December 7, 2019

At the Saturday Night Café...

EDCAE910-C16D-4BDC-B15F-734FFBA96043_1_201_a

... you can talk about whatever you want.

And please consider using the Althouse Portal to Amazon.

The photo shows a western view, 3 minutes after the official sunrise time.

87 comments:

David Begley said...

A Saturday night victory for the Badgers.

Creighton crushed the Corn. Total beatdown. Game was never close. Yeah!

tim in vermont said...

Now that’s a nice one. Color harmonies are first rate.

I remember once reading a comment by a landscape photographer where he said his job was a professional waiter. He would wait and wait, hours or even days for the exact right light.

madAsHell said...

When did Emmanuel Goldstein morph into Mr. Clinton Killedepstein?

mockturtle said...

I do hope the Badgers win! I'll be rooting for them. Almost kickoff time...

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

@MadAsHell
that was a delishus prank!
******

DACA... or CACA??

More Than 100,000 DACA Applicants Have Been Arrested—Murder, Rape, DUI

https://www.judicialwatch.org/corruption-chronicles/more-than-100000-daca-applicants-have-been-arrested-murder-rape-dui/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=corruption_chronicles

Big Mike said...

@madAsHell, why do you think it was Mr Clinton?

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

@Big Mike

cuz that's how it went down, at least this time! Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/_8lCYJc3R5k

chickelit said...

I would have thought that was a sunset view, looking west over Picnic Point towards Middleton. Amazing that you got the sunlight to appear on the western horizon that early in the morning.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

how does that go again? "A Fool and his Monkey are soon parted"??

Banana Duct Taped To Wall By Maurizio Cattelan Sells For $120K At Art Basel

https://miami.cbslocal.com/2019/12/06/banana-duct-taped-to-wall-maurizio-cattelan-sells-for-120k-at-art-basel/

Michael K said...

LSU just won with Coach O who should have been the SC coach the last 5 years. On the sidelines with him were John Robinson and Marcus Allen, two famous SC guys. When they play Ohio State for the National Championship, I expect there will be more SC alums.

He wanted to be the coach but he was not "slick enough" for the donors who were bribing coaches to get their kids into SC.

Bay Area Guy said...

Nobody's gonna beat LSU this year. Nobody.

Bookmark this.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

Nobody's gonna beat LSU this year. Nobody.

Bookmark this.


Tell it to America's Politico!

mockturtle said...

Woo-hoo! Touchdown Badgers!

R C Belaire said...

"The photo shows a western view, 3 minutes after the official sunrise time."

If so, shouldn't that be "sunset time?"

Yancey Ward said...

"Tell it to America's Politico!"

Yeah, he predicts Warren would be beating LSU 79-0 resulting in an LSU forfeit with 10:46 left in the first quarter.

Ann Althouse said...

“ If so, shouldn't that be "sunset time?"”

No, it was 7:13 a.m.

Reflected sun.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Pensacola NAS shooting victim 'saved countless lives with his own'

RIP Joshua Watson

...was shot at least five times,
“Heavily wounded, he made his way out to flag down first responders and gave an accurate description of the shooter.He died serving his country.”

...and those who perished at Pearl Harbor

Narr said...

Superb image.

Narr
Now, wake me when football season is over . . . and the '20 election, just to be on the safe side.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

#Burisma Press Release says Hunter Biden was the "Chief Legal Officer" for the company. This means Biden is the MAIN corporate officer legally responsible for crimes Burisma committed worldwide. He wasn't just a board member.
per UkraineLiberty

Narayanan said...

https://www.lawfareblog.com/defining-theory-bribery-impeachment

mockturtle said...

Indeed, ICTA. I hadn't heard about him but he was a hero. And please, please, let's stop welcoming our enemies into our military installations. In fact, I would say: No Muslims. Period. The Saudis bear responsibility for this shooting as he was a member of their military. Ship them all back to SA and stop pretending that Saudis are our allies.

mockturtle said...

Another Wisconsin TD! :-)

Yancey Ward said...

Go Badgers!

Seeing Red said...

It’s about time:

Harvard 1Harvard University expects to pay $49.8 million in federal taxes as a result of the tax reform package passed in 2017.

Most of the tax bill, $37.7 million, comes from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s new tax on net investment income -- the so-called endowment tax. The other $12.1 million is from a net investment income tax on operational revenues, unrelated business taxable income and excise taxes on executive compensation....

Jon Ericson said...

I warn you, this is all about Exercising badgers, mushroom and snake. Rated PG

Ken B said...

A day that will, hmmm. Something.

AllenS said...

HOLY SHIT! Bucky is up by 2 touchdowns!

Kyzer SoSay said...

I just watched "Midway". Meant to see it earlier, and when I realized today was December 7th I figured a little WW2 nostalgia might be in order. I was extremely disappointed. For an action movie, I give it a B, maybe a B+. For a movie about one of the most significant events in world history, not to mention the most important naval battle in American history (my opinion, but a defensible one), it was barely a D-. Most of the ships looked cartoony, the air combat and divebombing scenes were awesome at first, but became too routine after the first four or five, and it was written like an overdue book report on the battle itself. I'm a history buff of sorts, and I found myself rolling my eyes every five minutes or so. Clearly the writers knew quite a bit about the battle and the events leading up to it, but rather than work in sly references and keep some things in the background, they decided to hit the audience over the head with it nonstop.

Character motivations were loose and ill-defined most of the time, and the lead actor has a grating voice and almost no other character traits aside from "tryhard badass". One of the most disappointing things about the movie is that it focused on events surrounding the carrier Enterprise (CV-6). In itself that isn't a bad thing - I consider the Big E to be the finest fighting ship ever put to sea - but the story itself was handled quite poorly and seemed incredibly rushed and glossed over. Done better, this movie could have been sold as a chronicle of the Enterprise during the dark early days of WW2, with the Battle of Midway as the stirring climax showing the American victory as prelude to the eventual surrender of Japan. Instead, they just cut out paragraphs from a high school American History textbook and inserted some badly written caricatures of real life heroes.

Honestly, a well-written successor to the '70s classic would bust the box office. The story of Midway is an amazing one, with many moving pieces, deceptions, and silent successes all leading up to a knock-down, drag-out aerial-oceanic slugfest. Hell, even a well-written and acted chronicle of the times and trials of the Big E herself would break records. If any ship deserves it, she does. But this was neither. "Midway" was ham-fisted and grimace-inducing from start to end, and if you haven't already seen it, don't waste your time until it's out on Redbox. Make your popcorn at home, and don't be surprised if you're rolling your eyes with metronomic regularity.

narciso said...

I was a fan of the original, even with the schlocky subplot with eddie albert jr and charlton heston

narciso said...

Well it is roland emmerich backed by chinese money.

America’s Politico said...

Hello All:

A few options:

Bloomberg gets the nomination and makes Amy Klobuchar his VP.

Warren gets the nomination and makes Pete Buttigieg her VP.

Biden gets the nomination and makes Kamala Harris (or Stacey Abrams) his VP. Biden cannot win without having an African-American woman as his VP due to his history on busing and Crime bill.

What do all think?

mockturtle said...

Narciso, I liked the original too but not as much as Tora! Tora! Tora! which I watch on DVD every December 7. Never fails to satisfy.

narciso said...

I couldnt get into that one, i guess its a n acquired taste.

FullMoon said...

Biden gets the nomination and makes Kamala Harris (or Stacey Abrams) his VP. Biden cannot win without having an African-American woman as his VP due to his history on busing and Crime bill.

What do all think?


Booker, after he comes out. Timing is key..

narciso said...


The plot thickens


https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/350720/?fbclid=IwAR048xhKu6cNwKZEnRWWUyF00lMgCw0HZg21aUBMnhCfGhiWbiyuu5-dWAk

Seeing Red said...

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Watching it now. The zeros are about to launch.

traditionalguy said...

Magnificent hit piece on Midway by Kyzer SoSay @ 8:56. For those who still want to see it, go right ahead. The movie is near perfect. Nothing he wrote about Midway is true. And his assertion to be The Judge of all things connected to WWII history is the strangest display that I have ever seen.

rhhardin said...

I saw some Midway trailers and the physics on the airplanes is awful. If they took any old flight simulator they'd get much better dynamics in the CGI. This is a throwback to the 50s and before in movie fake airplane technology.

rhhardin said...

Some Hollywood naval movies had ships towed in bathtubs. Battleships beset by capillary waves.

narciso said...

Ive seen in harms way, a more gritty film about the solomon islands campaign

rhhardin said...

I just watched half of The Day After (1983). The nuclear attack was good but then the survivors start having psychological dramas, which meant the last half was going to be 45 minutes of bad acting. In addition several of them are teenaged girls undergoing trauma, which gives extra bad acting.

Bay Area Guy said...

1. The 70s flick "Midway" (Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda) was/is good. A little dated, though.

2. The Buckeyes are pissed. Sorry Badgers, no chance.

BlackjohnX said...

@Seeing Red: That must be one of the reasons I get at least one email or snail mail a week from Harvard begging that I contribute to the college fund- Not gonna happen. The new college president - Bacow, the Harvard Magazine, and the Harvard Gazette are all on board and full steam ahead with Climate Change, Project 1619, and all of the other left agendas being pushed by our would be socialist/communist leaders/betters.

rhhardin said...

In the event of nuclear attack, go to a shelter by yourself, is my advice.

rhhardin said...

In Shetland season 3, the hero falls for a lady without any motivation and they start tearing each other's clothes off. This marks a writers' crisis in the backroom. I don't know how it comes out as that was only episode 3. I'd have to guess about the plot possibilities they see. The lady isn't good enough to be a permanent character, which counts against her. So probably it's recognized as a mistake and they separate; or possibly she gets shot, which I'd prefer.

rhhardin said...

Pandemic (2007) also got a bailout halfway through, when it went to schlock. Victims and survivors have psychological problems. Geez, stick to the plot.

rhhardin said...

I think I've seen all the good movies now.

chuck said...

>> I saw some Midway trailers and the physics on the airplanes is awful.<<

I saw the beginning of a Midway trailer and bailed when the airplanes showed up. The CGI was Spielbergian in its awfulness.

rhhardin said...

Mostly movie plots are written by the deep state. The same crap over and over.

Seeing Red said...

Shetland is great.

Big Mike said...

Well, I saw “Midway” just last week, and I have to say I disagree with Kyzer SoSay. The key incidents in the film really happened, mostly as depicted in the film. I also saw the Charleston Heston version back on 1976, and it was inferior in nearly every way.

rhhardin said...

In a Day (2006) was good; Stranger than Fiction (2006) also. A good year. Not the same old crap.

I could probably list about twenty more where you don't start looking at the progress bar to see how long it still has to go on.

FullMoon said...

Joe is working on his Hunter spin. Kinda slo, but story so far is it may have looked bad, but was not wrong.

Biden quickly replied, “No! There’s nothing he did — there’s nothing he did that was illegal! I’m not going to play the game to take the eye off the culprit. The culprit here is what may have looked bad, but wasn’t anything wrong is totally different than whether a president has held up $400 million in aid for the Ukrainian military.” Biden said.

Of course this is a complete lie. Ukraine received US military THREE WEEKS EARLY and Ukrainian president Zelensky did nothing to receive the aid.

Once Again… Biden Deflects to Trump Impeachment After Reporter Confronts Him About Son Hunter and Burisma During Iowa Bus Tour (VIDEO)



Old Grandpa Joe went on a bizarre tangent claiming Ukrainians were killed because of President Trump.

Seeing Red said...

End of an era: Last Pearl Harbor veteran to be interred at USS Arizona Memorial

rhhardin said...

The thing about miniseries is that they're just movies with an extraordinary need for plot forks. A regular movie is made with only a few of the choices.

In a Day, and Stranger than Fiction, and other good ones, avoid seeming like that by being centered around the ending rather than a particular episode choice.

rhhardin said...

The first impression of Hickam, anyway in the 60s and 70s, was that the buildings needed repair. I gather the bullet strikes were left there as a sort of memorial.

FullMoon said...

"Spiral" French cop series. Actually has Muslim bad guys, good cops who bend the rules. Violence, romance ,rare brief nudity, surprises.. Good story lines. Russian gangsters, petty politicians.

Flounders once in awhile with long cops-following-bad -guys in cars as fillers,
though not as bad as Shetland detectives driving back and forth along the coast in every episode.

Big Mike said...

Pretty sporting of Ohio State to spot the Badgers two touchdowns before deciding to play some football.

mockturtle said...

In the event of nuclear attack, go to a shelter by yourself, is my advice.

Sounds like good advice, rhhardin. I think I'd prefer to face nearly any kind of disaster by myself.

Michael K said...

For those who still want to see it, go right ahead. The movie is near perfect. Nothing he wrote about Midway is true.

It got all then facts in but there was a lot of unreal CGI. SBDs did not dogfight Zeros.

About what I expected. Dunkirk was a bit phonier.

I'm not about to see one of those cartoon movies.

Kyzer SoSay said...

Big Mike, I never said the incidents in the film didn't happen.

I said the story around them was told poorly. Mostly because it truly, truly was. It's a comic-book adaptation of a real life event with historical facts thrown in as haphazardly as possible.

As for TradGuy's take on it, all I can say is some people really enjoy schlock. And that's perfectly okay. I'm sure the revered Scots-Irish were just gangbusters in their admiration of schlock.

Serious Poles like myself, not so much.

William said...

The Longest Day was the first and remains the best of the WWII battle re-enactment movies. A lot of the actors in that movie had been there on D-Day and some had actually participated in the incidents of that battle that were shown on screen....Saving Pvt Ryan gets a lot of deserved praise, but D-Day is better remembered for the glory and not the gore. Gore belongs in anti-war movies,not in celebratory ones....In like manner, venereal warts should not be shown in romantic comedies.

David Duffy said...

Everything looks dead. There's no life, no birds, no rodents, no people. The colors are wonderful, but the photo looks dead. Perhaps winter is coming.

William said...

I just finished Max Hastings book about the early days of WWI, "Catastrophe". It's a revision of the revisionists. He makes the point that the poet's version of WWI has come down to as the official version. The poet's version--i.e. the story of the war as written by Sassoon, Graves, Hemingway--is not how many of the soldiers remembered that war. They were proud of their service and thought the war was worth the sacrifice. Still, their memories have not made it into our collective memory. The war is remembered as sordid, unnecessary and futile.....The Junkers were not Nazis but neither were they good guys. They did sufficient bad deeds to justify the war against them.

Big Mike said...

@Michael K., Dauntless pilots could, and did, defend themselves from Zeroes. Read the story of “Swede” Vejtasa, who shot down three while flying a Dauntless (they transferred him to fighters).

AllenS said...

POOP!

Ken B said...

Hardin
Not until you have seen all the Preston Sturges movies. Even Unfaithfully Yours.

Kyzer SoSay said...

William,

Respectfully disagree with your sentiments about gore. Gore - the real-life effects of a body being insulted by high velocity metal or the pressure wave of an explosion - is necessary in ANY kind of serious war movie. The D-Day landing scene in "Saving Private Ryan" is a force of nature. Even in a movie celebrating a victorious war, or battle, gore is a visual cue to the stakes. "If we lose, we'll all end up like this." "Did you see what they did to (name)? Let's get those bastards!" And personally, I feel all war movies should be anti-war movies - but maybe not in the way most think. I don't mean Left-wing, "Bush Lied Kids Died", "No Blood for Oil" kind of anti-war. I mean the "My God, there is no thing so terrible as a battle lost than a battle won" kind of way. A sort of "We didn't want to have to fight, but now that the battle is joined, there shall be terrible slaughter" kind of way.

(Spoiler alert. I mean, movie scene spoiler, not eventual outcome spoiler - hopefully we all know who won, and lost, at Midway Atoll.)

In the movie "Midway", towards the end with one last Japanese flattop afloat, our (grating) hero leads the last assault of the day's fighting to try for a clean sweep. Pulling out of his dive at the last moment and dropping his bomb right onto the deck (which, with the trajectory shown onscreen, would have probably caused his bomb to skip RIGHT OFF the flight deck and into the water before exploding - if it exploded at all), he intones "This is for Pearl." Naturally, we then see the bomb pierce the flight deck and explode, igniting the munitions in the hangar deck below and ripping the carrier to pieces. The line delivery seems incredibly off. He sounded more like Vin Diesel muttering a one-liner before peeling out at a stop light in a Fast/Furious movie. A more effective delivery would have been to have him shout it at the top of his fucking lungs as he plummeted out of the sky surrounded by exploding flack and whizzing tracers, or maybe as an exclamation of relief after seeing the results of his drop. Instead it's reduced to the equivalent of "Yippee Ki-Yay, Motherfucker" at the end of Die Hard. THAT line belonged. The line in Midway - not so much, at least not as it was filmed. I'd be interested to see if they did other takes of that line in particular - maybe they decided a vengeful shout was too much or something. But in the pixel-panic of explosions and bullet effects on display during his final dive, I think it would have fit right in.

Kyzer SoSay said...

@ Big Mike

"Defending" yourself from Zeroes with your tailgunner/navigator shooting them is one thing. "Dogfighting" with Zeroes in a slow, clunky dive bomber is another.

Note that they transferred Swede to fighters.

Because Dauntlesses don't dogfight Zeroes, and Swede was a dogfighter.

Although, to the movie's credit, there weren't REALLY any intentional dogfights between the bombers and the Zeroes. There were chance encounters where a Zero got itself in trouble and ended up in the sights of a bomber, but most of the air-to-air stuff was the rear-seaters frantically shooting at Zeros chasing them, unable to shake off the more nimble Mitsubishi products.

Ken B said...

William
That sounds like a good book. Myths and Legends of the First World War by Hayward is good. Be sure to watch They Shall Not Grow Old!

Churchy LaFemme: said...

I liked Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? by David Fromkin. His conclusion: Germany mostly.

Churchill's The World Crisis is also very interesting. Hopefully now that things are going out of copyright again, it will show up on Project Gutenberg soon, otherwise hard to find except in abridged versions.

narciso said...

Yes the scale of the post war devastation was such that many thought there was no cause that could justify such carnage

Yancey Ward said...

Seeing Red said...

Shetland is great.

Yes, it is. I just finished binging seasons 4 and 5 last night. Was glad to see it is renewed for two additional seasons.

Yancey Ward said...

Jon Ericson said...

"I warn you, this is all about Exercising badgers, mushroom and snake. Rated PG"

Well, at least you didn't link to the 10 hour long version.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

I guess the irony is that after two world wars you *still* end up with a Europe ruled by Germany. Of course that won't last past the demographic collapse, but what comes after won't be any better.

William said...

Germany is the dominant power in Europe, but it's not the Germany ruled by Junkers and the Hohenzollern. Of course, it's quite probable that had Germany won or been stalemated the Junkers would have mellowed over time or been overthrown. The British Imperialists won WWI, but their day was over. Victory is just as ephemeral as defeat....I didn't read Churchill's The World Crisis, but it's quoted extensively in the Manchester biography. The quote I read told of the British bravery and unflinching valor in the Battle of the Somme. I don't think that's now the judgment of history.....I had an uncle by marriage who landed a few days after D-Day. He was a regimental cook, but he got shot at quite a lot during the Battle of the Bulge. He didn't live to see Private Ryan but The Longest Day was his favorite movie. If I were an old soldier, I think I'd like my memories of St Crispin's Day to be in black and white and with excessive carnage edited out.

chickelit said...

rhhardin said...Some Hollywood naval movies had ships towed in bathtubs. Battleships beset by capillary waves.

Nothing's quite as famous and phony as the swimming pool finale of the RomCom "The African Queen."

tim in vermont said...

If the story is good, the effects don’t matter as long as they aren’t a complete distraction. I liked the old Midway because the people in it had been through the war, it was closer to it historically, and free of modern agendas like pandering to the Chinese.

traditionalguy said...

FTR: there was one SBD pilot ( the Air Group Commander who won the battle himself) who did dogfight two attacking zeros on his return flight. Forty year old McCluskey, who had also been a fighter pilot, had no choice but to turn into them and fight them or die. (That's the Scots Irish part of the story.) He and his rear gunner shot down one and drove off the other by turning and dogfighting them. That is also how McCluskey got his bullet wounds that put him out of the PM action. While wounded and his SBD damaged he insisted on his being the last returning SBD to land on the Enterprise because his plane's battle damage made any crash landing a risk of closing the deck. He landed with 4 gallons of AvGas left.

That's the reason Midway 2019 is a superb movie. The pilots' real stories is the fascinating part. Whether the special effects are 1000% accurate is a silly distraction that means absolutely nothing.

Michael K said...

The Longest Day was the first and remains the best of the WWII battle re-enactment movies. A lot of the actors in that movie had been there on D-Day and some had actually participated in the incidents of that battle that were shown on screen....

The Longest Day was much better than "Saving..." It told the story very accurately. I have walked those locations. Those people were real. Richard Todd who played Major Harris was actually in the 6th Airborne and jumped on D Day. The cafe next to Pegasus Bridge is there and that story is true., The little girl whose father dug up his champagne to give to the British wounded prepared our lunch in 2006 when we were there. The cafe is full of memorabilia left by British veterans.

The D Day scene in "Saving.." is all anyone talks about. The rest is fiction.

As for SBDs, I knew a guy who flew Corsairs and SBDs from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. He would not want try dog fighting in an SBD. Maybe somebody did so in defense and survived.

rhhardin said...

I don't quite understand dogfighting - the slower plane wins by being able to turn inside the faster one, if the guns work. Missing the target is bad though. Apparently speed is needed for escape or avoidance and wins out though.

Rusty said...

rhhardin.
Different planes had different characteristics. A P51 could out turn a bf109. A bf 109 could out turn a P47, but a P47 could out dive any other airplane in the theater. It could also fly at greater altitude. they pilots always tried to use their aircrafts best characteristics to their advantage.

Andrew said...

Ohio State!
(Insert victory emoji here.)

Seeing Red said...

Those people are cray-cray.

Via Lucianne:

Portland, Oregon, like many cities on the left coast, is struggling with a growing homelessness crisis. But what can they do about it? One idea that’s now being floated is to change the building codes so that all new structures (including private property, not just government buildings) include spaces for people to “rest” and “feel welcome and safe.” This understandably has prospective property owners concerned, since the wording is all quite vague and suggests that they will be forced to allow the homeless to camp in and around their buildings. (KATU News)

Andrew said...

"I saw some Midway trailers and the physics on the airplanes is awful."

Off the subject of Midway, but on the subject of WWII airplanes...

One of my favorite stories from WWII is how mathematician Abraham Wald prevented the military from reinforcing the wrong sections of American and British planes. They were planning to strengthen the armor where the most damage had occurred on returning aircraft. Wald pointed out that they were observing only the survivors (survivorship bias). They needed to reinforce the armor where they observed the least damage, because that was where the armor was penetrated in the planes that had been shot down.

There are numerous articles about this online. Here are a couple:

https://deanyeong.com/survivorship-bias/

https://medium.com/@penguinpress/an-excerpt-from-how-not-to-be-wrong-by-jordan-ellenberg-664e708cfc3d

narciso said...

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/trumping_a_low_pair.html?fbclid=IwAR09g_goWLBTEcfhMM27V1rw6nwpWUu060MFOOyoloSSxEk-bLmsM7dhOPE

Howard said...

Very beautiful and dynamic.