Yep, that stinking piece of garbage known as Trump is once again asking his war ciminal buddy, Putin, to help him smear his political opponent. What is even more sickening is that recnet polling show that more Americans would now vote for Trump for president than for Biden.
Big NATO meeting - sound and fury, signifying nothing. If Russia uses chemical weapons in Ukraine, what will NATO do then? Cringe behind their borders, hoping Putin won't come for them next. Did they learn nothing from WW2? NATO could crush Putin's forces, the US alone could crush Putin's forces. We won't. I am ashamed of us.
Watching a bit of the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. I think she is a great choice and will make a great judge. Of course, she will be confirmed. Sadly, the liberals will still be in the minority on the Court.
But what is worth mentioning is the way the Republicans at the hearings have embarrassed themselves. Some of them had voted for her earler for appeals court judgeship, but now they feel they must caper for their brain-dead base of voters and their brain-dead master, Trump ... elections are coming up soon, after all.
a 2021 American science fiction action film produced, co-written, and directed by Lana Wachowski. It is the sequel to The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and the fourth installment in The Matrix film franchise. Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Lambert Wilson reprise their roles ...
This film is set 60 years after events of the 2003 third Matrix movie in which Neo (Reeves) and Trinity (Moss) died. I have seen the first movie many times and liked it a lot. I only saw the second movie once and didn't really like it. And I never saw the third movie. Some of the stuff in the new movie was confusing, but reading the Wikipedia page helped fill in the things I'd missed.
In this film, Neo/Tom Anderson has been resurrected and is living in the simulated world of the Matrix with no memory of his real past. Instead, he thinks he's a video game writer who years before had created the most popular game ever: The Matrix. While he struggles with his mental health and longs for his lost love, some of the free people not living in the Matrix try to free him and Trinity from the simulation.
The reviews of the movie are all over the place. Here's a bit of the review in The L.A. Times that might help you decide if you want to see the film ...
[...] Released Dec. 22 in the age of Omicron, in theaters and streaming on HBO Max, “The Matrix Resurrections” is an enticing work of nostalgia for those whose minds exploded watching Keanu Reeves’ hacker hero fall down the rabbit hole only to wake up in a grimy machine dystopia as Neo, the fated cyberpunk savior of humanity, in the original “The Matrix.” Next came 2003’s well-received “The Matrix Reloaded” (aka the one with the rave scene) and 2003’s not-so-well-received “The Matrix Revolutions” (the one with no rave scene — you do the math), pushing the franchise’s worldwide grosses over $1.6 billion.
[...]
But this “Matrix” is not like the old “Matrix,” and that’s very much by design. At once sequel, reboot, and self-aware critique of the previous films and their legacy, “Resurrections” is sparking starkly divided reactions and cinephile debate. Will you love the Nü “Matrix?” Times reporters Tracy Brown and Jen Yamato are here to help ...
I wish the rest of the West would listen to Latvia about a no-fly zone for Ukraine, becaue the news of the war is getting ever more depressing. Russia and Ukraine have reached a kind of stalemete in which neither side can claim victory. usually that opens the door to compromise, but I don't think that will ocur. Instead, Russia will destroy what it can't win, turning Ukraine into a devistated, bombed out wasteland full of corpses. The Ukrainians won't give up - they will fight to the end, and the end will last a very long time - but they won't be able to keep the apocalypse from happening.
And we wil watch, because while we are ok with helping Ukraine lose the war more slowly, we draw the line at helping them win it. We're so scared of WW3, we will insure it will indeed come to pass once Putin sees what temporizers we are. People will look back at this and marvel at the gutless, shortsighted choices the West is now making.
Toight Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, explained that while a NATO no-fly zone may not be doable, we can and should help Ukraine have its own no-fly zone. ...
He ends on a pretty scary note ...
The Russian army has become an army of terrorists. They are trying to terrorize these populations, and particularly ominous ... are the reports we are going to see Chechens and Syrians who are going to be free booters - looters, rapists - coming into the middle of this conflict. I fear that is Putin's next card to terrorize the population.
As readers know, I have been a fan of Arnold since college. I saw today that he has released a message to the Russian people about the war in Ukraine, about the true horrors of the war and about the lies they are being told by Putin (The Atlantic: I Have a Message for My Russian Friends) ...
The latest tv show I've been renting is Crossing Lines ...
a German-French-Italian-American action crime thriller television series .... Former New York Police Department officer Carl Hickman's life has fallen apart after he was injured on the job; he has become addicted to morphine and works as a garbage collector at a carnival in the Netherlands. He is recruited to join the International Criminal Court's special crime unit (a fictional unit). Based in The Hague, it investigates a variety of crimes that cross international boundaries.
I started watching the series, which had 3 seasons from 2013 to 2015, because I like the actor who plays the main character, William Fichtner ...
Sadly, I can only find the first season to rent here in the US. But anyway, it's pretty interesting, with lots of foreign locations, so worth a try.
Today on MTP Daily, they had an interview with the youngest member of the Ukrainian Parliment, Sviatoslav Yurash ...
And every few days on Deadline White House we hear from a former adviser to President Zelensky, Igor Novikov, who is in Kyiv (The New Yorker: Igor Novikov on Standing His Ground in Ukraine).
He mentioned a sad reality of life there. Many of the residents who have fled the country have had to leave their pets behind, and now cats and dogs roam the city, starving :(
It looks like President Zelenskyy will be addressing Congress later this week. I hope he and Congress can convince Biden to go all in to help Ukraine, including giving them aircraft. Russia is appealing to China to help them in the war. We're already on the cusp of WW3 ... it's time to start winning it.
I'm checking to see if hell has frozen over: I actually agree with Republican Mitt Romney about something ...
Ever since I was a teen during the Vietnam war, I have been a peacenik, pretty much a pacifist. But I guess I'm not that anymore. Not sure why exactly that's changed.
Update 3/10/22: To save face, the US government is saying that we can't help Ukraine with a no-fly zone because we don't want to risk the lives of US pilots or have them fighting Russian pilots in Ukraine. But this is so disingenuous. Ukraine has not asked for US pilots, they have asked for the planes alone which they themselves would fly. We won't give them the planes because we don't have the integrity to do what's necessary to help save Ukraine. We would rather they just give up. God help us if we ever need help.
As Russia sends missles raining down on civilian targets in Ukraine, the Ukrainians have asked for planes so they can defend their own airspace, given we are too frightened to provide them with a no-fly zone: our planes might have to shoot down Russia's planes and then Putin would be really mad at us.
So we asked NATO allies like Poland to give the Ukrainians their old Russian planes to fly themselves. But Poland didn't want to directly give the planes to Ukraine: the Russians might realize that Poland gave Ukraine the planes and then Putin would be really mad at them.
So then Poland said to us - we'll give you the planes, and you can give them to Ukraine. But we didn't want to do that: the Russians might realize that we gave Polish planes to Ukraine and then Putin would be really mad at us.
Now the US is saying that Ukraine doesn't really need the planes after all.
Holy sh*t, give Ukraine the effing plabes while there are still some Ukrainians left alive to save.
Watching the news about Ukraine is so depressing. Russia committing war crimes against civilians, taking over nuclear power plants, threatening thermonuclear war on the west. And what are we doing? We're standing behind Ukraine, way way behind them, taking yauchts away from oligarcs.
This is like a domestic violence situation writ large. A man terrorizes and brutalizes his wife and children. They spend their days trying to keep him calm, finding him emotional off-ramps so he won't feel emasculated and beat them all to death. They can't go for help because he's told them that would mean their deaths, and maybe the deaths of those who try to intercede. So they live as slaves, their one main hope being that they might somehow survive long enough to outlive the monster.
We shouldn't let this be the fate of the Ukrainians, all because we are too scared to stand up to a bully.
I think we (the US) should use our military to help the Ukrainians. And I'm not alone in that belief. We would beat Putin in a conventional war, but would he then use his nukes? I don't know. But I feek we should be trying harder to find a way to do this. People are dying and it's only going to get worse.
