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Open thread 2/12/24 — 62 Comments

  1. “Anyway, Trump v. Biden 2.0 might go along way towards breaking the two party system. “

    1) Pew: “% of registered voters who are Not too/ at all satisfied [dissatisfaction] with the choices of presidential candidates. [~Sep]”

    • 2016: 63%

    • 2012: 40%

    • 2008: 26%

    • 2004: 32%

    • 2000: 33%

    • 1996: 36%

    • 1992: 46%

    “In prior campaigns, voter satisfaction with the selection of candidates either increased or held steady as Election Day drew closer [June to Sept]. “

    • 2016: 40% to 33%

    • 2012: 56% to 54%

    • 2008: 60% to 72%

    • 2004: 65% to 65%

    • 1996: 47% to 62%

    • 1992: 35% to 53%

    https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/09/12/already-low-voter-satisfaction-with-choice-of-candidates-falls-even-further/

    2) Gallup: “[Aug, 2020] Americans’ Perceptions of Whether Presidential Candidates Would Make Good Presidents”

    • 2020: Trump Only – 33%, Biden Only – 36%, Neither – 25%, Both – 5%

    • 2016: no data

    • 2012: Romney Only – 31%, Obama Only – 38%, Neither – 17%, Both – 12%

    • 2008: McCain Only – 25%, Obama Only – 29%, Neither – 19%, Both – 25%

    • 2004: Bush Only – 40%, Kerry Only – 33%, Neither – 11%, Both – 15%

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/317474/say-neither-candidate-good-president.aspx

    3) Gallup: “…how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media … reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly …”

    • 2020: 40%

    • 2016: 32%

    • 2012%: 40%

    • 2008: 43%

    • 2004: 44%

    • 2000: ~52%

    https://news.gallup.com/poll/355526/americans-trust-media-dips-second-lowest-record.aspx

    4) Poll Shows Growing Distrust of Media Among Americans

    (CN) — A [2020] survey released Tuesday shows Americans’ trust of the news media is declining even though they still see the institution as invaluable to democracy, indicating growing skepticism toward what many see as journalists straying from objectivity in the internet age.

    The report assembled by Gallup and the Knight Foundation surveyed 20,000 Americans as part of the firms’ Trust, Media and Democracy series, and it found that Americans are more pessimistic than ever about a perceived lack of objectivity in news coverage from a media apparatus driven by barely concealed agendas.

    “With each passing benchmark study,” the report said, “the American people render deeper and increasingly polarized judgments about the news media and how well it is fulfilling its role in our democracy.”

    Even though the Knight/Gallup poll found 84% of Americans say the news media is either critical or very important for a functioning democracy, 49% of those surveyed think the media is very biased and roughly three-quarters believe the owners of media companies are influencing coverage. The latter statistic is up 5 percentage points since 2017.

    Fifty-four percent of people believe that reporters intentionally misrepresent facts, and 28% believe reporters make the facts up entirely, the survey found.

    Note: The Dog Did Not Bark – i.e., no mention of the corresponding rise in Advocacy & No-Platform journalism.

    https://www.courthousenews.com/poll-shows-growing-distrust-of-media-among-americans/

    5) Once again – when we look at history – we find out that American political trends & MSM partisanship did not start with Trump.

    • Despite the unrelenting 7+ years of MSM negative coverage, there is a growing public realization that Trump delivered what is important to the average American citizen – not necessarily what is important to the MSM/ Ruling Class.

    • Also, for those who will take the time to objectively review his record, there is the realization that Trump’ results were some of the best in our voting lifetimes.

    [Feb 2024] Voters are delivering a poor assessment of President Joe Biden’s job performance as he and former President Donald Trump prepare for a 2024 rematch. They are also looking back more fondly than before on Trump’s tenure in office.

    Just 14% of registered voters say Biden has done a better job as president than they expected he would, according to the latest NBC News national poll. Another 42% say Biden has done a worse job than they expected, and 44% say his tenure has gone about as they expected it would.

    But 40% say Trump’s presidency was better than expected, with 29% saying it was worse and 31% saying it was about as expected.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/voters-are-rating-trumps-presidency-better-expected-hindsight-rcna137971

    [Nov 2023] With views of things in America continuing to be bad and now hitting their most negative marks of the year, one might expect an incumbent president to trail in a pre-election poll — as Joe Biden does in this one. But that’s only half the story.

    The other half is that Donald Trump holds distinct advantages in his own right when voters look forward: More voters think they’d be better off financially if Trump wins in 2024, and more voters think it’s Trump who can keep the U.S. out of a war, if he wins.

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-vs-biden-poll-2024-presidential-election-year-out/

  2. New Hotness: The Ocean Currents in the Atlantic are changing because of all the ice melting from Greenland.

    Lloyd Austin is in intensive care. Prostate cancer must have spread to his bladder and elsewhere. Want him gone, but not this way.

  3. Biden posting of bizarre memes and joining Tik Tok yesterday indicates pretty clearly that Biden himself hasn’t been deterred from continuing to run after last weeks events, despite what the various powers in the top echelons of the party may want. So if they want to be rid of him, they’ll have to take action. If they can’t (or won’t) blackmail him, they’ll have to invoke the 25th amendment.

  4. whoever is holding the eye, the scottish play has great import, don’t see anything wrong with that, remember they hate orthodox peoples with great zealousness, they provoke the lakewood shooter, with words and deeds like kjp did after the nashville shooting,

    I don’t have to agree with their insanity, but it’s head in the sand to ignore it, a different flavor of category error inspired the alexandria shooting, that targeted 18 members of the Freedom Caucus including our future Governor of course Maddow never owned up to it, nor were Durbin and Duckworth ever investigated for any foreknowledge

    in narrative engineering, marie antoinette was an austrian and hence an outsider to the French Court, in a similar way to Alexandra a German was to the Russian court, lurid innuendos were conveyed upon her, and well we know there that eventually led, to their deaths

  5. Music and film historians can undoubtedly do more than point and say ” Hey look at that! Isn’t that kinda like …?” when it comes to the influence of the Rhapsody.

    But any of us who are interested in Film Noir or have watched “old movies” on TV as kids will see what look like examples of some trend which Gerwishin set.

    This first one, used in several films, was so far as I knew actually some part of Rhapsody in Blue … if I had had to guess, that is. If you don’t see Victor Mature’s face and a New York skyline when you hear it, you did not watch enough television as a child.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PJlfQwBZAuo&pp=ygUVQ3J5IG9mIHRoZSBjaXR5IGludHJv

    This next one is obviously less “lyrical” or rhapsodic and almost pure drive, but my uneducated guess is that the Gershwin work paved the way for this city theme music. Some time ago, I asked Neo if she could access her infant era memories and identify the streets in NY. No luck

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QShabLiL1lA&pp=ygUWaW50cm8gdG8gdGhlIGJpZyBjb21ibw%3D%3D

    And of course there are the musical mood themes running through the girl in red scene in that old Astaire movie. Amost enough to spark an interest in watching more dance. Almost. Certainly enough to remember it.

    As best I can tell it’s only a few bars near the 58 sec mark, that show an influence. But then I’m just remarking on what ” looks kind of similar” to me and calling it influence. Anyway ….

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1oKTdxYyJA8&pp=ygU2RnJlZCBhc3RhaXIgY3lkIGNoYXJpc2UgYmFyIGRhbmNlIHNjZW5lIHRoZSBiYW5kd2Fnb24g

  6. RE: UFOs–Drs. Kirkpatrick, Loeb, and Knuth, and the question of what is good, useful “evidence/data”

    Both the DOD–through it’s spokeswomen Susan Gough, and Dr. Shaun Kirkpatrick, former head of AARO–have consistently proclaimed that there is no “credible evidence” of extraterrestrial/NHI involvement in the UFO Phenomenon.

    It seems to me that it all depends on, first, what information you have access to, and are basing your conclusions on and, then, on how you define what is “credible.”

    It also helps if you really want to find out what may be a very unpalatable truth.

    Did Dr. Kirkpatrick and AARO have full access to all available government information—both unclassified and classified–on UFOs?

    I note that, in past testimony, it appeared that Dr. Kirkpatrick had supposed access to classified Title 10 DOD information, but not to classified Title 50 Department of Energy information.

    (According to whistleblower David Grusch, the very broadly written Atomic Energy Act gives the DOE the power to classify anything which emits some form of radiation.)

    So, perhaps not.

    Of note, it has been pointed out that, according to reports, until very recently the AARO organization was also not fully staffed and/or operational.

    Did Kirkpatrick and an understaffed AARO aggressively go out, “beat the bushes,” and try to search out and gather information, or, did they passively wait for various government agencies and others to hand them whatever information these various agencies and witnesses wanted to give them?

    It appears that they passively waited to receive information, and reports indicate that, when they did receive first hand information from whistleblowers who came and testified before Dr. Kirpatrick and the AARO staff, some of these witnesses reported they were treated very badly, and that Kirkpatrick and AARO have simply discounted/ignored their evidence.

    Dr. Kirkpatrick also recently wrote a very scathing and snide Op-Ed in Scientific American, essentially calling those—including members of Congress–who thought that there was something to the UFO phenomenon, and who wanted to investigate it, fools, the deluded followers of conspiracy theories peddled by a small group of UFO fanatics, some of whom might have dishonest motives.

    Thus did Dr. Kirkpatrick, in effect, drive a dagger through the heart of AARO, and render it useless.

    I can’t imagine that, after this snide and dismissive Op-Ed, any more UFO witnesses will ever be making the trek to AARO to give them their testimonies.

    I wonder how, with such a small amount of actual time to operate, and with what well may have been a minimal staff, Dr. Kirkpatrick or the AARO organization could have conducted what Dr. Kirkpatrick reported to Congress was a “full-scale” investigation of the presumably voluminous 80 year’s worth of information on the UFO Phenomena in just a few short months?

    Seems more like dismissal and disinformation rather than investigation; Project Bluebook all over again.

    On the other hand, extremely well known Harvard astronomer Dr. Avi Loeb, head of the Galileo Project, says that anecdotal accounts are not what he is looking to collect and analyze—Loeb sees them as essentially worthless—and instead, he wants to gather and examine “scientific” evidence; things which can be recorded, measured, and calculated.

    By way of contrast, Physicist Kevin Knuth’s approach to studying what he views as the intriguing mysteries to be solved surrounding UFOs (which he believes scientists should regard as a challenge, and not just ignore, or dismiss) is different, since he says that anecdotal data—especially data from many thousands—cumulatively perhaps hundreds of thousands of observations over the decades, from all over the world—have some value, and should not just be dismissed as useless, because these observations can, for instance, reveal various patterns.

    Dr. Knuth views this anecdotal information as valuable evidence, since these—what today we might call “crowd sourced” observations—provide very valuable “clues” as to what the characteristics, nature, and behaviors of the Phenomenon might be, and, moreover, that some scientific calculations and estimations can be derived from some of this data.

    So, for example, the fact that when people take pictures of UFOs or view them and their images are haloed or fuzzy, seems to indicate that these objects are surrounded by some kind of plasma, and such plasmas are created by strong electromagnetic fields.

    Such strong electromagnetic fields might also explain the common reports that when UFOs hover over cars (apparently just older cars which do not have computers operating their electrical/ignition systems, and not diesels) they frequently stop the engines of these cars, which frequently restart when the UFO leaves.

    It seems to me that hundreds of thousands of “Experiencers,” people all over the world, who, over the last eight decades, have had sightings or close encounters of various kinds, cannot all be misidentifying common objects, hallucinating, drunk, nutjobs, or hoaxers; their observations point to the fact that there is something real there.

    Dr. Knuth also points out that we don’t even know the scope and size of the problem i.e. he knows of no one who has collected even close to a comprehensive and accurate count of the number of UFOs which have been and are flying over each and every region and nation of our Earth, are shadowing our military forces, nuclear research labs, ICBM sites, nuclear weapon storage sites, our military exercises and actions, flying over, in and out of our oceans and seas, in orbit around our planet, or even further out into our Solar System over the course of these last 80 or so years.

    Say, do we happen to have any sensors, designed to detect UFOs, and pointed outward, out into the Solar system?

    Inquiring minds want to know.

    Dr. Knuth also thinks that, with the apparently vast number of UFOs flying around, for many decades now, they very likely have not just commuted here from far distant star systems which they will return to.

    Knuth thinks that these UFOs, and whatever NHI is directing them, have likely made a one way trip here to Earth, now live here and, according to some calculations he has made, could even have been here on Earth for “hundreds of thousands of years.” *

    * See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUa-9qMH068&t=4430s

  7. About the Biden’s shrinkflation tweet…. I wonder how many takes they had to do to get the prez to sound coherent?

    Since they were talking about inflation, the smaller sizes are bad and the companies are ripping the consumers off.

    However, if you looked at the snacks that were on the table, I am sure the food & nutrition critics would have praised the smaller sizes and the higher prices in an effort to have citizens eat and drink less. Heck, some communities have imposed a sugar tax on sodas.

    So are smaller sizes good or bad??? I rarely buy chips and other snacks and now the higher prices do make me pass up the aisle in the grocery store.

  8. Shirehome: “ New Hotness: The Ocean Currents in the Atlantic are changing because of all the ice melting from Greenland.”

    Thorough debunking of this at watsupwiththat. Based on a model of dubious validity. Even with that model, the tipping point does not occur until 3782AD and requires about seven times more water than all the Greenland ice. But hey, it is settled science after all. /sarcasm

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/02/11/tipping-is-optional/

  9. even Charles Boyer didn’t gaslight us that insistently, maybe some guess star on Colombo, probably Patrick McGoohan,

  10. Snow,

    Knuth might be on to something: that is a robust statistical analysis of anecdotal sightings. However, the parameters of what to look for and code could be daunting. Also, one would need access to literally all those thousands of reports and to sift through them and code them. Might be worth it just to find some mathematical regularities. Such a result could swing the argument either direction however.

  11. well the opening to close encounters, which includes a cameo for new wave auteur truffaut, is curious, because it’s set in the sonoran desert, and introduces the three missing bombers from 1945, which apparently the aliens took in the bermuda triangle, thats kind of an odd intro into the film, and ET is supposed to be kind of a sequel to close encounters,

  12. Bob, I don’t believe it either, but Left Climate Change idijts will and will push it very hard.
    Remember, facts don’t matter, Lies do

  13. Shirehome, more problems with “science” from the New York Times of all places

    He Hunts Sloppy Scientists. He’s Finding Lots of Prey.
    Meet Sholto David, whose error-spotting has raised a question: If researchers aren’t getting the little things right, what else might be wrong?

    https://archive.is/f9F2V

    32-year-old blogger’s research forces Harvard Medical School affiliate to retract 6 papers, correct another 31

    https://fortune.com/europe/2024/01/29/harvard-medical-school-affiliate-retracts-corrects-research-dana-farber-welsh-blogger/

  14. physics guy—

    As for collections of UFO data, one place to start might be the apparently still secret searchable 200,000 UFO sighting database which Jacques Vallee says that he created when he was working for Bigelow Aerospace.

    P.S. The videos of the presentations given at the Sol Foundation’s inaugural 2 day symposium on the UFO phenomenon have now shown up on YouTube, annd include presentations by many major figures who have been researching UFOs.

    The Foundation’s founders include eminent Stanford pathologist Dr. Garry Nolan, anthropologist Dr. Peter Scafish, and former intelligence officer and UFO whistleblower Major David Grusch.

  15. I assume that this means that we’ll hear absolutely nothing more about this trans-pro Palistine lunatic mega church shooter in mainstream media sources. Far too many contra-narrative factors.

  16. Piece in City Journal about Israel’s reality check. Like us, they thought they were on a Holiday from History, Nope.
    After the Pearl Harbor Attack, which was on a purely military objective, and led to (compared to 10/7) much less loss of life and no atrocities, we declared war on Japan and our stated objective was “Unconditional Surrender,” which was eventually accomplished. Similarly, we enforced Unconditional Surrender on Germany, which, for all its multiple defects and horrors, posed no real threat to the USA.
    Israel is under much more serious threat form its immediate neighbors. Israel has played whack-a-mole and used proportional responses to egregious provocations for 75 years. It’s about time that Little Satan learned from Big Satan’s example and let loose its dogs of war; Gaza’s options are Surrender or be annihilated.

    https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-new-israel-and-the-old

  17. I am sorry to tell you but I have witnessed climate change over the years. What causes it I have no idea, but I can tell you that I have seen an increase in rain and a a serious reduction in snowpack. My thought is that that Chinese balloon that hung around overhead here in my corner of the state might have had something to do with last summer’s intense rain and this winter’s lack of snow. We are currently experiencing the lowest snowpack in any recorded history in the state of MT. You do know don’t you that we seed clouds to help grow crops in AZ?

  18. physics guy—

    So, for instance, one Sol symposium presenter, Dr.Kevin Knuth, looked at the observed radar data on the Tiktac UFO, and its drop from 28,000 feet down to sea level in 0.78 seconds.

    Then, for the purpose of his calculations, he assumed that this object —which was about 40 feet long—weighed about a tenth of what an F-16 weighs.

    Given this data, he calculated the G forces involved in this maneuver as being at least 5,000 Gs, that the speed at the halfway point, at the changeover from acceleration to deceleration, was 45,000 mph, and that the power needed to accomplish such a maneuver was far more than the entire output of all of the nuclear power plants in the the U.S.

    So, not swamp gas, a bird, a drone, adversarial craft ( if it were human adversarial craft we would already be speaking Russian or Chinese), a misidentified planet, or a balloon.

  19. Bob Wilson:

    Is that cow tipping? Because the study is full of bullshit*t, as pointed out by your link to Watts Up …..

  20. P.S.-

    I note that Dr. Knuth, like a lot of other serious UFO researchers, has come around to the belief /understanding that—given the vast variety of the UFO craft which are being reported— what we may be dealing with are the craft from a number of different species of NHIs, and/or with different kinds of NHIs—prosaic ETs, inter-dimensional NHIs, Ultraterrestrials, Time travelers, etc.

  21. Re: Trans rage

    When the Woke make it onto my radar, I don’t let go…. Here’s a great rundown from the “Times of Israel” on two US college professors who let their hatred all hang out after 10/7.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-university-professors-retract-blaming-israel-for-hamas-massacre-after-censure/

    You may recall Prof. Russell Rickford of Cornell who exclaimed, “It was exhilarating. It was energizing” about the horrifying Hamas atrocities that day. He did have to belly crawl afterward about how careless and reprehensible his speech was. He is on “leave” and keeping it on the down-low for now.

    However, I wish to draw your attention to one of Rickford’s academic colleagues in crime: Dr. Mika Thomas, guy gone trans, muscular, coiffed, tatted and (grrl!) angry. Apparently Mika has worked at the prestigious Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) so I guess Mika has some tech chops. However, Mika was last seen as a “climate scientist” at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

    Mika’s response to 10/7:
    __________________________________________

    “Israelis are pigs. Savages. Very very bad people. Irredeemable excrement,” Tosca had written Tuesday, nine days after the massacre and in the midst of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, according to a screenshot shared by The New York Post. “The propaganda has been downright evil. After the past week, if your eyes aren’t open to the crimes against humanity that Israel is committing and has committed for decades, and will continue to commit, then I suggest you open them.” She concluded, “May they all rot in hell.”
    __________________________________________

    That was a bridge too far even for a School of Art. Mika groveled, but too little, too late. Mika no longer has a job at SAIC. Sob!

  22. In charge of the air conditioning.
    (Which is actually a very important job. Don’t want your Seurats to catch pneumonia…)

  23. @ Snow,

    The subject is I agree, interesting.

    But once more:

    1, Do you really think that every last scrap of extraterrestial craft wreckage of all those reportedly occurring, could have been scooped up by some omnipresent ( perhaps quasi) governmental agency for the last 80 years?

    Do all these crashed craft just happen to be deposited where military forces can eliminate all physical remnants before a native grabs a piece to take to his hut?

    2, Why would intelligences with such hypothetically advanced – possibly interstellar – technology experience so many hypothesized issues keeping the devices flying?

    3.If the crashes were real but the number many fewer, would you really expect those trying to reverse engineer such epochally transformative tech to just share it?

    “Gee, we just figured out smokeless gun powder, jet propulsion, and how to make an atomic bomb, so please help yourself.”

    Hell, look what the heedless herd animals we call our “fellows” have done with what looked to be the unmitigated good of antibiotics. ” Oh goody”, says the retirement village hedonist, ‘Now that the moral hazard of sticking my prong in a human sewer has been temporarily alleviated, I’ll rush out and do it. By the time the germs catch up, ( rubbing hands) I’ll be dead of old age! Thanks modern medicine!”

    Or how about that modern chemistry being practiced by the otherwise shiftless graduate in the basement of the house across town?

    Would you expect those with the incipient tech to squander the advantage they might be able to realize a few years hence?

    If you had the tech nearly developed, would YOU, turn it over to the Biden Admin, and the purple haired fatty child molesters that call the shots within the captive state?

    That tech could be your future ticket out. Or the leverage needed to nonviolently put the fu**-ups on notice to stand off at arm’s length and stay in their swamps.

    Share it? Not bloody likely.

  24. Ukraine Funding Bill Tries to Make Peace Illegal
    Provisions buried in the Ukraine supplemental funding bill would make it nearly impossible for a future president to pursue a peaceful resolution to the conflict without facing impeachment from Congress. U.S. Senator J.D. Vance is raising the alarm regarding the legislative text and its implications for a future Trump presidency should Trump pursue peace between Ukraine and Russia.

    Not kidding apparently. Say what you will about the insane, laugh if you must, but they are sincere. And rest assured, as stark raving mad as Senator Roger “First Strike Nuclear” Wicker seems, he and his nutty senatorial allies are deadly serious.

  25. sdferr,

    Thanks for the link to the piece on, “Rhapsody in Blue.”
    George was right about the title and shouldn’t have taken his older brother’s advice. Ira was talented, but George was not only the better composer and musician, he was also a better lyricist. 😉

    Amazing piece of music! It really evokes New York, America and that period of history. One of the great compositions of all time!

  26. TJ Repost from this morning’s Open Thread:

    On Friday, Will Cain hosted an important interview with investigative reporter Matt Taibbi about the Far Left-Deep State cabal to “save” Democracy by destroying it.

    Yet again, the Left fascists are organising contingencies to stop Trump in addition to the ones seen in 2016, 2017, 2018, and before and after the last Presidential election.

    “We know it will involve censorship…” one of the two says, and the other agrees.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv1fGGbK-90

    Matt suggests the rise of this threatened Oligarchy likely has roots going back to the years after World War II. But before Trump, no true outsider besides Ross Perot in the 1990s, has succeeded in gaining the Presidency or even edging on to.

    Who are Ruling Oligarchy? Media, both major parties, and the Big doners. At least.

    THIS is worth bookmarking and sharing with others.

    Still, neither has an answer to why the Oligarchy — instead of accepting temporary loss of power — evinces anaphylactic shock at a Trump Victory.

    I’d suggest the answer lay in the enormous growth in funding and powers gained by the Intelligence Community after 911, together with Obama leading the Left into embracing the doctrines of the Far Left during his time in office.

    Matt is aghast at the weaponising of the law, serving partisan interests. It cannot be unseen what it exposes.

  27. 1, Do you really think that every last scrap of extraterrestial craft wreckage of all those reportedly occurring, could have been scooped up by some omnipresent ( perhaps quasi) governmental agency for the last 80 years?

    DNW:

    The government sure managed it at Roswell. Whatever the real Roswell story was, something crashed, its debris was gathered up, we were told different weather balloon, Project Mogul balloon stories, and then the debris … disappeared.

    Apparently that debris went into the same government warehouse as the Ark of the Covenant in the first Indiana Jones movie:

    –“Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Ending Scene (1981) [HD]”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5pd1U6yXe0

    The government has stonewalled requests about the debris from civilian organizations and even Representative Stephen Schiff of New Mexico (not that pop-eyed bastard Adam Schiff D-CA) couldn’t pry any info loose.

    Project Mogul was supposed to detect Soviet nuclear tests, but it is tech over 75 years-old and the USSR no longer exists.

    Why can’t we see the Roswell crash debris?

  28. DNW–

    The possible answers to why, if supposed NHIs are much more advanced scientifically, technologically, and perhaps intellectually, biologically, or spiritually, are there so many crashes–the totals I have seen mentioned are a little over a hundred crashes–are as follows.

    One, our airlines, although safe–I think that the chances of dying in a plane crash are around 11 million to one–have crashes which do occasionally happen–no one is perfect– and I would not expect even highly advanced NHIs to be perfect.

    Second, adding up decades worth of reports, it appears that the operating tempo of UFOs–appearing all over the world–is and has increasingly been incredible. That kind of apparently frenetic Optempo would increase the chances of accidents.

    Three, perhaps these UFOs are part of some underfunded, shoe-string archeological operation, and using second hand vehicles, plus pilots who are not all up to snuff, and/or very stressed or tired, and thus, the occasional crash.

    Fourth, some theorize that crashes are actually deliberate, a staged way to get alien technology into our human hands–either as a kindly effort to give us a boost, or, diabolically, to delight aliens who will watch us monkeys try to understand technology which–at our present level of development and knowledge–we are simply incapable of doing.

    I note that reportedly some intact craft are just landed and their pilots wander off–they are “donations.”

    All the reasons you’ve given for not disclosing whatever might have been learned or back engineered from recovered UFOs have a lot of merit.

    However, I just object to whoever has this information from likely using it for their own advancement in terms of wealth, power, and influence.

    Can we be so sure that these “gatekeepers”–whoever they are–are better than our current leaders, have our best interests at heart, and that these gatekeeper’s goals are more admirable, and advantageous for the human race than those our current leaders–however flawed–might come up with?

  29. Re: Rhapsody in Blue

    sdferr, DNW, Rutus,

    I first heard “Rhapsody” when I moved to my first not-so-big city, New Orleans. I was mad to learn as much culture as I could and my roommate played “Rhapsody” for me. I swooned to that soaring clarinet glissando which opens the piece. It was one of those unrepeatable aesthetic thrills.

    Perhaps Woody Allen is persona non grata, but his use of Gershwin at the beginning of “Manhattan” is cinema magic — the music and the backdrops, not the maudlin, self-mocking Woody shtick. (Though I still enjoy the Woody shtick.)

    “Manhattan – Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z4FgnAVFgM

  30. Perhaps Woody Allen is persona non grata, but his use of Gershwin at the beginning of “Manhattan” is cinema magic — the music and the backdrops, not the maudlin Woody shtick. (Though I still enjoy the Woody shtick.)

    Yeah, it is remarkable that two of the more interesting directors of our era, are sexual cretins whose histories make watching their product unsettling at best.
    I used to like Allen movies and my girl and I would make sure to include one on a date if was new. Hannah and her Sisters, Zellig, the early mid 80s stuff.

    Saw, Love and Death on TV long ago and thought it hilarious at the time. Don’t recall Manhattan.

    And Polanski had Chinatown, The Ninth Gate, and The Ghost Writer. The last of which I guiltily watched despite his despicable sex crime being news.

  31. @ Huxley,

    I’m pretty sure that if you think back you will probably recall seing the Gershwin story on TV as a kid, or hearing an album played in music class sometime after 7th grade.

    Of course I did too, and a decade or two later could not distinguish or identify its movements clearly enough to judge that Alfred Newman’s Street Scene was not one of them.

  32. Don’t recall Manhattan.

    I could argue “Manhattan” is Woody Allen’s masterpiece.

    But for one tiny, squicky problem — the plot hinges on the 40ish Woody character’s relationship with the 17 year-old Mariel Hemingway.

    I saw “Manhattan” with friends when it came out in 1979. No one thought twice about that aspect. Well, she was only one year shy of 18, which I guess would have made it legally all right.

    Still, Woody was a middle-aged man dating a high school student.

  33. I’m pretty sure that if you think back you will probably recall seing the Gershwin story on TV as a kid, or hearing an album played in music class sometime after 7th grade.

    DNW:

    I got nothing. I didn’t watch old B&W aside from Bogart, sci-fi and horror and all I remember from my few music classes is “Peter and the Wolf.”

  34. @Snow,

    Yes but we don’t have proof of crashes, just tales of them. So the answer to why they crash at this point, is that we have no physical evidence that they do, and therefore no material remains that even demonstrate they exist, much less crash all over the world.

    So, if one embraced the scenario that they are:
    1, only a few hundred years more advanced comparatively than our best science, and that
    2, They are not one culture at all but several engaged in a more or less free for all visitation or resource mining exercise (though it actually makes no sense) ; and that,
    3, We are to them as Sentinelise level primitives would be to us were they skulking in jungles around an open pit mining operation ;( even at 200 years behind because of Moore’s Law-like tech advance compression) ….
    And
    4, if we find that they are not on our planet but that it is we who are a life form they ignore on a resource pile which they consider theirs,

    Even then, you still have the lack of material remains.

    No way that all the crash artifacts supposedly scattered all over the world could be gathered up by governments.

  35. @ Huxley,

    Yeah ok. Great intro and cityscapes.

    See that you are also into – and isn’t every guy who watches a movie- film composition, cinematographic techniques, noticing the architecture, and civilizational tech portrayed, be it basement or over shop apartments, skyscrapers, grain elevators, radial engines, or repeating rifles.

    So, if you have not checked it out look up The Naked City on YouTube. It’s the no-big-stars post war 1940’s detective movie shot on location in NYC. You want it for the historic locations, not the drama.

    I had no idea there was such a movie. And you want the movie, not the crap tv series your grandparents watched on Thursday night.

  36. DNW:

    I get “The Naked City” mixed up with “The Asphalt Jungle.” No, I haven’t seen “Naked.” I am a fan of old noir B&Ws, so It’s On The List.

    I love grain elevators!

  37. DNW:

    Coincidentally today I bought 44 half-hour episodes of the old “Philip Marlowe” radio show from Audible.com.

    I love old radio shows!

    Plus I’m learning where the Firesign Theatre copped many of their riffs for their Nick Danger stories.

  38. Huxley,

    Suggestions,

    The Killing. Virtue: Stanley Kubrick film

    Pick-up on South Street. Virtue: Richard Widmark, Jean Peters. Good film. Drawback, one of the most vicious beatings of a woman I have ever seen in a movie, much less an old time one.

    House of Bamboo. Virtue: American racketeers in Japan shot on location. Robert Stack Robert Ryan, “Doctor McCoy’, and Shirley somebody, a Japanese American Socialite from New York, star. Crazy off beat, in color, on location in post war Japan. Roof of a Tokyo department store playground circus fight climax. Insane.

    Speaking of location shoots. You know The Third Man. But do you recall Decision at Dawn, or The Big Lift? Both shot on location in authentic damaged postwar Germany. Real German soldiers playing real German soldiers in real ruins in Decision.

    I also think that anyone who has not seen Executive Suite, or The Moon is Blue should catch Holden at his peak, and catch the old modern tech pictured along with the movies, portable Tvs, home bars, modern fireplaces … all the stuff.

  39. In 1986, I was in a electronics store in Portage, WI. I heard Rhapsody In Blue on a CD, and took home a CD player for my stereo system that night.

    The only song I know of, with more evocotive power is Richard Rogers’ Song Of The High Seas, from Victory at Sea.

  40. Huxley, I am listening to Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar on Audible, on the way home from work in the morning.

  41. Public Service Announcement:
    Havin’ trouble keepin’ track of the really important stuff, like Decent Joe’s fave flavor of ice cream?
    Or the angle of the crease in his trousers?
    Or how he beat the stuffing out of Max Schmelling in—when was it—1977?

    I know I am. A lot of trouble…
    Well, here’s Molly Hemingway to help us all out…
    “Joe Biden’s Classified Docs Provide More Evidence Hunter’s Pay-To-Play Was A Family Affair;”
    “The nearly 400-page special counsel report confirms an overlap in the timing and topics of Joe Biden’s vice presidency and Hunter Biden’s ‘business’ enterprises.”—
    https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/12/joe-bidens-classified-docs-provide-more-evidence-hunters-pay-to-play-was-a-family-affair/
    H/T Powerline blog.

  42. It’s an excellent article, Barry M., and the author is The Federalist’s resident legal expert, Margot Cleveland.

  43. Huxley–

    Some have said that UFOs crash debris is very resistant to decipherment and reverse engineering, and that the reigning technique is to work on it for a couple of years and–if/when you have had no real success–you put the material back in storage, then, bring in back out to work on a few years later, when our knowledge and technology have advanced, and you may have a better chance of cracking it’s secrets, then, rinse and repeat.

    Perhaps crash debris in tucked away in such a huge Indiana Jones type government government warehouse, or, more likely, the crash debris is in secure locations–one hopes they’re secure–scattered among a number of different military and aerospace facilities, all over the U.S.

    (What is the situation, one wonders, in Russia, China, and possibly elsewhere?)

    P.S. DNW is of the opinion that there is “no way” that a government retrieval program could possibly find and collect all of the debris from all UFO crashes.

    But, as far as I can see, that is just his “opinion,” and not backed up by any actual facts or proof.

    There were those few very successful couple of Communist spies, but, in generaI, I note that the government managed the gigantic, couple of year’s long Manhattan Project with apparently very few leaks from the hundreds of thousands of people who were ultimately involved in the Program.

    When running a much, much smaller crash retrieval program, why couldn’t the government manage to keep the secret of a UFO crash retrieval regime secret over the decades if–

    First, it operated a generation’s long, very wide-spread, and sophisticated disinformation campaign, telling the members of the public that UFOs do not exist and that, if they reported seeing one, or anything related to them, these witnesses would be seen as crazy and, as well, could suffer all sorts of negative consequences, lose their reputations, be viewed as an unreliable nutcase, could possibly lose their jobs, and also be subjected to a life time of non-stop, intense ridicule by some family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors.

    Thus, the prevailing attitude, which was established by this campaign, was and still generally is, that anyone who comes forward with their eyewitness testimony/evidence about a UFO encounter is to immediately be viewed with suspicion and derision, and their testimony discounted.

    Second, Patriotism might be a good reason for you not to disclose what you know to the public.

    But, as well, what if those inside the program operated under a strict secrecy regime, with draconian penalties–reportedly up to and including long stretches in Federal prison for the discloser, and/or threats of possible harm to their family members, or even their murder (see David Grusch’s testimony before Congress) –if they disclosed what they knew?

    (According to David Grusch, he has suffered all sorts of negative consequences/reprisals because of what he has revealed, reprisals which the Intelligence Community Inspector General has said make what he alleged about the matter and the programs he talked about “credible” and of “urgent” concern to Congress. )

    That I’d think, would do it, and it seems like it has.

  44. Snow on Pine provides voluminous posts on other people’s opinions and speculation regarding Unicorns and yet takes umbrage when DNW patiently gives gentle questions regarding the belief in Unicorns, using logic and reason.

    Belief in Unicorns is not to be subjected to questioning using facts and reason.

    Is Steven Spielberg an authority on Unicorns now? Fiction and science fiction are not to be questioned.

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