Make today a positive day. Don’t bother reading the news, or browsing social media. Enjoy Christmas for what it is: a time to spend with family and friends. All that bad news and fighting social media posts will be there tomorrow for you to scroll through and waste your time on.
Plenty of people will want you to spend your holiday in fear. Fear for the future, and whether you’ll leave a better place for future generations. Or fear about the present, and between inflation and the latest Wu-Flu variant, there is plenty to stoke fear over. Or even fear of the past, judging past actions out of context in order to shame us about crimes we never committed ourselves.
Don’t give in to that fear. Celebrate Our Lord’s birth today. Call your friends and wish them a Merry Christmas. Gather with family and friends. Cook up a tasty feast. Push off any fears until tomorrow…they will still be there, like fears always tend to be. Positive feelings are the first to leave under the fire of those that think they know better. Resist those urges today and enjoy the holiday.
While these views don’t represent the views of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency (obviously, since most agencies want you to cower in fear today or submit to a battery of tests to just enjoy it with friends), it does represent my views and hopes for you today. Please accept my wishes of Merry Christmas to you and your family today.
While acknowledging adaptation of motion pictures from one culture to another is commonplace, Hinds, who begins one sentence with, “As a Black woman, cultural appropriation is behavior I’m all too familiar with,” unloads on the wave of Hollywood remaking South Korean movies. And she spews this awful offal, “Instead, I’m referring specifically to how Hollywood seems to be making a concerted effort to focus on South Korean – as well Japanese – content, for the sole purpose of remaking the stories to appeal to American audiences, i.e. white audience.”
But as Mark Levin so often responds on his radio show to a recording of some liberal, “Oh, shut up you idiot!”
Hinds calls the Asia-to-Hollywood artistic transfer “whitewashing.”
There are plans in Hollywood to remake the Korean thriller Parasite, a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed and one that I felt was deserving of its Best Picture Oscar. In her Salon piece Hinds brings up other movies from South Korea that were remade by Hollywood, including Oldboy, another fabulous film. The flat American version (or so I’ve heard, I haven’t seen it) was directed by Spike Lee. Il Mare was redone as The Lake House, which starred Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Moving beyond South Korea, Hinds notes that Martin Scorsese’s The Departed was inspired by a Hong Kong flick, Internal Affairs.
No society exists in a vacuum, not even North Korea, which is it should be. Culture crosses borders, as does science as well as political notions. The modern version of democracy comes from the European Enlightenment. The greatest form of government is utilized not just in the United States, but also in South Korea and Japan.
Another South Korean film I enjoyed is The Good, the Bad, the Weird, which as you probably guessed is a remake of Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And weird it is–instead of an American Civil War setting, this Western takes place in Japanese-occupied Manchuria in 1939. Hinds ignores this specific cultural transfer in her Salon piece. The soundtrack of The Good, The Bad, The Weird includes an instrumental rendition of the Animals’ 1965 hit “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” The original was recorded by Nina Simone, an African-American woman.
What about Japan, which Hinds mentioned earlier. The stellar collective of writers here at Da Tech Guy is known as Da Magnificent Seven, a tip of the hat to the 1960 Western that starred Yul Brynner and many others. That film is an acknowledged remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai. The first movie of Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy,” A Fistful of Dollars, is an unacknowledged remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.
The National Defense Authorization Act for FY22 just passed this week. While there are some nice changes, like a 2.7% pay increase (sadly offset by rampant inflation) and some additional baby leave, there is a lot that is left to be desired.
Now, given looming war with China and Russia, our gaps in hypersonic technology, space, bioweapons, and cyber, and our poorly maintained “battle” fleet that seems to barely limp along from extended deployment to extended deployment, you would think anyone writing the executive summary of this bill would want to reassure the public that its going to make us stronger and ready for war with the hopes of deterring it to make peace.
And well, you’d be wrong. Here’s the highlighted portion of page one of the summary:
The FY22 NDAA builds on previous attempts to close the pay gap by authorizing support for a 2.7 percent pay increase for our service men and women in uniform, makes historic and sweeping changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice to combat sexual assault in the military, authorizes record funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, contains measures to ensure our military is diverse and inclusive, and makes key investments to address the threat of climate change and bolster energy resiliency across the Department of Defense, and takes full advantage of our diverse talent pool to meet the complex national security challenges of today and tomorrow.
What the heck is this? HBCUs? Diversity? Climate Change? Seriously?
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have got to be laughing at this.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all about getting research money to HBCUs to support weapons and tactics development. Why not? It would be awesome to see an HBCU open a cyber center, or contribute to space warfare, or some other highly technical area. That would have long reaching benefits, encouraging young black kids to aspire to be great engineers and scientists. There is a lot to love with ideas like that, and its a win-win for the Department of Defense.
But how is that the highlight? Defense is about combating our enemies and helping our policy makers negotiate peace from the best possible position. Think about World War 2. Could we have negotiated a lasting peace with Hitler or the Japanese Emperor without being in a position of strength? I’d argue that half of the reason Hitler rose to power in the first place was that he saw weakness and pushed against it. The same could be said for Putin today as he gazes at Ukraine, challenging the US and its NATO allies to do something.
Nothing in those opening paragraphs radiate strength. As you dig through the document, the increases in equipment are buried, but they are paltry. We’re getting 13 additional ships, if they can be built on time. We really need another actual shipyard, yet that piece of vital infrastructure isn’t in the bill, since it would compete with companies that already have a lock on shipbuilding (and the Congress-people on their payroll to prove it). If you need proof of how bad it is, just check our CDR Salamander’s blog.
But most disingenuous is that military personnel are going down in numbers. Yup. Hidden away in the actual text is a decrease in manpower:
With regard to military end strength, the number of Army soldiers would drop by 900 (to 485,000) compared to this year’s levels and the Marine Corps would cut its troop numbers by 2,700 (to 178,500). That’s in line with White House end strength plans. The Navy’s end strength total would drop by about 900 (to 346,920), about 700 more sailors than the White House requested. The Air Force would see a decrease of about 4,200 personnel (to 329,220), about 1,000 more airmen than the administration requested.
If we’re already not doing a good enough job keeping up with China, how on earth will we do that with less people, specifically less people in the Navy and Air Force, the services that will take the brunt of any Pacific conflict?
This year’s NDAA is a joke. It’s laser locked on social justice issues while missing all the important items needed for any future conflict. Sadly, it’ll likely take a war where we lose thousands of service members before Congress will shelve the pet programs and get serious about winning.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you liked this article, please consider supporting the author by buying his book on Amazon, also available as an audiobook on Audible.
If you give a press conference and the result looks like a Saturday Night Live sketch, a pre-woke version of the show that is, then you have a big problem.
So it was last week with Chicago’s inept leftist mayor, Lori Lightfoot, when she blamed retail crime victims for the rise of flash mob thieves plaguing Chicago’s Magnificent Mile shopping area.
“We still have retailers that won’t institute plans like having security officers in their stores, making sure that they’ve got cameras that are actually operational, locking up their merchandise at night, chaining high-end bags,” the first-term Democrat said. “These purses can be something that is attracting a lot of organized retail theft units.”
So it’s the victims’ fault.
Just like it was in this SNL skit from 1991, featuring Chicago native Joe Mantegna, where he blames New York City crime victims for their problems.
“Yeah, I was flying to Florida, and we had a stopover in New York,” a caller to a talk radio show told Mantegna. “Well, while we were sitting on the ground a group of ‘wilding’ teenagers boarded the plane and beat with me on the head with a pipe.”
“And which airport was this,” Mantegna asked,
“LaGuardia,” was the reply.
“Well, there you go,” Mantegna scolded the caller.
Chicago Police brass were said to have a plan in place to combat smash-and-grab thieves and avoid scenes such as what happened when a Burberry’s on North Michigan Avenue was emptied of purses–each handbag was worth more than a thousand dollars.
If there was a plan by the CPD, then it clearly didn’t work. Since Lightfoot’s delusional presser a North Face store on the Mag Mile was struck twice. But proving that the Burberry’s looting was just a tame opening act, yesterday a luxury car dealer just off of the Magnificent Mile was robbed of an estimated $2 million worth of high-end watches–which, are you paying attention Mayor Lightfoot?– were locked up inside a locked glass display case. Yep, $2 million.
The dealership is now seeing customers on an appointment basis only–its doors are locked during store hours. Welcome to the new Chicago.
On Friday night’s Flannery Fired Up show on Fox 32 Chicago, host Mike Flannery estimated that 20 percent of the storefronts on North Michigan Avenue are empty. Regular readers of my posts know that the Mag Mile was devastated by two rounds of looting–oops, I mean “mostly peaceful protests”–in 2020.
The luxury dealership, which sells Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis, is owned by Joe Perillo, who is rethinking operating in Chicago.
“It is wrong for someone to break into a place – if they get caught, they get let out!” Perillo explained to ABC 7. “If they get arrested, they get let go. So, how do you intend to ever solve that problem?” He added, “If they don’t do anything about this, they’re going to lose a lot of businesses. They lost Macy’s. They’re losing Neiman Marcus. They may lose this store.”
While Neiman Marcus still has a store on the North Michigan Avenue, the Gap and Disney have also left in the last year. And remember what Flannery said about Mag Mile vacancies.
It’s not just Lightfoot’s fault.
Kim Foxx is one of those woke so-called prosecutors whose campaign was funded by radical leftist George Soros. She’s received plenty of well-deserved scorn for her mishandling of the Jussie Smollett case. But the greater sin of the Cook County state’s attorney is her catch-and-release policy involving criminals accused of serious offenses. Even some alleged murderers are out of jail on electronic surveillance.
How ’bout if a non-woke SNL updated that skit with a Chicago twist?
“Hello, my store was emptied of merchandise by flash mob looters,” a caller to that SNL-radio show might say.
“What do you sell,” Lori Lightfoot would reply.
“Purses worth more than $1,000.”
Lightfoot’s retort would be, “Well, there you go.”
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