How Stupid is the Evil Party and How Evil is the Stupid Party?

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Many people describe the Democrats and the Republicans combined as the Uni-Party.  Essentially it is alleged that because the main business of all congressional office holders is to make as much money as possible off of peddling their influence that there really isn’t much difference between the goals or actions of either.  As an example, is the support in both the House and the Senate for the Ukraine War.  It would be impossible to prove that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was any less enthusiastic than Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to send another hundred billion dollars to Ukraine.  Or look at the Democrats and Republicans who sit on subcommittees overseeing the FDA.  I’m sure that lobbyists from Pfizer know each of them by first name and routinely wine and dine them while informing them which bills need to be passed and who at the FDA is giving them grief about their latest “wonder drug.”

So, there is a lot of truth in this characterization.  But there is still a fierce rivalry between the two parties for control of the Congress.  After all, the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader have enormous power to set the agenda in their respective legislative bodies.  The Speaker especially has complete control to block any bill from ever seeing the light of day in the House.  And if for no other reason than to acquire this power the two parties are constantly at war to overtake each other in the number of seats they control.

So, the question I think about is how badly do the Democrats have to screw up before the Republicans recognize the situation as more momentous than just allowing them to steal more than the Democrats.  Put another way, if the country became so disgusted with the multiple crises that Joe Biden’s crime family has sparked that they gave the Republicans very large majorities in both the House and Senate would the Congress have the patriotism or at least the common sense to use the opportunity to try and save the country from the impending crash landing that we are surely headed for?  Or would they just use the opportunity to steal more stuff as fast as possible before the end?

I believe there is a little bit of hope out there.  Recently we saw the Republicans in the House of Representatives sack the Speaker of the House; an unheard-of thing.  And there have been grumblings against Mitch McConnell in the Senate.  Now granted, the Senate is a lot more bought and sold than the House.  Even if McConnell were replaced as Leader by someone who hadn’t yet reached his two hundredth birthday it would still be one of McConnell’s cronies.  But maybe the same forces that got rid of Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney are working to build a more representative party out of the Stupid Party.

I think given enough time we could get enough somewhat honest people into the Congress to begin changing the direction of the laws in this country.  The real question, the only crucial question is whether we will do that before we run out of time and the whole mad house collapses and crumbles to dust.

Will the Democrats get bounced by the voters?  Will the Republicans seize the moment to fix things?  What do you think?

The Truth is Out There

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Every man has a different version of the truth.  We, each of us, look out at this world through different eyes.  And each of us only can discern a small piece of the truth.  The old story of the six blind men and the elephant is a folk tale that illustrates this idea.  And that is why we band together and try to come up with a consensus account of how things “really” are.

And that was why when the country was essentially united after World War II the news networks were highly respected and at the same time took seriously their responsibilities to appear objective.  Well, that’s a different planet than the one we live on now.  Can you imagine trusting the version of the news that was read by a “reporter” from ABC or NBC, never mind MSNBC or CNN?

Now you might say, “What does it matter if the news is accurate?  There’s nothing we can do to change what goes on around us.  Why not just go with the propaganda version?”  And sometimes, I almost feel the same way.  Why bother?

But there is a good reason to scratch out the facts.  In the Bible it says, “The truth shall set you free.”  And this has a very specific meaning that relates to the soul of the believer.  But the statement is also true in the broadest sense too.  The truth is another way of saying objective reality.  It is a claim about the nature of the universe we live in.  It is the belief that if we could know definitively the truth of a particular claim then that truth would define reality for anyone and everyone.

So, if you lived in Hiroshima or Nagasaki and even if you did not believe in the atomic theory of matter, sometime in 1945 you would still have been constrained by that objective reality to experience the onslaught of the atomic bombs dropped on those cities.  And if you had believed in the reality of those weapons, you might have gotten out and survived.  And if you lived at ground zero and stayed you would have died even though you did not believe in the possibility of those weapons.

Now granted, being aware of things like the motivations of RINOs or the willingness of the FBI to use their agents to instigate incidents to harm their political enemies is hardly equivalent to knowing that an atomic bomb is headed for your location.  But the difference is one of degree not of kind.  Always and everywhere having or lacking accurate information is the difference between rational planning and blind luck.

All those people who listen to Fox News and NBC and hear what a great candidate Nikki Haley would make in the general election and believe it, will never understand why she would be John McCain or Mitt Romney in a dress.  They haven’t bothered to educate themselves on the facts concerning Haley and the positions she espouses.  And they don’t understand that whether she wins or loses we lose if she is the candidate.  Because if she is the Republican candidate then all the candidates are leftists.

And the same goes for the other facts that are out there.  People claimed that Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell wanted to enact a conservative agenda but even when a conservative president was in office, they did nothing.  This should have been enough to prove these claims false.  Bill Barr assigned a special prosecutor to investigate Russia-gate and after four years not a single person was convicted of a felony.  That should have shown that the Deep State doesn’t allow its people to be subject to normal justice.

So, this knowledge is mostly of a negative type.  It mostly tells you what won’t happen.  But sometimes it’s the opposite and in those cases, it could also save your life.  I’d say the January 6th event is one of the best examples of that.  Ashli Babbitt probably never imagined that a federal agent would shoot and kill her for trespassing in the Capitol building.  She was unaware of the truth.

As discouraging as the current reality is, understanding the important facts is crucial to surviving and thriving in this complicated and deceptive environment.  But don’t despair.  There is plenty of ignorance of the facts on the other side too.  And one day it will have its consequences.  So, hang in there.