If they didn’t blend as well as they did, this near-century relationship between popcorn and the movies would not have endured. It is obviously not just a fad. The main point of this fascinating video is that movies only became part of our way of life in the way they did because of the popcorn concessions in each cinema. Since I never see a film without a box of popcorn and a Diet Coke, I am the last person alive to think this is untrue. But it would be amazing if it is true.
Is this the very letter of what it means to be living in a bubble, Labour law revolt across France humiliates President Hollande.
A day of chaos left Mr Hollande under pressure to perform another humiliating U-turn, after his climb-down over new anti-terrorism laws on Wednesday.
So what has got him into such hot water after he found it impossible to introduce new laws restricting the rights of terrorists?
The labour legislation, promoted by Prime Minister Manuel Valls, was touted by spin doctors as a brave bid to improve the stuttering economy by lengthening France’s notoriously short working week, while making it easier for companies to lay off staff.
The economy is without doubt stuttering, and the 35-hour week has been a major handicap since it was introduced in the 1980s. It has also been impossible for a firm to reduce employee numbers whether or not those employees were actually needed by the business. So you don’t really have to look all that far to see what the economic problems are. But this is the bit I liked the best:
The under-25s are now prominent in a protest movement whipped up by student unions claiming that the workers of the future will suffer conditions worthy of Anglo-Saxon countries.
Well given how things are going, they won’t have to worry about economic conditions being like ours in a few years, or about other conditions as well.
The fantastic amount of anti-Trump material pouring out across the media and throughout the whole of the left means they perfectly well understand the threat Trump poses to them. If they thought he was not a the most serious threat to the Democrats among the Republicans, they would stay silent and let nature take its course. They are not silent and are doing all they can to stop him. At the beginning they thought of him as the easiest one to beat and brought him forward out of the pack. Now they have seen the error of their ways and are pushing as hard as they can in the other direction.
I have just gone through Lucianne and the headlines there. It was near on a quarter of the stories were anti-Trump from every media source you could name. They mean it – the writerly class, they understand that he needs to be stopped, and of course this writerly class consist of almost as many Republicans as Democrats.
I don’t know if it is permissible for anyone to declare someone else’s view the most sensible because it happens to be the same as theirs, but this piece on Trump in The Weekend Oz by John O’Sullivan is the best I have seen: US election 2016: Donald Trump continues to defy the rules of politics-as-usual. As I see it, Trump is essentially a New Yorker with many of the attitudes and sensibilities of someone from New York. But he is also in his late sixties and has a residual set of values based on the way things were half a century ago. A liberal in the 1960s is someone whose values were laid down around the time JFK was president, which means he has approximately the same values that Ronald Reagan would have twenty years later. Over the span of those years, what was mainstream Democrat became mainstream Republican. Today, mainstream Democrat is Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama, while Hillary is held back by a residual, although minimal, grasp of the values of the early sixties. But here the issue is Trump who in many ways sees the world much the same way as I do, and I think in much the same way as O’Sullivan.
It is this that causes Trump to make those peculiar kinds of mistakes when he tries to walk away from the things he believes in and try to imitate what he thinks a Republican believes. My advice to him is just to do the Kennedy thing and not try to pander to the religious right. They will never support him so long as Cruz is running, and in any case, it is those same fools who decided not to vote for Romney in 2012. The bigger game is in pulling Democrats across to the Republican side, not trying to shore up his near-certain constituency should he become the nominee. This, I think, is the same point O’Sullivan has tried to make.
Will Trump’s suggestion this week that women who have had abortions should face legal penalties finally trip him up?
This was a serious mistake on two levels. To pro-choice voters it looked like a barbaric threat to a constitutional right millions of American women have personally exercised. Echoed by the media, also mainly pro-choice, it will confirm the caricature of him as brutalist right-winger. To conservative voters and anti-abortion organisations, however, it revealed the very thin and outdated understanding that Trump has of the conservatism he now espouses. The anti-abortion movement long ago abandoned any thought of penalising women for having the procedure. Today they typically characterise such women as victims and direct almost all their criticisms at “abortion mills” that murder women through negligence as well as babies intentionally, or at organisations such as Planned Parenthood that provide abortion almost as a late stage method of birth control.
Or then this:
On other issues as well, such as killing the families of terrorists, Trump expresses what he supposes to be hardline conservative opinions; but because he is late to the faith (and perhaps not very devout), he constantly gets it wrong, and expresses instead what liberals (like himself until recently) think conservatives believe in their dark hearts.
Reporting that concentrated on this misunderstanding might weaken Trump with at least a segment of the Right. But most mainstream journalists have a view of conservatism only slightly less skewed than Trump’s.
What Trump doesn’t get is that there are plenty of us on the right that, whatever our religious beliefs, hold other values as more important, with the preservation of our way of life high on that list. We are not worried that he won’t get the exact nuance right about abortion nor about the way that terrorists should be dealt with through constitutional procedures. We don’t need him to take the hardest most-Rambo line he can think of. For myself, I am content to let him enter the Oval Office and in the company of the cabinet he chooses, work through what needs to be done. It is his instincts that I am looking for him to guide him as these issues arrive on his desk. Again I think O’Sullivan is exactly right about this.
Trump voters discovered their hero in the early debates not because he was an alpha male or a star of reality television — though these things helped — but because he expressed their own feelings and opinions on matters that both major parties sedulously avoided. . . .
Trump discovered his voters and their issues almost as much as his voters discovered Trump. Once he had done that, however, reporters and sociologists noticed the existence of entire classes of voters whose interests government had largely ignored and whose angry discontents were fuelling an insurgent campaign that broke half the rules of polite electioneering. So angry were these voters, indeed, that they simply tuned out criticisms of Trump, however seemingly justified, as emerging from a failing, inactive, and remote establishment that despised them and therefore him.
And then these same non-insightful journalists and political insiders also discovered something else.
As the primaries wore on, Trump proved to be winning votes at all levels of wealth and education, even if disproportionately at the lower end. And Tea Partiers were more concerned with fiscal solvency, expenditure control and constitutional limits on what government can do, whereas Trump supporters were enthusiasts for activist government that would get things done at home and abroad.
It therefore comes down to what Trump can and cannot do if elected. But the one thing he most certainly could do by winning the election is deprive Hillary of the office herself, with this conclusion:
Trump could never inflict the same amount of damage on the Republican vision of America as Clinton. She would enjoy the support of a major party, the media, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, and all the great social and cultural institutions of America. She would be virtually unimpeachable as the first woman president.
This really is the reality since it is all of the above who will do all they can to elect her, and without Trump her success is assured, at the 95% level. None of the other 17 Republicans who have gone for the nomination has ever had the slightest chance of winning. The immense amount of money that is coming to Cruz and Kasich from among the largest Democrat donors is a sure sign they know who Hillary’s most formidable opponent is. O’Sullivan ends with this:
Trump would have none of [Hillary’s] advantages as president — not even the support of congressional Republicans. He would be unable to pass controversial parts of his program. His administration would become a byword for gridlock.
The Road Runner would run out of steam and finish up wrapped entirely in red tape — not a cartoon threat but a cautionary tale.
I would expect more, but first we have to see Trump win. Although O’Sullivan doesn’t say so in words, he seems to have been saying it very clearly between the lines of his article, the best analysis of the election I have so far seen anywhere.
Dated 31 March 2016
First read this: Europe’s Muslims hate the West and then read this: An Up-close Look at the Liberal-Muslim Alliance.
We no longer know history, not our own and certainly no one else’s. Our ignorance and the malice of our elites will do us in, and there is little chance of recovery in Europe from here. So far as Europe goes, it is a lost continent, like the Titanic at the moment it hit the iceberg. It hadn’t sunk yet but its fate was from then on inevitable.
John Hinderaker, one of the four at Powerline, has just been visiting Australia and mostly Melbourne. He calls his post Back from the Outback which is not technically correct if you are visiting mostly Melbourne and a little of Sydney, but never mind: his final words of the post make up for everything:
Don’t be surprised if I refer to Australia from time to time in the future. It requires a rather epic journey to get there, but the trip is well worth it.
And not just a place to visit either since, for now at least, it is officially the most liveable city in the world as well.
Such tedious, tiresome drivel from The Oz, this time from Janet Albrechtson. She has never been much of an analyst, but at least she used to be on the same side on most things and so I would more often than not get through a column she wrote. But now that she has taken the Murdoch shilling and enlisted in one of the anti-Abbott regiments, I only read as far as I need to so as to work out the lay of the land, and then go to the comments, most of which see things the same way as me. I would have fallen into line more or less immediately after the transition if there had actually been a line. But he is not called Lord Waffle for nothing. I am in sympathy with the comments below, not quite in sequence but these are ten out of the first twelve that came up.
I) I bet Albrechtson, Devine, Savva, PVO, Kroger, Reith, and so have all been Wined and Dined by Malcom. Ross Cameron was and he was so impressed Malcom gave him a Book when he left for home.
II) Janet is right about Abbott. But what policies are we getting from Malcolm? Sweet nothing. And then today, we hear of his masterstroke: the states will add to our taxation burdens! Hallelujah! Problems solved. More government bureaucracy, more government controls, more taxes to pay for more bureaucrats. And not one word about reducing spending, which Scott Morrison told us is Australia’s major problem. First, Malcolm floats the lead balloons of increased GST, then increased capital gains tax, then the shafting of negative gearing, then theft of our superannuation…and having failed with all of those, now we get state taxes! Malcolm doesn’t have a clue what to do, so he shoves the problem onto the states! He is blundering from one mess to another. It’s time for the Liberals to jettison their Labor-ite PM and get someone who can deliver on their conservative promises and principles.
III) So there’s not enough money. But we won’t cut spending. We’ll just rearrange the deck chairs. And if you don’t look carefully you won’t realise that a swifty’s been pulled and we’re all going down.
Good one Mal.
IV) Much as I detest Malcolm Turnbull, making the States more autonomous is a good idea. But it might take a bit more preparation than todays anouncement.
V) Finally Malcolm has united Australia. From the left and from the conservative side there’s at last consensus about the PM. His latest Tax plan is a dud. Universally hated. Good one Malcolm. Losing the next election is getting closer. Bring out the Utes. Buy up nappies. Get Malcolm a hanky.
VI) Does free speech still exist in Australia?
Is Australia still a democracy?
Tony is an elected member of parliament and represents his constituents he, I and everyone else can speak on whatever suits them!
Why are you going down this path Janet, has your partner Michael Kroger enlisted you in the peril exercise of gagging free speech in this country, why does this not extend to Howard, Reith, Costello et al!
For years Turnbull and his shadow Lucy Macbeth have undermined Abbott and now you appear to have joined their social engineering experiment along with the rest of our pathetic and lazy journalists/commentators in this country.
VII) The comments below reflect conservatives’ frustration at having the party usurped by a weak wet waffler. Who wants to reward bad behaviour? Not I. Minority parties are looking good.
VIII) “wants it known that just because we don’t know his economic plan, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one” Exactly, just because Tony didn’t know to watch his back didn’t mean Turnbull wasn’t there all ready to ……… ? He did have a devious plan after all, Tony found out too late.
IX) Somehow this Prime Minister reminds me of Julia Gillard: not up to the job. Both of them have high personal ambition but no ability to match it.
X) Perhaps tomorrow Janet can explain this latest fiasco announced today by Malcolm Turnbull which in one stroke has lost the election for the Coalition.
Poor Scott Morrison.
The Libs are evens to lose, and what a shipwreck that would be. They may be setting up a line of excuses, but having created the instability in the first place, no one around here will blame anyone but Malcolm himself.
My thoughts on the photo story of Ivanka Trump, her husband and children in a normal mother, father, kids relationship, on the day she came home with their third child. It is just like how it used to be. And then there is the picture of Donald Trump with his grandchildren having an Easter lunch. Many people can any longer relate to such a world.
Shame it doesn’t matter to greenies the world over who wish to luxuriate in their ignorance. So for the rest of us: Another Climate Alarmist Admits Real Motive Behind Warming Scare. What she said, and please note these are quotes:
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015. . . .
“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.
And I might note that it is not incidental that these cretins make a pile of money running these international agencies as well. The strategy could not be more clear:
The plan is to allow Third World countries to emit as much carbon dioxide as they wish — because, as Edenhofer said, “in order to get rich one has to burn coal, oil or gas” — while at the same time restricting emissions in advanced nations. This will, of course, choke economic growth in developed nations, but they deserve that fate as they “have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community,” he said. The fanaticism runs so deep that one professor has even suggested that we need to plunge ourselves into a depression to fight global warming.
To people for whom this policy makes sense, nothing you could say would dissuade them. More to the point is why we let them get away with it. They are the very essence of ignorance and evil.
Law of Markets 