MotoGP was in Austin, TX this past weekend where Marc Marquez traditionally runs at the front. This time around was no exception with him handily taking pole position, his brother third on the grid, and Fabio Digiantonnio in second. Bagnaia all the way down in sixth!
Honda once again put two bikes into Q2, this time both factory riders, and is regularly performing better than Yamaha's factory team. Jack Miller looks at ease on his ride with another Q2 appearance.
KTM's Acosta qualified fourth, his best of the season so far and the best for a KTM. Vinales, who won here last year, finally made it to Q2 but was down in 10th.
At the start of the sprint Bagnaia made an excellent beginning and stormed to the front to fight with Marc Marquez. Eventually beaten within the opening few laps he would settle down for another third place behind Alex M in second and Marc Marquez with a one second gap for victory. Digi's poor start saw him fight his way to fourth from second.
The race had a bizarre beginning with riders scrambling to swap to dry bikes while on the grid. Very strange. At the beginning Pecco once again had a killer start to move up into the podium places. Marc Marquez however, breezed to a two second gap by lap 9. He would finally show the ability to make mistakes by bumping over too much curb in the esses and lose the front, scraping off a footpeg, and making a points recovery impossible. Alex Marquez lost out to Bagnaia who finished first and made up 25 points to stay in third in the championship. Alex Marquez is now leading with 87 points over big brother's 86.
Joan Mir crashed out yet again but Luca Marini finished in the top ten. Quartararo fought to 10th after a rough beginning. Bez finally bested Ogura in a race finishing 6th with Ogura again in the top 10. Enea Bastianini finally finished decently in 7th and was the top KTM with both factory bikes out.
Qatar is next with Lusail favoring the high top speeds of Ducati and KTM for overtakes down the big straight.
thank you for stepping up and saving me the trouble of figuring out how to get Loopy across the country to Oakland. that said, Jack let me know if things fall through and she needs a home. I've already got a 3-pound deaf cat who can't walk or even stand and requires a small fortune in ongoing care. What's one more special needs cat?
I wonder if America would have collapsed under a Harris presidency, especially after sending troops to UKR. Between the proxy war and gross abuse of the taxpayers in the form of USAID funded NGOs, the republic is seriously frayed at the edges.
(That said, I don't think Trump is "crashing the economy" as I don't think any president controls the economy directly. What I don't like is beating up on our allies / friends / relatives who have equal or better labor & environmental standards like Canada and Europe but NOT aggressively targeting China and India and doing nothing to undo Obama's unlawful conversion of H-4 and F-1 visas into work visas. Actually sucking up to India in many ways...although maybe giving them more nuclear capability will mean that they characteristically fuck it up and kill a few hundred million.)
I said "most important ways." At least they're not making the most extreme form of the transgender movement the centerpiece of their agenda.
But I can't support an administration that's doubling-down on India's colonization of ~every~ white-collar job while educated Americans sit on the sidelines.
USAID accounted for 0.3 percent of federal spending last year. you know who benefits most from killing it? China. all of the soft diplomacy that USAID did is being taken over by China, who will be viewed as the good guys in all the countries that no longer receive US assistance. this will bolster China's influence and standing in the world.
we're already seeing this in Myanmar, where China has sent $13.9 million in aid and dispatched search and rescue crews. Meanwhile, the US has pledged $2M and, last I read, is still trying to get search and rescue crews together and dispatched.
No, we are not. But when things do go wrong and it is China who steps in to help when it used to be us, that strengthens China's position in the world. If China is the threat Trump says it is, why would he lose so much to gain so little?
You've confused 'economic rival' with 'existential enemy'. Our leaders consciously chose to make China what it is today mostly out of greed and to a slightly lesser degree hatred of their own constituents.
I'm not sure that the US has more of a moral right or obligation to determine what happens away from its own borders and immediate interests, let alone on the doorstep of another regional/world power. In any case, buying subs at Politico is not it.
Time to let Bond movies fade away. He had his time and gave us some wonderful moments, and basically invented an entire genre. He also invented the movie quip with gems like: "That's a Smith & Wesson, and you've had your six" , and "I can be a lot more persuasive"
I just finally finished Nicholas Shakespeare's new biography of Ian Fleming. I read it on Kindle but I imagine the physical book would make one heck of a doorstop. That thing is thorough: it starts in 1907, prior to the author's birth, with detailed analysis of Fleming's experiences as a an embryo. 9,000 pages later we are in Switzerland in the early 1930s.
I've got a treatment prepared for the next Bond film. He'll be on his home turf, battling online bullies who are haranguing the cherished Muslim migrant rage gangs that have blessed the UK with the great strength of diversity.
Please make Bond a Muslim in your screenplay. This will produce some fantastic ironic quips. Then have Jamari Bond bed some white supermodels, preferably Christian or Jewish ones.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen protests at a movie theater, but this would do it.
I'm still shocked that we blew up Nord Stream I and II and told the mainstream media that the Russians did it themselves. How would we respond if Putin blew up the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and said with a wink, "The Americans must have done it themselves"?
There is also the possibility it really was an accident due to shoddy maintenance by the Russians. A friend who knows these things was very much leaning in that direction.
I seem to remember that the anti-Russia rhetoric started when the Russia stopped sending orphans to the US because the US was allowing homosexuals to adopt.
I still think the anti-Russia sentiment (and anti-facebook) almost entirely stems from Hillary and her campaign advisors looking for a scapegoat instead of admitting they ran a terrible algorithm campaign with an atrocious candidate.
Scott Horton’s book Provoked is an exhaustive review of the Ukraine situation starting at the end of the Cold War if anyone wants further historical context.
yes, victoria nuland created this mess. the entire ukraine war response has been an exercise in squeezing putin's balls. ukraine never had any possibility of regaining the eastern oblasts or crimea without foreign troops. lock putin and zelenskyy into a room with a map and a sharpie. don't let them out until they draw a line.
It’s unfortunate for me that there’s a perpetually (pun intended) negative correlation between the availability of certain watches at my Rolex AD and my ability to pay for them. Back in 2023 when I was flush with money they couldn’t procure me a James Cameron Sea-Dweller. Fast forward to this past August when I wasn’t so flush and they were enthusiastically trying to convince me to take one of their hands. I have a feeling the story will be the same when I reach out to inquire about procuring that lovely new Green GMT.
I'm sure if his third term ambitions start to look probable, they'll use that as a justification of why he still can't run since he's technically won 3 times.
I recently became aware of techniques to turn still images (read: illustrations) into animations using AI, which would be a dream come true for me, because I'd LOVE to see my work animated.
But not the way they do it. Robot Art demeans the whole idea of art, and I can't copyright it because I wouldn't be the one making it, the internet would.
"I’d like to believe that we’d have stopped short of that — that President Biden would think of how he lost his own son before he would command the death of anyone else’s sons — but I have doubts, dear reader, I have doubts."
Biden's son died of brain cancer, not in combat. I know Joe and the media liked to create the impression that Biden's son died fighting for Raytheon's stock price, but he did not.
I suspect the NYT published this story to force Vladmir Putin's hand. I'm sure Putin wanted peace without having to discuss that the previous US regime was conducting war directly on the Russian people. Since President Trump won't bring the US into WWIII, then perhaps the CIA controlled media can goad Russia into lighting the touchpaper and causing hundreds of millions of deaths instead. Maybe the NYT will 'reveal' that we blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline next.
I don’t know that Amazon could do a much worse job with Bond then the Broccoli/Wilson team did with the Craig films. The worst Bond ever in the worst films ever. Yes, CR was a strong entry, and likely would have been the best in the series had Brosnan played Bond (of course, he wouldn’t have been a novice Bond, and he wouldn’t have needed some chick he just met to teach him how to dress). After that, we hit the absolute garbage depths of Skyfall, the worst Bond movie ever, and then they became so bereft of ideas, they had to kill Bond, just as he became the modern, sensitive man Hollywood always wanted. JHC! I can’t imagine that Amazon could do any worse. The Moneypenny series sounds more appealing than Craig’s Bond.
For a while, I believed the hype when the Craig-Casino Royal reboot came out. Upon reflection, that film, while well made in general, was a bigger turd than it needed to be.
Then there was some rumblings a couple of years ago about the first woman cast in the lead role, don't know what became of that, but the comparison of beshitted IP's Star Woke and v.007.5 is apt. Let them all die, leave their legacy alone.
In a few years somebody is going to reboot something from the late David Lynch.
I’ll still put Skyfall as the worst of them all. Including Die Another Day and the Woody Allen Casino Royale. Bad James Bond movies were usually movies made with good intentions that just didn’t work out. But there is just something different about Skyfall. It’s patronizing, perhaps? It always felt like they were looking down on us and the franchise.
I still say From Russia With Love. Perfect adaptation and a great cast. I’m certain that the Romany cat fight alone would get a screenwriter blacklisted today.
At this point, they have all been so forgettable that I can’t remember which is which or what happened. Nor do I care. Which is sad considering how much I looked forward to a new Bond movie when I was younger. I didn’t even bother to watch the last one.
In 1977, I believe, my dad took me at what was likely way too young an age, to see a special presentation of the Spy Who Loved Me. Iirc, after the movie was over, the director and a few other folks involved in making the movie were there to answer questions. I’d never experienced anything remotely like that, and it cemented the Bond movies in my head as a very special thing. (Btw, I was already a Bond fan, as my dad had bought me a battery operated, tin DB5, and I was hooked). I saw every Bond movie after that in the theatre, and enjoyed them all, some more, some less. But the finally broke me with No Time to Die. After more than 4 decades, almost 20 movies, and 5 Bonds, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t go and watch them desecrate a character that was so important to me.
This pearl clutching over fighting a proxy war in Ukraine is baffling to me. This happened time and time again in the Cold War, I don’t see what the big deal is.
This in comparison to the Iraq fiasco is cheap by any measure in terms of furthering foreign policy goals. We gave Eastern Europe security guarantees, what’s the problem with honoring them.
Which is exactly why you don't ever want U.S. soldiers as "peacekeepers" in Ukraine. Change the word peacekeeper to target or pretext for starting a war between the U.S. and Russia.
It’s almost like we forgot Russians were proxy killing Americans in Vietnam, and we were proxy killing Russians in Afghanistan, and then they were proxy killing Americans in Afghanistan…
Oh, and that’s getting beyond the entire North Korean Air Force being composed of Russians during that war, which everyone involved decided it would be best to never notice.
USAID/CIA/DOS astroturfed the Maiden Revolution to put a NATO puppet in power. They are quite open about this. Ukrainian nationalists proceeded to immediately shell ethnic Russians civilians in the Donbass, with our materiel. At every attempt at a settlement, the US/NATO/EU reneged and then (and still) laughed about it.
I don't think the US is a premier power now. We were from the late eighties to the nineties. The Cold War, Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact are dead and buried thirty years, the missteps that created them nearly a century longer still.
The current US is mostly morally if not fiscally bankrupt....closer to 'The Great Satan' now than when the term was first coined.
It isn't sympathy but self preservation and a desire to end worldwide meddling and proxy wars in principle. These fools got a lot of people killed and most of a country destroyed. It didn't have to go this way.
Becasue the neocon fantasy of democracy flowering in the rubble turned into full parking lots at the VA and maimed kids, so many of us grew tired of American adventurism…so we wont countenance the latest incarnation of the War Pigs who sold direct conflict with Russians as feel good American democratic Saviorism to plant on the lawn next to the Biden/Harris and In This House signs
Regional power with a formidable nuclear arsenal and delivery systems. Hence the first time ever use of a MIRV a while ago. I have sympathy for Ukraine, but not up to the point of finding out how realistic The Day After was.
I've read that the shoe-banging incident was a response to being advised that "Americans respond to loud, boisterous speeches." Kind of like the idea that "Mexicans would never buy a Nova because no-va means no-go," despite the fact that Nova sold very well throughout Latin America, including in Mexico where owners often filled up at a major gas station chain also named Nova."
I understand the Marshall Plan because Americans have ethnic ties to Europe and Germany itself, and because the harshly punitive nature of Versailles arguably led to WWII. But we were also very nice (according to Bob Lutz, perhaps ~excessively nice~, to the detriment of our own domestic OEMs) to Japan, despite how their soldiers desecrated American corpses, etc. (I'm not objecting to our kindness towards Japan, just stating that it could have easily gone the other way).
But the Soviets were, although scary, not particularly inhumane, so it's weird that our relationship with Russia is almost worse than it was during the cold war. I suspect that Sailer's "WW G" theory may have something to do with it, as well as the fact that the Western Left views Russians as traitors to the Communist cause.
Our relationship with the USSR was never so bad because the worst actors in the US government saw them as comrades. Their modern counterparts hate Russia today, because Russia is a symbol of the failure of totalitarianism, of restored Christianity, and of the beauty possible when you aren't trying to eradicate your white native population. They are everything that globalists hate, and globalists still control the mainstream message in the USA.
It is frightening how close we came to the brink. The Russians have known of our involvement from the start and it would have been trivial to retaliate. For all the tarring of Putin as 'Hitler', he is probably the most dovish of their leadership. The Eurofags are still in the FAFO game and Trump has no influence over them anymore. There are rumors that Ukraine would salt the earth by destroying their reactors on purpose.
MotoGP was in Austin, TX this past weekend where Marc Marquez traditionally runs at the front. This time around was no exception with him handily taking pole position, his brother third on the grid, and Fabio Digiantonnio in second. Bagnaia all the way down in sixth!
Honda once again put two bikes into Q2, this time both factory riders, and is regularly performing better than Yamaha's factory team. Jack Miller looks at ease on his ride with another Q2 appearance.
KTM's Acosta qualified fourth, his best of the season so far and the best for a KTM. Vinales, who won here last year, finally made it to Q2 but was down in 10th.
At the start of the sprint Bagnaia made an excellent beginning and stormed to the front to fight with Marc Marquez. Eventually beaten within the opening few laps he would settle down for another third place behind Alex M in second and Marc Marquez with a one second gap for victory. Digi's poor start saw him fight his way to fourth from second.
The race had a bizarre beginning with riders scrambling to swap to dry bikes while on the grid. Very strange. At the beginning Pecco once again had a killer start to move up into the podium places. Marc Marquez however, breezed to a two second gap by lap 9. He would finally show the ability to make mistakes by bumping over too much curb in the esses and lose the front, scraping off a footpeg, and making a points recovery impossible. Alex Marquez lost out to Bagnaia who finished first and made up 25 points to stay in third in the championship. Alex Marquez is now leading with 87 points over big brother's 86.
Joan Mir crashed out yet again but Luca Marini finished in the top ten. Quartararo fought to 10th after a rough beginning. Bez finally bested Ogura in a race finishing 6th with Ogura again in the top 10. Enea Bastianini finally finished decently in 7th and was the top KTM with both factory bikes out.
Qatar is next with Lusail favoring the high top speeds of Ducati and KTM for overtakes down the big straight.
Re: loopy, hit me up directly if you're interested. She really is a helluva kitty. Jack can get you my direct contact info.
thank you for stepping up and saving me the trouble of figuring out how to get Loopy across the country to Oakland. that said, Jack let me know if things fall through and she needs a home. I've already got a 3-pound deaf cat who can't walk or even stand and requires a small fortune in ongoing care. What's one more special needs cat?
god bless you
I wonder if America would have collapsed under a Harris presidency, especially after sending troops to UKR. Between the proxy war and gross abuse of the taxpayers in the form of USAID funded NGOs, the republic is seriously frayed at the edges.
And in most important ways, the current administration is just as bad; much worse than expected. I don't quite know how this ends.
Yet still not a single word against trump and the gop's looting of and crashing the economy .
-Nate
Consider re-reading the post more closely.
(That said, I don't think Trump is "crashing the economy" as I don't think any president controls the economy directly. What I don't like is beating up on our allies / friends / relatives who have equal or better labor & environmental standards like Canada and Europe but NOT aggressively targeting China and India and doing nothing to undo Obama's unlawful conversion of H-4 and F-1 visas into work visas. Actually sucking up to India in many ways...although maybe giving them more nuclear capability will mean that they characteristically fuck it up and kill a few hundred million.)
https://www.india.com/news/world/india-united-states-us-department-of-energy-holtec-asia-tata-consulting-engineers-ltd-tcel-larsen-and-toubro-donald-trump-narendra-modi-ratan-tata-npcil-nuclear-reactors-7720474/
Okay, I will do that .
If you are blind to the economic damage the president is doing, I cannot help you because you obviously don't care about the truth .
-Nate
I do not say this as an insult, but you have a very naive view of Canada if you think it’s a friend or ally.
Disagree that it's "just a bad." I don't like a lot of what Trump does, but I'm pleased with DOGE. Sunlight is a great disinfectant.
sunlight is great
some online health guru cranks have taken to promoting the benefits of sunning your balls and anus
not making that up
also dont think about sunburn there
I think MadTV did that years ago.
Don’t forget the perineum!
I said "most important ways." At least they're not making the most extreme form of the transgender movement the centerpiece of their agenda.
But I can't support an administration that's doubling-down on India's colonization of ~every~ white-collar job while educated Americans sit on the sidelines.
Agree wholeheartedly. If I were king, I'd eliminate H-1B and similar programs immediately.
My money is on the trouble stemming from rot at the core, rather than being frayed at the edges.
USAID accounted for 0.3 percent of federal spending last year. you know who benefits most from killing it? China. all of the soft diplomacy that USAID did is being taken over by China, who will be viewed as the good guys in all the countries that no longer receive US assistance. this will bolster China's influence and standing in the world.
we're already seeing this in Myanmar, where China has sent $13.9 million in aid and dispatched search and rescue crews. Meanwhile, the US has pledged $2M and, last I read, is still trying to get search and rescue crews together and dispatched.
We’re not responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world.
No, we are not. But when things do go wrong and it is China who steps in to help when it used to be us, that strengthens China's position in the world. If China is the threat Trump says it is, why would he lose so much to gain so little?
You've confused 'economic rival' with 'existential enemy'. Our leaders consciously chose to make China what it is today mostly out of greed and to a slightly lesser degree hatred of their own constituents.
I'm not sure that the US has more of a moral right or obligation to determine what happens away from its own borders and immediate interests, let alone on the doorstep of another regional/world power. In any case, buying subs at Politico is not it.
Myanmar may not be the best example to give for this …
No, but it is the most recent.
Good. China can waste their money on trans comic books in Argentina instead of my tax dollars
Time to let Bond movies fade away. He had his time and gave us some wonderful moments, and basically invented an entire genre. He also invented the movie quip with gems like: "That's a Smith & Wesson, and you've had your six" , and "I can be a lot more persuasive"
I just finally finished Nicholas Shakespeare's new biography of Ian Fleming. I read it on Kindle but I imagine the physical book would make one heck of a doorstop. That thing is thorough: it starts in 1907, prior to the author's birth, with detailed analysis of Fleming's experiences as a an embryo. 9,000 pages later we are in Switzerland in the early 1930s.
I've got a treatment prepared for the next Bond film. He'll be on his home turf, battling online bullies who are haranguing the cherished Muslim migrant rage gangs that have blessed the UK with the great strength of diversity.
DO IT!
Sir I believe you meant to type "rape gangs" but i think "rage gangs" also applies.
Good catch: My brain auto-corrected it to "rape."
You are correct.
"Muslim migrant raping rage gangs" describes the situation better.
Flip this on its head and I would pay to see that in a real theater.
What does what people want to pay to see in a theater have to do with the movies that are currently getting made?
Absolutely nothing.
Please make Bond a Muslim in your screenplay. This will produce some fantastic ironic quips. Then have Jamari Bond bed some white supermodels, preferably Christian or Jewish ones.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen protests at a movie theater, but this would do it.
indian bond and jewish bond girls
jagpreet bond and pussyberg galorestein
Perfect! We need the final scene to take place at UN Headquarters, the ultimate villain lair.
Look at the Night Manager if you want to see a hint of what Amazon has in store for Bond
is it called night manager becuase hes black
oops! i confused it with 'night porter' with dirk bogarde
Amazon fired the gal who you mentioned above.
However, I think her replacement might have been worse.
That's the same issue dictatorships around the world face. This guy's bad, but what about the next guy.
Hiring people for this job is easy just:
1: no DEI.
2: have a record of success.
3: stay away from crazy political assholes.
I think I heard that they're doing away with her position.
That's what I heard as well, but the person who is supposedly going to be in charge next is also a cat-lady loon.
c.f. Red Bull F1
What the times wrote about a lot of us have been saying for years.
There are American soldiers in Ukraine and some of have been killed fighting - and are immediately called 'deserters who just ended up there'.
Yeah... Right...
I don't know why the democrats want a hot war with Russia, but they've been pushing for one since Hillary was running State.
I'm still shocked that we blew up Nord Stream I and II and told the mainstream media that the Russians did it themselves. How would we respond if Putin blew up the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and said with a wink, "The Americans must have done it themselves"?
I'm still not sure we did it. But it wouldn't surprise me at this point.
Yeah, but Sy Hersh is an idiot.
NOTHING would shock me at this point.
YEah, our government has become pretty evil.
The Biden administration would never had had the balls for that.
That's why they were inching towards it constantly. Thinking that they could get into a war and win it before anyone realized we were in a war.
I mean, they had the balls to authorize attacks on Russian soil with American assets, and tht's pretty damn ballsy right there.
If not us, the Brits. If Ukrainians were involved it was to the degree that you'd hold the power drill while your five year old pulled the trigger.
There is also the possibility it really was an accident due to shoddy maintenance by the Russians. A friend who knows these things was very much leaning in that direction.
However, time will tell.
One theory on "why the democrats want a hot war with Russia":
https://isteve.blogspot.com/2013/12/world-war-g-and-military-industrial.html
Lots of other articles in that vein.
I seem to remember that the anti-Russia rhetoric started when the Russia stopped sending orphans to the US because the US was allowing homosexuals to adopt.
Could be.
I still think the anti-Russia sentiment (and anti-facebook) almost entirely stems from Hillary and her campaign advisors looking for a scapegoat instead of admitting they ran a terrible algorithm campaign with an atrocious candidate.
"Russia stopped sending orphans to the US because the US was allowing homosexuals to adopt"
but why would that be objectionable
*checks graph*
oh
oh no
Scott Horton’s book Provoked is an exhaustive review of the Ukraine situation starting at the end of the Cold War if anyone wants further historical context.
yes, victoria nuland created this mess. the entire ukraine war response has been an exercise in squeezing putin's balls. ukraine never had any possibility of regaining the eastern oblasts or crimea without foreign troops. lock putin and zelenskyy into a room with a map and a sharpie. don't let them out until they draw a line.
It’s unfortunate for me that there’s a perpetually (pun intended) negative correlation between the availability of certain watches at my Rolex AD and my ability to pay for them. Back in 2023 when I was flush with money they couldn’t procure me a James Cameron Sea-Dweller. Fast forward to this past August when I wasn’t so flush and they were enthusiastically trying to convince me to take one of their hands. I have a feeling the story will be the same when I reach out to inquire about procuring that lovely new Green GMT.
So Covid came from a lab and Biden put us on the brink of nuclear annihilation. Will they next report Trump won 2020?
I'm sure if his third term ambitions start to look probable, they'll use that as a justification of why he still can't run since he's technically won 3 times.
how do i bet money on this exact outcome
his third term ambitions can't begin to look probable because the constitution clearly prohibits a third term.
I recently became aware of techniques to turn still images (read: illustrations) into animations using AI, which would be a dream come true for me, because I'd LOVE to see my work animated.
But not the way they do it. Robot Art demeans the whole idea of art, and I can't copyright it because I wouldn't be the one making it, the internet would.
Postmodern culture demeaned art well before Robot Art, so I say bring on the AI cartoons! At least they look better than paint splattered canvases.
I have a made up German word for the feeling paint spattered canvases give me - Kunstschmerz! Careful with the pronunciation now...
"I’d like to believe that we’d have stopped short of that — that President Biden would think of how he lost his own son before he would command the death of anyone else’s sons — but I have doubts, dear reader, I have doubts."
Biden's son died of brain cancer, not in combat. I know Joe and the media liked to create the impression that Biden's son died fighting for Raytheon's stock price, but he did not.
I suspect the NYT published this story to force Vladmir Putin's hand. I'm sure Putin wanted peace without having to discuss that the previous US regime was conducting war directly on the Russian people. Since President Trump won't bring the US into WWIII, then perhaps the CIA controlled media can goad Russia into lighting the touchpaper and causing hundreds of millions of deaths instead. Maybe the NYT will 'reveal' that we blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline next.
At this point, Joe is sure his son died during the battle of Basra and was eaten by a cannibal.
I think the NYT released this purely to damage the negotiating positions from the Trump team.
Agreed.
Trump is trying to negotiate peace, so there is no way that you can be wrong.
OT: April Fool’s Day is, as the kids say, cooked. These low-effort posts aren’t even funny.
This was pretty good. https://www.realcleardefense.com/2025/04/01/new_us_navy_aircraft_carrier_to_be_named_uss_musk_1101183.html
I don’t know that Amazon could do a much worse job with Bond then the Broccoli/Wilson team did with the Craig films. The worst Bond ever in the worst films ever. Yes, CR was a strong entry, and likely would have been the best in the series had Brosnan played Bond (of course, he wouldn’t have been a novice Bond, and he wouldn’t have needed some chick he just met to teach him how to dress). After that, we hit the absolute garbage depths of Skyfall, the worst Bond movie ever, and then they became so bereft of ideas, they had to kill Bond, just as he became the modern, sensitive man Hollywood always wanted. JHC! I can’t imagine that Amazon could do any worse. The Moneypenny series sounds more appealing than Craig’s Bond.
Glad to see we are of the same mind. I despise Craig as Dockworker Chav Bond.
For a while, I believed the hype when the Craig-Casino Royal reboot came out. Upon reflection, that film, while well made in general, was a bigger turd than it needed to be.
Then there was some rumblings a couple of years ago about the first woman cast in the lead role, don't know what became of that, but the comparison of beshitted IP's Star Woke and v.007.5 is apt. Let them all die, leave their legacy alone.
In a few years somebody is going to reboot something from the late David Lynch.
I’ll still put Skyfall as the worst of them all. Including Die Another Day and the Woody Allen Casino Royale. Bad James Bond movies were usually movies made with good intentions that just didn’t work out. But there is just something different about Skyfall. It’s patronizing, perhaps? It always felt like they were looking down on us and the franchise.
I totally get what you are saying. The filmmakers of both series have a very obvious disdain for both the material and the audience.
I disagree. I thought it overall was a very good film.
Re: David Lynch…I DUNE know about this…
Totally blanked on that one. I was thinking some half assed redux of Twin Peaks or Eraserhead.
Not after they make Moneypenny a lesbian.
Make her bisexual!
What's the best Bond movie?
I still say From Russia With Love. Perfect adaptation and a great cast. I’m certain that the Romany cat fight alone would get a screenwriter blacklisted today.
At this point, they have all been so forgettable that I can’t remember which is which or what happened. Nor do I care. Which is sad considering how much I looked forward to a new Bond movie when I was younger. I didn’t even bother to watch the last one.
In 1977, I believe, my dad took me at what was likely way too young an age, to see a special presentation of the Spy Who Loved Me. Iirc, after the movie was over, the director and a few other folks involved in making the movie were there to answer questions. I’d never experienced anything remotely like that, and it cemented the Bond movies in my head as a very special thing. (Btw, I was already a Bond fan, as my dad had bought me a battery operated, tin DB5, and I was hooked). I saw every Bond movie after that in the theatre, and enjoyed them all, some more, some less. But the finally broke me with No Time to Die. After more than 4 decades, almost 20 movies, and 5 Bonds, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t go and watch them desecrate a character that was so important to me.
I enjoyed the first twi D.C. bond films. I thought they were solid pieces of cinema. The latter 3 were tiresome.
Re: The wildest thing, and most frightening facts, you’ll read this year- Possible 007 movie plot?
This pearl clutching over fighting a proxy war in Ukraine is baffling to me. This happened time and time again in the Cold War, I don’t see what the big deal is.
This in comparison to the Iraq fiasco is cheap by any measure in terms of furthering foreign policy goals. We gave Eastern Europe security guarantees, what’s the problem with honoring them.
This is peer-peer on Russian soil, not satellite to satellite.
Yeah, that's my feeling too. If Russia targeted American soldiers for death inside this country, there would be a real hue and cry.
Or it wouldn't be reported. More Americans are dying now because of the actions of foreign nations than ever before.
I would bet an imported beer that a couple of the recent stars at Langley are from shenanigans in Laos, um, Kursk, um, Donbass, um Crimea.
But they can’t, so they don’t.
Again, Russian backed proxies kicked all this off in 2014.
They can't *why*, exactly?
Because we'd nuke them?
And if that's the case, how dare we claim moral superiority in Ukraine?
“ Russian backed proxies kicked all this off in 2014.”
Now, what would you call the Maidan protests of 2013 with Victoria Nuland and McCain on the ground?
Which is exactly why you don't ever want U.S. soldiers as "peacekeepers" in Ukraine. Change the word peacekeeper to target or pretext for starting a war between the U.S. and Russia.
That was the neocon and warmonger left’s goal.
It’s almost like we forgot Russians were proxy killing Americans in Vietnam, and we were proxy killing Russians in Afghanistan, and then they were proxy killing Americans in Afghanistan…
Oh, and that’s getting beyond the entire North Korean Air Force being composed of Russians during that war, which everyone involved decided it would be best to never notice.
Little different. This is more like Russians in Cuba launching ordnance into Florida.
Oh man you’re never gonna believe this, that’s what they almost did this one time
Something something Jupiter missiles in Turkey.
I don't recall ever seeing the Afghan leaders plastered over Time magazine or speaking in Congress or Afghan flags freakin' everywhere.
Yes but we’re the premier power now and Russia is a second rate regional only power, so yes there is a double standard.
ALSO THEY DID THE INVASION AND STARTED ALL OF THIS. Why the sympathy?
[chomps down hard on obvious troll bait]
USAID/CIA/DOS astroturfed the Maiden Revolution to put a NATO puppet in power. They are quite open about this. Ukrainian nationalists proceeded to immediately shell ethnic Russians civilians in the Donbass, with our materiel. At every attempt at a settlement, the US/NATO/EU reneged and then (and still) laughed about it.
I don't think the US is a premier power now. We were from the late eighties to the nineties. The Cold War, Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact are dead and buried thirty years, the missteps that created them nearly a century longer still.
The current US is mostly morally if not fiscally bankrupt....closer to 'The Great Satan' now than when the term was first coined.
It isn't sympathy but self preservation and a desire to end worldwide meddling and proxy wars in principle. These fools got a lot of people killed and most of a country destroyed. It didn't have to go this way.
Becasue the neocon fantasy of democracy flowering in the rubble turned into full parking lots at the VA and maimed kids, so many of us grew tired of American adventurism…so we wont countenance the latest incarnation of the War Pigs who sold direct conflict with Russians as feel good American democratic Saviorism to plant on the lawn next to the Biden/Harris and In This House signs
Regional power with a formidable nuclear arsenal and delivery systems. Hence the first time ever use of a MIRV a while ago. I have sympathy for Ukraine, but not up to the point of finding out how realistic The Day After was.
Our conflict was with the USSR and the Comintern, not the people of Russia. When the system collapsed, so too should have our animosity.
Mr. Putin has never banged his shoe at the UN and indicated his desire to bury us.
Exactly!
I've read that the shoe-banging incident was a response to being advised that "Americans respond to loud, boisterous speeches." Kind of like the idea that "Mexicans would never buy a Nova because no-va means no-go," despite the fact that Nova sold very well throughout Latin America, including in Mexico where owners often filled up at a major gas station chain also named Nova."
I understand the Marshall Plan because Americans have ethnic ties to Europe and Germany itself, and because the harshly punitive nature of Versailles arguably led to WWII. But we were also very nice (according to Bob Lutz, perhaps ~excessively nice~, to the detriment of our own domestic OEMs) to Japan, despite how their soldiers desecrated American corpses, etc. (I'm not objecting to our kindness towards Japan, just stating that it could have easily gone the other way).
But the Soviets were, although scary, not particularly inhumane, so it's weird that our relationship with Russia is almost worse than it was during the cold war. I suspect that Sailer's "WW G" theory may have something to do with it, as well as the fact that the Western Left views Russians as traitors to the Communist cause.
Our relationship with the USSR was never so bad because the worst actors in the US government saw them as comrades. Their modern counterparts hate Russia today, because Russia is a symbol of the failure of totalitarianism, of restored Christianity, and of the beauty possible when you aren't trying to eradicate your white native population. They are everything that globalists hate, and globalists still control the mainstream message in the USA.
No, he just told the Houthi rebels where the American ships were so they could do it for him.
Were the Cold war proxy wars a good thing?
I suppose Land-Dweller is fitting to those who call themselves Food-Eaters.
It makes me think of the Apatosaurus.
It is frightening how close we came to the brink. The Russians have known of our involvement from the start and it would have been trivial to retaliate. For all the tarring of Putin as 'Hitler', he is probably the most dovish of their leadership. The Eurofags are still in the FAFO game and Trump has no influence over them anymore. There are rumors that Ukraine would salt the earth by destroying their reactors on purpose.