Quotes: "I'm advocating for violence. I am advocating for violence. Light it on fire."
Too funny.
Well, Brian, bike-riding proficiency is a low bar, but he's failed at that now also.CNN’s Brian Stelter suggests that Joe Biden’s ability to ride a bike proves that he is mentally fit for office.
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 9, 2020
pic.twitter.com/D3fdQUH94T
Disney/Pixar just laid a pretty big turd this weekend, so it seems like a good time to revisit my answer to a Quora question a year ago. It has garnered 75 likes in that time, and so I am kind of proud of that. Honestly I just rushed my answer out with a lot less work that I generally put into blog posts. The reason people like it is obviously not because of brilliant writing but because the message resonates with fans of stories of all sorts. Here's the text:
Will Marvel Studios’ “woke” stance backfire like the comics did?
If the storytelling goes downhill, then the MCU will fall. “Wokeness” seems to erect artificial barriers to good storytelling. For example, look at the Charlie’s Angels movie. All the women are Mary Sues and can all do just about everything. All the men are awful and easy for the women to beat. The old white guy turns out to be the villain and this surprises no one. The movie tanked and was deservedly mocked.
“Batwoman” is another recent cringeworthy example. Good storytelling takes a back seat to woke button-pushing, and it is one of the lowest rated things in the DC realm.
Having said all this, there are many macho-crap films, stuff as far from “woke” as possible, out there that suck as badly as Batwoman. They feature one-dimensional, steroid-jacked heroes and hot women posing merely damsels in distress. I have just never heard anyone insist that those examples of film-making are great. Not in the way people insist that Last Jedi or Rise of Skywalker is great storytelling when the plot holes in those films are gaping and their characters demonstrably less realistic.
The best of the older, cheesy action films didn’t suffer from macho or woke posturing. Commando didn’t take itself very seriously, but neither of the females comes across as a fearful damsel-y character, but rather tough characters with courage. Rae-Dawn Chong actually uses a rocket launcher to free Schwarzenegger from a paddy wagon. But if Chong was shown beating all these military guys up with Arnold sitting there cheering her on that would have ruined the story. I feel like there are a bunch of woke fans that want that, i.e., ruin the story for the sake of a narrative that shows that men need to take a back seat to women, not that men and women can work together, using different talents, to beat the bad guys. “Edge of Tomorrow” is a good example of a more recent example of this, along with the first “Avengers” film of course.
“Falcon and the Winter Soldier” is a good example of the latest MCU project which was not sure what it wanted to be. Quirky action romp or preachy geopolitical / racial statement? Fortunately, the great action scenes provided enough cover for fans like me to ignore the cringe-worthy monologuing and confusion about who really is the “bad guy”. But here’s the thing: I’m a hardcore comic movie fan. If the MCU takes the wrong message from its decent ratings and injects more statement and less fun into their products, they are going to lose a lot of audience. You have got to get normal people to see your movies. If you are just able to count people like me coming through to door then woke or not, you’ll go broke.
The Catholic League points out the taintedness of the media's coverage of the Nigerian Catholic Massacre.
This was only the latest in a series of killings carried out by radical Islamists against Christians in Nigeria, though the media are reluctant to discuss the identity of the terrorists.
No one was better at describing what happened than Nina Shea, whose expertise is monitoring religious liberty worldwide at the Hudson Institute. “The massacre in a church while filled with Sunday worshippers is an atrocity that we’ve repeatedly seen in northern Nigeria over the years. Those were the work of Islamist extremists.” Mostly Muslims live in the north of Nigeria; the south is populated by Christians.
Among the media who did an accurate job reporting on the mass shooting was Christianity Today, Quartz Africa and Reuters. They made it clear that Muslim radicals were to blame.
The New York Times and the Associated Press made a passing reference to the role of Muslims (abcnews.com and the Washington Post picked up the AP story). Many others were worse.
By most conservative counts, the Quran contains over 100 passages that call Muslims to take up arms against unbelievers in the name of Allah.
“Kill them [unbelievers] wherever you find them… And fight them until there is no more unbelief and worship is for Allah alone” (Quran 2:191-193).
“Strike off their heads and strike from them every fingertip” (Quran 8:12).
“Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties; in exchange for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah, so they slay and are slain” (Quran 9:111).
“Truly Allah loves those who fight in His cause in battle array…” (Quran 61:4)
“The Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, and that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” (Sahih Muslim 1:33).
Atop Mark Shea's Facebook feed today we find this sensible and true assertion:
Jesus Christ is not here to put the stamp of approval on your political ideology.
Yet several minutes before this, he linked to this dainty morsel on his blog which I call The Daily Stumble. Excerpt:
The young man said to him, “All these I have observed; what do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell your guns and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young Gun Lover heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had a great arsenal.
And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a Gun Lover to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a Gun Lover to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mt 19:16–24)
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| Taken from an article titled "Lithium Mining and Its Impacts on the Environment" (https://www.techolac.com/business/lithium-mining-and-its-impacts-on-the-environment) |
This story makes me exceedingly happy.
Today, Strive Asset Management (“Strive”) launches with the mission of restoring the voices of everyday citizens in the American economy by leading companies to focus on excellence over politics. Strive is led by co-founder and Executive Chairman Vivek Ramaswamy and has raised over $20 million from some of America’s most prominent venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.
Strive aims to solve a fiduciary problem created by the three largest U.S. asset managers — BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — which control over $20 trillion in assets, exceeding the total U.S. gross domestic product. These “Big 3” firms bear a fiduciary duty to advance the best interests of their clients. Yet in the name of “stakeholder capitalism,” they use their clients’ funds to exercise decisive influence over nearly every U.S. public company to advance political ideologies that many of their clients disagree with. They engage in coordinated efforts to enact a uniform social agenda across corporate America resulting in higher gas prices and other consumer harms, which Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich recently called “the biggest antitrust violation in history.”
