When Fox canceled “#The Last Man Standing,” a sitcom featuring a middle-class family with a conservative patriarch, many suspected that the move had more to do with the politics of the character and the actor who played him, #Tim Allen. Now, however, with the success of the rebooted “Roseanne,” with the title character an open Trump supporter, the network is said to be considering bringing back “The #Last Man Standing” for much the same reason it is alleged to have canceled it in the first place. Does that mean that the entertainment industry is prepared to offer programming designed to appeal to conservative Middle America? And if so, what will that be like?
Random thoughts on politics, current events, popular culture, and whatever else interests me.
Friday, March 30, 2018
A recent story in the #Jerusalem Post, citing a Kuwaiti media source, claimed that Israel sent two F-35A stealth fighters into Iranian airspace [VIDEO] undetected, overflying Bandar Abbas, Shiraz, and Esfahan, before returning. The two fighters, the story alleges, were not even spotted on Russian radar. Neither Israeli nor American military officials would confirm or deny that the overflight took place. The notion that Israel could enter Iranian airspace at will has startling implications. But could the mission have actually taken place the way the story described?
Thursday, March 29, 2018
Season six of “The Americans” starts in late 1987, during the run-up to a crucial summit in Washington. Three years have passed since the end of season five, and everything has changed. Philip has been living the free and easy life of a happy capitalist, having expanded the travel agency, driving a fancy car.
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
I have to make one confession. I never watched “Roseanne” in its late 20th Century incarnation. #Roseanne Barr seemed to be a thoroughly unpleasant person, which is saying something for the entertainment industry. Besides, I was never a big fan of sitcoms, with certain exceptions.
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Last August, Hurricane Harvey [VIDEO] turned the Greater #Houston area into a vast lake, inundating homes and businesses that had never flooded in previous storms. Experts called the disaster a 1,000-year event. However, due to urban development in floodplains, Houston tends to flood in any case during heavy rainstorms, turning streets into impassable rivers and wreaking havoc. The prospect of more of the same has government officials’ attention and is causing them to think outside the box to make sure that another Harvey never happens again.
Monday, March 26, 2018
On one level, Mike Hughes is a nut for believing that the #World Is Flat. The Ancient Greeks first determined that the Earth is a sphere around the time of Pythagoras (around the 6th Century BC). About three hundred years later, the Hellenistic astronomer Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth within an error of about five percent. Since then no educated person, even in the Middle Ages, has believed that the world is flat. Direct observation starting with Magellan’s epic voyage around the world to every orbital space mission ever mounted, including the International Space Station, tends to confirm it.
Sunday, March 25, 2018
One of the most surreal incidents that occurred in the MarchforOurLives took place in #New York when Paul McCartney reflected how “one of my best friends was killed in gun violence.” He was referring, of course, to the murder of fellow Beatle #John Lennon at the hands of a deranged person named Mark David Chapman in 1980. The invocation of the musician best known for the song “Imagine” was unfortunate for a number of reasons.
Saturday, March 24, 2018
A group of more than 60 House members sent a letter to the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), demanding that Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) be confirmed as NASA administrator. The interesting fact about the letter is that more than a dozen Democrats signed it, knocking down one of the main arguments for blocking Bridenstine’s nomination.
Barbecue season is just around the corner. However, whether one is smoking a pork butt or brisket with a nice dry rub or grilling slices of zucchini and eggplant brushed with olive oil, garlic, and rosemary, anyone who eats anything will be perpetuating either “white masculinity” in the case of veggies or “#Toxic Masculinity” in the case of meat. Apparently, the only way one can avoid doing these horrible things is to try to live on water and sunshine.
Friday, March 23, 2018
The choice of #John Bolton as #national security advisor has the punditocracy in a tither. The consensus seems to be that Bolton is a warmonger who is ready to strike first at North Korea and bomb Iran to make sure neither country uses nuclear weapons against the civilized world. Interestingly, Bolton is to the right of the president on Russia as well, much more skeptical on Putin and more willing to treat him as an enemy. In fact, Trump’s selection of Bolton plays into something that Jerry Hendrix, writing in National Review, of something called “strategic ambiguity.”
Thursday, March 22, 2018
The one thing that you have to say about #Joe Biden is that he can be exciting on the stump. Between his series of epic gaffes and his recent suggestion that he would have beaten up Donald Trump had he heard him say what he said on the Access Hollywood tape in High School his prospective third attempt to become president in 2020, Biden would be fun to cover. However, Biden is taking an incredible risk for reasons that are obvious.
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
One would not know it by the press he gets now, but President #Donald Trump used to be a favorite in the media [VIDEO]. As Jim Geraghty said in National Review, “Television’s coverage of Donald Trump from the 1980s to early 2015 portrayed Trump as a phenomenal business success, endlessly knowledgeable and fascinating, insightful, shrewd, entertaining, and funny — a larger-than-life character.” Some measure of truth exists in this observation. So what changed to make this man into a monster?
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
#Hillary Clinton has not mastered the first rule of holes, which is that in order to get out of one you need to stop digging. She started by raising eyebrows suggesting at an event in India [VIDEO] that she lost because white women are under the thumbs of the men in their lives and that, besides, Trump voters are a pack of racists. The former first lady, senator, secretary of state, and two-time #Presidential Candidate has spiraled further into the depths of iniquity.
Monday, March 19, 2018
More proof arrived Friday that Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas is either an incompetent politician or has decided that he is doomed to lose his quest to take away Ted Cruz’s Senate seat [VIDEO]. O’Rourke appeared on Bill Maher’s show, his first bad mistake. Then when the obnoxious political shock jock referred to Cruz, a first-term United States senator and former presidential candidate, as a “giant a-hole” O’Rourke, who is being regarded by national Democrats as the second coming of Bobby Kennedy, agreed. Cruz must be pinching himself, wondering how he had stumbled into such good fortune.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
A story in College Fix relates how an MIT librarian who describes herself as a “’butch and queer’ cis woman and ‘feral librarian’” has an interesting proposal to make tech workplaces more welcoming to women. She suggests expunging them of posters that promote “geek culture” such as “Star Trek” and replacing them with more of what she considers gender friendly graphics depicting nature and so on. She also suggests not naming printers, domains, and other things after male figures from Greek mythology. Her name, by the way, is Chris #Bourg. No kidding.
Saturday, March 17, 2018
One has to have a lot of sympathy for Robert Lightfoot. When he agreed to be acting administrator of NASA, he thought he would hold that position for a few months until a permanent head of the space agency was nominated and confirmed. Such would have been the case for most changes of presidencies. However, the Trump presidency has not been an ordinary one where nominating government officials has been concerned.
A group of student rocketeers at a small community college near Los Angeles #California called #Citrus College have found themselves embroiled in a controversy as a result of a recent law passed by that state designed to punish other states for being less than enlightened about LBGTQ rights. The group, called the Citrus College Rocket Owls, has been invited, along with 60 other student groups, to participate in a rocketry competition at NASA [VIDEO]’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. However, they have been prohibited from going because of the state law.
Friday, March 16, 2018
Leaving aside the understandable shock and horror that the Florida school shooting caused, one nevertheless would have to have a heart of stone not to roll one’s eyes at the astroturfed school walkout to protest gun violence [VIDEO]. The demands for “gun control,” whatever that means does not have any real-world relation to what happened. The massacre was a failure of law enforcement, due to the numerous instances Nicholas Cruz could have been taken into custody before that fatal day. That is not to mention the cowardice of a particular sheriff’s deputy who otherwise might have truncated the carnage had he confronted Cruz instead of cowering outside the school.
Thursday, March 15, 2018
“The Death of Stalin,” the new film by Armando Iannucci, the creator of “Veep,” starts with the sudden demise of one of history’s greatest monsters. A lot of wheeling and dealing, backstabbing, and backbiting ensues, along with hilarity. Only someone who could sell a Hillary Clinton-type character as the center of an HBO comedy could create a satire that takes down the Soviet Union at the height of its ferocity and terror. No wonder the modern Russian leader. Vladimir Putin, hates the movie.
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
#Stephen Hawking is known to the public for two things. He authored a book in 1998 called “A Brief History of Time” that was a runaway, international bestseller and propelled him into the status of a scientist celebrity. He also suffered from an autoimmune disease from his early 20s that put him in a wheelchair and robbed him of his voice. Most people know his computer-generated voice that he controlled with eye blinks.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Hillary Clinton, former first lady, former senator, former secretary of state, and twice failed presidential candidate, ventured to India, of all places, and poured out her hatred of middle America in such a way that has rocked the political world. Still bitter at her election loss at the hands of Donald Trump, Clinton has decided that many Americans who voted against her were just not worthy.
Monday, March 12, 2018
#Arnold Schwarzenegger, the movie actor and former #Governor Of California, ventured to the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas and said a number of odd things. First, he accused the oil companies of committing “first-degree murder.” Then, he celebrated the #MeToo movement that is sweeping the entertainment industry against sexual misconduct. Finally, Schwarzenegger took some shots at #Donald Trump, heavily implying that the president is a Russian puppet.
Sunday, March 11, 2018
“Westworld,” the HBO series based very loosely on the 1970s movie about the ultimate theme park, depicts humanity as an evil, depraved species that is likely to get what it deserves when the robots finally rebel. So a panel discussion on the TV show was an odd event to trot out #SpaceX’s #Elon Musk to offer a piece of optimism, complete with a video of the recent launch of the Falcon Heavy that sent a car with a mannequin at the wheel into interplanetary space, according to Ars Technica.
Saturday, March 10, 2018
Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is to try the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different outcome. Talleyrand, the early 19th Century French diplomat, might have added that those who do so have learned nothing and have forgotten nothing. So the #democrats are behaving similarly with developing issues in ways they think will sweep them back to power in 2018 and especially 2020. The Democrats promise to raise taxes and some are proposing to disband #ICE, the federal agency charged with hunting down illegal aliens and deporting them to their countries of origin.
Friday, March 09, 2018
The announcement that President Donald Trump is going to have a #Summit Meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was met with considerable shock and awe, according to the Washington Examiner. The subject of the talks will apparently be the denuclearization of #North Korea in exchange for some guarantee for the security of the regime. The meeting was apparently brokered by the government of South Korea.
Thursday, March 08, 2018
Sen. #Ted Cruz, R-#Texas is one of the happiest men in the great state of Texas. The meme in the mainstream media leading up to the Texas Primary was that a blue wave was building that would sweep the dominant Republicans out of office. Cruz was said to be threatened by Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, a young liberal congressman with a superficial resemblance to Bobby Kennedy. The actual results of the primary revealed the “blue wave” to be a blue drip.
Wednesday, March 07, 2018
The sharp-eyed Keith Cowing, the purveyor of one of the more entertaining sites on the Internet, NASA Watch, has noticed that Sen. #Bill Nelson, D-Florida has cosponsored a bill called the U.S.-Israel Space Cooperation Act, along with Sen Gary Peters, D-MI, Sen Ted Cruz. R-Texas, and Sen Cory Booker, R-Colorado. In Cowing’s view, this is significant because the House version of this bill is co-sponsored by Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Oklahoma. Nelson has led a campaign to deny Bridenstine a confirmation for the post of NASA Administrator.
Tuesday, March 06, 2018
According to the aerospace newspaper Space News, Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, gave a talk at a Space Transportation luncheon. He suggested that not only are the #international space station partners are interested in joining the return to the moon program, but also a number of emerging space countries. He cautioned that the #United States needs to develop a plan for going back to the moon and to stick to it, or else those countries will partner with China instead.
Monday, March 05, 2018
Twitter, as all the world knows, is a place where people throw rhetorical punches on controversies ranging from traumatized children being used by unscrupulous adults to abolish the 2nd Amendment to whether or not the president of the United States is evil, crazy, stupid or all three. However, Munchies, a culinary publication of Vice Magazine, blew up #social media with a tweet that linked to an article that stated: “Why is Brooklyn #barbecue taking over the world?”
Sunday, March 04, 2018
Recently, I had a chance to see “#The Space Between Us,” the story of two star-crossed lovers, a boy who was born and raised on a Mars colony [VIDEO], and a girl from Earth caught in the foster care system. The story was somewhat mediocre and nowhere near the quality of “The Martian.” Gary Oldman, who is a much better actor than his performance in this movie suggests, seems to have phoned it in.
Saturday, March 03, 2018
Russian tyrant #Vladimir Putin recently boasted about a couple of new nuclear weapons delivery systems he claims his country possesses. One is a hypersonic cruise missile that can evade any defense system and strike any target on Earth. The other is a long-range nuclear-tipped torpedo. The first weapon system, according to Western military analysts, is a work still in progress. The other is already operational and is a threat to the United States Navy.
Friday, March 02, 2018
Bloomberg has an update about one of the most astonishing and disgraceful standoffs to have occurred in recent political history. Senate Democrats, with the help of two Republicans, have succeeded, thus far, in blocking the confirmation of Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Oklahoma to be the next administrator of NASA. Since President Trump is not disposed to withdraw Bridenstine’s nomination, both he and the space agency he has been nominated to head are caught in a grotesque limbo. In effect, Scott Pace, the executive director of the National Space Council, along with the acting administrator Robert Lightfoot, is running NASA, an imperfect situation at best.
Thursday, March 01, 2018
Update: Join the discussion at Instapundit.
The construction of the SpaceX launch facility at Boca Chica, near Brownsville, Texas, is not yet complete. However, according to a piece in Teslarati, the company’s CEO Elon Musk, has plans for #South Texas that go beyond just launching rockets to the moon and Mars. He is contemplating manufacturing the heavy lift launch vehicle BFR [VIDEO], decorously known as the Big #Falcon Rocket, near the spaceport, greatly simplifying transportation issues. The idea has profound implications for the economies of south Texas and of California, where the Falcon 9 is currently being produced.