It is not a mystery why the ratings for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards Ceremony, better known as the Academy Awards or The Oscars, have seen rapidly declining ratings over the past decade: they are nominating and rewarding every shittier movies. Gone are the times when the awards committee would go to extraordinary lengths to promote movies that told worthwhile, original stories with breathtaking skill in direction and cinematography. Now, The Oscars are little more than auxiliary marketing campaigns for the vapid blockbuster movies that earn billions solely by virtue of outsized marketing campaigns and dominant distribution deals that leave movie fans with little choice of what to see.
Naturally, it falls to the old, established and accomplished actor to give The Academy the criticism it deserves. It is a tired cliché that the masses want pablum. Hollywood could make money by making good movies. Now, they are suffering the consequences of the commodification of their products: people can only eat so much pablum. Overfed on the tasteless stuff, movie fans can scarcely stand three-hour telecasts praising the stuff they have been force fed far beyond the point of satiety.
If anyone had any backbone in Hollywood, then they would heed Penn’s criticism, but much like a dictatorship, they have become prisoners in the system they created.
Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow with his family after Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds, a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies on Sunday, and a deal has been done to ensure the safety of Russian military bases.
The two claims made in this short paragraph are staggeringly inaccurate and infinitely ironic. First, only a ruthless dictator who has killed a million of his own soldiers and about as many civilians and soldiers in Ukraine could ever offer asylum on “humanitarian” grounds to a dictator who, with the aid of Russia and Iran, killed a million of his own people and caused 8 million of his own population to flee the country, creating the largest refugee crisis since WWII. The notion of “honor among thieves” absolutely pales in comparison with “honor among dictators”.
Second, it is hard to imagine that Russia actually believes that the rebels who have taken over Syria will follow through on their promise to protect the Russian port in Tartus, Syria. It is hard to imagine that the rebel armies who were laid to waste indiscriminately by the Russian forces on those bases will grant these ruthless murderers forbearance as a practical consideration for building power in the state they now control. Keeping the Russian foothold in Syria will, after all, pose a risk to the new regime that he rebels form in the future.
Exhausted financially and militarily, Russia will, apparently, spin any story to pretend that its disastrous defeat in Syria is a graceful exit. No one will shed a tear if the Russians in the Tartus military base are laid to waste.
Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow with his family after Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds, a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies on Sunday, and a deal has been done to ensure the safety of Russian military bases.
Trump insisted that the Federal Reserve Bank needs to cut interest rates because Trump thinks US economy is not doing well. The Fed demurred for the longest time because no data supports Trump’s point of view. Consequently, when Fed finally gave in to the awful businessman, the market saw it as a sign that the economy is not doing well and started a huge sell off.
This is a clear case of the blind leading the the acutely sighted. (Or blind ambition overpowering clear vision.) Trump may get the failing economy he has been projecting after all.
The poll, which is linked in the article below, looks legitimate, with most Los Angeles area television stations identified as the sponsors. An apparent new-nazi is the most popular Republican candidate in the California 2018 senate race.
It is difficult to determine whether candidate Little is benefitting from the ignorance of Republican voters in California or from their genuine malice. Either way, the California Republican Party can only hope that Russia will be unveiled as the financial backer of Little so that it can call the candidacy “fake news”. Barring such a revelation, the California Republican Party’s self destruction will be complete if this clown emerges as their candidate in the fall senate election. It is a necessary outcome to the pandering the GOP has made to the basest factions within its base, yet it is unlikely they will change their pandering.
The man always came off as as big talker, anyway. He never impressed me as a particularly edgy intellectual or an especially skilled manager who can delegate authority prudently towards the efficient accomplishment of tasks. His choice of operatives, however, is his undoing in my mind, and it should be his undoing in the minds of everyone else.
Given that a successful Presidency, even more so than a governorship, is vitally dependent on appointing the right people to the right positions, Christie’s career is now officially over. His apology today impugns him. In this very long mea culpa, he effectively is saying that he appointed idiots to the most important posts, and that it took him over three years to discover that they are idiots. (His specific words are “abject stupidity”.) In a presidency, three years is enough time for idiots to destroy the world.
The company one keeps, they say, says a lot about one, Mr. Christie’s company have said absolutely nothing good about the politician or the man. People should take note.
There is a lot of speculation about how the Republican Party will do in the upcoming elections in California. If there is any truth in the above cited poll of Californians, then the extreme positions that the GOP has taken in California have almost certainly guaranteed its demise and decline into an irrelevant minority party. Prehistoric sensibilities rarely succeed in ostensibly modern societies.
Perhaps the only thing gloomier than this picture is the fact that no American news source can be bothered by the simple process of consulting publicly available data from the government. The Brits seem to have grasped the utility of the internet browser better than American journalists. Perhaps that’s because it was a Brit who invented the world wide web and the browser.
Let’s have some fun. I tend to be right on these matters, so I might as well publish these predictions and see how I fare against the “professionals”.
Barack Obama will choose either Bill Richardson or Wesley Clark as his running mate because both men are without peer in their respective fields. Richardson is peerless in issues of foreign affairs, and Clark is peerless in military affairs. Either man will round out the ticket nicely.
The most likely choice is Bill Richardson because he was the first to endorse Obama.
The animosity between George W Bush and John McCain is insufficient to moderate the latter’s desire for power. Consequently, the former is conveniently building up troops in Iraq in order to aid McCain’s already lackluster campaign. The strategy is quite clear, and it will most likely become apparent when the troops who are slated to be relieved will be retained. It is an escalation of the military conflict that will create a circus of fear and greed come September, and there is little doubt that McCain will gladly oblige W by continuing the fear mongering that has thus far guaranteed reelection for every Republican who is utterly bereft of creativity, desire for serving the nation and scruples.
Never before could it be said that the success of one man will guarantee failure for everyone else.
