ORLANDO, FL—Disney has recently unveiled their latest addition to their Hall Of Presidents attraction located in the Magic Kingdom. It now features an Audio-Animatronic replica of President Joe Biden that exhibits stunning accuracy of his likeness.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women created by — by — by —,” said the short-circuiting Biden robot seemingly stuck on his loop. “You know, you know, the thing!”
The audience erupted with clapping and praise as they had never had seen such realistic technology. “Wow! That’s amazing how lifelike it is. I never imagined I’d live to see such wonders.” exclaimed Katherine Summers. “Almost makes me wonder if that’s actually the real Biden up there after all.”
Met with such high praise, the creative teams behind the Biden bot decided to just go with it. “Yeah, um that’s just how we programmed him, right guys?!” said chief engineer Garret Nichols secretly pouring a glass of water on the robot circuit board. “We made him painstakingly accurate, down to the minute details and mannerisms.”
“Listen here folks, the greatest threat, upon this great nation gathered here today is we need to act to save the, if you think about it, by building back, we can stop the world, with the forming of a coalition. It’s just not that hard folks, so c’mon let’s mobilize Trunpandixsbdandeprensndal!”
The animatronic Biden continued to give his speech until he was rudely interrupted by the Trump animatronic.
Oliver Stone is one of Hollywood’s few interesting people, in that agree or disagree with him, you could sit down and have a long, intelligent conversation with him. Oh, and he’s been right about JFK’s assassination. With Geoffrey Macnab at independent.co.uk:
As he releases a documentary follow-up to his 1991 film about the Kennedy assassination, the Oscar-winning director talks to Geoffrey Macnab about what he believes is a continuing cover-up, plus cancel culture, Margaret Thatcher, Julian Assange and why Boris Johnson ‘would throw you in jail in a second’
Oliver Stone: ‘I am a pin cushion for American-Russian peace relations’
(Marco Piraccini/Mondadori Portfo/Shutterstock)
Oliver Stone is not a fan of “cancel culture”. “Of course I despise it,” the Oscar winning filmmaker says, as if utterly amazed that anyone needs to ask him such a dumb question. “I am sure I’ve been cancelled by some people for all the comments I’ve made…. it’s like a witch hunt. It’s terrible. American censorship in general, because it is a declining, defensive, empire, it (America) has become very sensitive to any criticism. What is going on in the world with YouTube and social media,” he rants. “Twitter is the worst. They’ve banned the ex-President of the United States. It’s shocking!” he says, referring to Donald Trump’s removal from the micro-blogging platform.
It’s a Saturday lunchtime in the restaurant of the Marriott Hotel on the Croisette in Cannes. The American director is in town for the festival premiere this week of his new feature documentary JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, in which he yet again pores over President John F Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.
“I am a pin cushion for American-Russian peace relations… I had four f***ing vaccines: two Sputniks and two Pfizers,” Stone gestures at his arm. The rival super-powers may remain deeply suspicious of one another, but Stone is loading himself up with potions from both sides of the old Iron Curtain.
He has recently been travelling in Russia (hence the Sputnik jabs) where he has been making a new documentary about how nuclear power can save humanity. He also recently completed a film about Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev which – like his interviews with Vladimir Putin – has been roundly ridiculed for its deferential, softly-softly approach toward a figure widely regarded as a ruthless despot.
Dressed in a blue polo shirt, riffing away about the English football team one moment and his favourite movies the next, laughing constantly, the 74-year-old Oscar-winning director of Platoon, Wall Street, Natural Born Killers et al is a far cheerier presence than his reputation as a purveyor of dark conspiracy thrillers might suggest. He is also very outspoken. For all his belligerence, though, Stone isn’t as thick-skinned as you might imagine. I wonder if he was hurt by the scorn that came his way when his feature film JFK was released in 1991.
Like Trump, Tucker Carlson has a gift for driving his enemies crazy. From Matt Taibbi at taibbi.substack.com:
Authoritarian arrogance is handing a ratings bonanza to the onetime Daily Show target, who laughs: “It was easy to be Lenny Bruce in 1963.”
On Monday, June 28th, Fox host Tucker Carlson dropped a bomb mid-show, announcing he’d been approached by a “whistleblower” who told him he was being spied on by the NSA.
“The National Security Agency is monitoring our electronic communications,” he said, “and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”
The reaction was swift, mocking, and ferocious. “Carlson is sounding more and more like InfoWars host and notorious conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones,” chirped CNN media analyst Brian Stelter. Vox ripped Carlson as a “serial fabulist” whose claims were “evidence-free.” The Washington Post quipped that “in a testament to just how far the credibility of Tucker Carlson Tonight has cratered,” even groups like Pen America and the Reporters Committee on the Freedom of the Press were no-commenting the story, while CNN learned from its always-reliable “people familiar with the matter” that even Carlson’s bosses at Fox didn’t believe him.
None of this is surprising. A lot of media people despise Carlson. He may be Exhibit A in the n+2 epithet phenomenon that became standard math in the Trump era, i.e. if you thought he was an “asshole” in 2015 you jumped after Charlottesville straight past racist to white supremacist, and stayed there. He’s spoken of in newsrooms in hushed tones, like a mythical monster. The paranoid rumor that he’s running for president (he’s not) comes almost entirely from a handful of editors and producers who’ve convinced themselves it’s true, half out of anxiety and half subconscious desperation to find a click-generating replacement for Donald Trump.
Being liberal means never being wrong, until you’re wrong, in which case you quietly discard your position and either ignore or adopt the right one, never ever apologizing or even acknowledging your prior error. From Michael Tracey at mtracey.substack.com:
If contemporary American liberalism has any High Priests, foremost among them would have to be Jon Stewart. Arguably, he’s the functional equivalent of a supreme pontiff. So much of contemporary American liberalism hinges on aesthetic presentation — the ever-present need to convey that you and your peers “get it” — and Stewart pioneered the perfect public sensibility tailored to this ambition. For years, cultural liberals’ sense of savviness and ironic detachment, coupled with an underlying pretension to earnestness, was cultivated and affirmed by Stewart. His method of communicating political information on The Daily Show became the dominant style not just of mainstream corporate comedy, but of left-liberal politics as a whole. Everyone from establishment Democrats to cynical online leftists speaks of Stewart with worshipful reverence.
Stewart is also very smart. Like any good leader of a religious order, he knows on occasion he must chide his fellow clergymen for their doctrinal blindspots, tactical blunders, or personal indiscretions. He knows how to gently but firmly advise parishioners when they’ve gone astray, or gone too far. He also mostly kept his head down throughout the Trump presidency — declining to weigh in on every fleeting micro-scandal — which was a wise decision, so as to not get himself too brain-melted by the endless frenzy of that period. He didn’t even join Twitter until this past January.
Empathizing with the habits and tastes of those who are culturally dissimilar is always healthy, but it’s a major struggle to understand why some people still voluntarily watch late-night network TV. Nonetheless, Stewart appeared this week on the first back-in-studio taping of his protégé Stephen Colbert’s late-night show. There he issued what amounted to a new Papal encyclical. In that signature weary, deadpan delivery everyone knows and loves, he averred that the “lab leak” theory of COVID origins — previously a contemptible heresy — should not just be seriously considered as plausible, but had in fact become trivially obvious. So obvious that you’re now the dummy if you don’t think so. Watch as Colbert awkwardly wrestles with the implications of what his longtime hero Jon Stewart is saying; he looks almost pained. Six months ago, anyone who broached this topic on Colbert’s show would’ve been assumed to be some sort of QAnon crank. But here’s Jon Stewart, repeating Steve Bannon talking points. Colbert, understandably, appears quite disoriented.
Jon Stewart is the High Priest of Barely Functional Millennials. Not all Millennials, just the ones he’s personally destroyed. I’ve hated him from the moment my younger friends/family told me they got their news from him rather than you know, the news.
And saying this is not an endorsement of the news, then or now.
Stewart’s agitprop was the stuff of legend during his run on The Daily Show. He programmed an entire generation to think he was the truth-telling court jester when he was really always The Davos Crowd’s Pied Piper. All he had to do was bust open a few easily-busted lies while mugging for the camera.
That’s instant credibility with a generation incapable of real critical thinking.
He was funny when he got his first break on Dennis Miller Live on HBO back in the early 90’s. I didn’t have cable back then and had a co-worker tape them for me. Stewart stood out. He’s a talented guy, always has been. I don’t begrudge him his talent. It’s one of the hallmarks of evil people, most of them are admirably talented at something.
There are people whose lives revolve around being famous, and even more disgustingly, there are people who spend their lives fixated on the famous. From Theodore Dalrymple at takimag.com:
photo credit: Bigstock
Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles
I have tried all my life to understand my fellow humans but have failed. If I understood them better, perhaps I would share more of their interests.
Take reality TV, for example. Returning to France recently, I discovered by chance that a family called the Gayats had become famous. For what, exactly? Mainly for their number—two parents and nine children. As far as I can tell, they were not in any other way remarkable. A television chain had found them and turned them into stars. One can, if one feels so inclined, follow their daily lives; there are web pages devoted to them that answer such important questions as “Which member of the Gayat family is pregnant?” Hundreds of thousands of people “follow” them.
Even more inexplicable to me is the fact that they are now regarded, and generously paid, as “influencers”; that is to say, when they mention a brand of some commodity—soap or mustard, for example—they receive a payment.
Can such a mention really influence people to copy them? Since the world of commerce is hardheaded and would not part with money unless to some commercial advantage, I have to suppose that there is reliable, or at least plausible, evidence that influencers do really influence.
Let us grant, then, that when the Gayat family (whose income per month as influencers is greater than its income in a year from other sources) is shown using a certain brand of something, the sales of that brand rise. Whether the demand for that something is elastic or inelastic hardly matters. From the point of view of the owners of the brand, what counts is the total sale; whether the increase is at the expense of other brands or the result of increased demand for the brand’s commodity, whatever it might be, is irrelevant.
The best laid plans of those who scheme to use mass movements for their own designs usually fail. It’s not that easy to control the masses. From Tom Luongo at tomluongo.me:
I expect the Great Reset to fail. Completely.
I also expect the Great Reset unleashes chaotic forces no one can control.
Honestly, it’s already done so. Look around the headlines today and you can see all the strings pulled by Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum but you can also see the uncontrolled events which reverberate as consequences.
I think the little conflict between Israel and Hamas, soon-to-be Hezbollah, qualifies, so does the growing protests against ‘vaccine passports’ over a virus that just replaced the flu in its actual effects.
One wing to this ‘bird’ is evident in a powerful and (controversial) monologue delivered by Tucker Carlson, a leading (conservative) American political commentator, that is devoted to explaining just why one U.S. party is importing a new electorate to dilute, and replace, the existing U.S. electorate – and has been doing so for a decades. It is the dominating impulse within U.S. politics, Carlson avers; It is ‘replacement politics’.
Replacement politics is nothing new. Obama used zip code targeting to flood Minneapolis with Somalis. Now they are represented by one in Congress while the city has been ground zero for the abdication of responsibility by local government at the direction of the WEF.
Replacement politics has also morphed pretty quickly, thanks to the race-baiting during Obama’s first two terms, into the corporate/government (or do I repeat myself) program known as the Woke Revolution. The radicalization of maleducated twentysomethings into literal black bloc wearing Brown Shirts was always part of this plan.
And the more the Biden Obama administration pushes policies to make life in the U.S. less ordered, the more their ranks can swell regardless of the puppet masters’ wishes. Things like this take on a life of their own. Such is the politics of envy and hate.
HOLLYWOOD, CA—According to sources at the 91st annual Academy Awards ceremony this evening, the nation’s wealthy, privileged elite gathered to lecture the nation on the horrendous evils of wealth and privilege.
The wealthiest 0.00001% of the nation arrived at the exclusive, walled-off, high-security event in limos and luxury cars driven by servants in order to spend a few hours telling the nation’s poor and middle-class citizens how they need to throw off the yoke of oppression put on them by the wealthy elite.
“It’s the white, privileged, wealth hoarders that are ruining America,” said one white, privileged man whose net worth is estimated at $160 million. “All you people in the cheap seats at home: you need to do better.”
“America is just a terrible nation with no opportunity,” said one woman who made $100 million wearing costumes and reading words someone else wrote off a page. “We must stop the 1% from hoarding all the wealth.” Upon being informed she was well within the 1%, she clarified that it was actually the 0.000001% who are the problem.
Unfortunately, it looks like the event will proceed as planned next year as well.
Maybe Bill Maher feels liberated with Biden in office, but he’s telling some uncomfortable truths. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:
Something strange is occurring in the gutter of “liberal comedy”… After four years of constant attacks on anything ‘Trumpian’ and constant ignorance of anything ‘Left’, one man has begun to realize that there is plenty of farce on both sides of the aisle and virtue-signaling to your cocktail party co-conspirators just doesn’t pay the bills anymore (cough CNN cough).
Last week, Comedian Bill Maher used his HBO show to highlight some awkward ‘facts’ and ask some uncomfortable questions about media and politicians approach to COVID.
This week, he has taken aim at the heart of the problem – American Millennials and Gen Z and their total ignorance of history.
“In India, young people touch old people’s feet to show reverence. In Japan, there’s a national ‘respect for the aged’ day.
You know the reason why advertisers in this country love the 18-34 demographic… because it’s the most gullible.
A third of people under 35 say they’re in favor of abolishing the police…not defunding, but doing away with a police force altogether… which is less of a policy position and more of a leg tattoo.
36% of Millennials think it might be a good idea to try Communism… but much of the world did try it… I know most of Millennials think that doesn’t count because they weren’t alive when it happened… but it did happen, and there are people around who remember it. Pining for communism is like pining for BetaMax or MySpace.
So when you say ‘you’re old, you don’t get it’, get what? Abolish the police? …and the Border Patrol? … and Capitalism? … and cancel Lincoln?
No, “I get it”… the problem isn’t that I don’t get what you’re saying or that I’m old. The problem is that your ideas are stupid.
If you say “let’s eat in the bathroom and shit in the kitchen”, yeah, that’s a new idea, but I wouldn’t call it interior design.
You think someone 80 is hopeless because they can’t use an iPhone? Maybe the one who is hopeless is the one who can’t stop using it.
You think I’m out of it because I’m not on Twitch? Well maybe I ‘get Twitch’ but I just think people watching other people play video games is a waste of fucking time.
20% of Gen Z agree with the statement that “society would be better off if all property was owned by the public and managed by the government” and another 29% say ‘they don’t know if that’s a good idea’…
Here’s who does know… anyone who wasn’t born yesterday!”
There are narratives, and then there are facts and reality. From Lipoh at theburningplatform.com:
Everywhere I look, I see narratives. Truth and logical reasoning has given way to narrative. People are buying into the MSM and politically driven narrative system, and become so entrenched in their positions that no amount of truth or facts can alter their views. This gives the narrators enormous control over the entire population. The lemming mentality is taking us down a dark path, which in the end leads to a cliff.
The left is entirely consumed by narrative, but the right is catching up rapidly. They are two sides to the same coin, and I encourage everyone to break free of the narrative system, and focus rather on facts and truth.
Following are but a few of the narratives that I see, day after day:
Narrative: Bernie Sanders complains because Bezos and Buffet have more wealth than bottom 40% combined. Reality: What he does not mention is that he himself has more wealth than the bottom 34% combined. The bottom 34% of Americans have a combined net worth of zero.
Narrative: Media laments that police target blacks and kill them disproportionately. Reality: What they do not say is that 3% of population – male blacks between the ages of 16 and 35 commit approximately 1/2 the murders and violent crimes in the country, which brings them disproportionately into contact with police.
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