Roundup
Here we go again:
(1) Colonel MacGregor is Tucker Carlson’s longtime go-to “expert.” He sings the same song as Carlson. I’ve written about him before, mostly in connection with his pro-Russian “predictions” about the Ukraine War (see this). Apparently he’s now opining on the awfulness of Israel and our war on Iran – of course.
That’s why bonchie of RedState has posted this Twitter thread listing the things about which MacGregor has been wrong (hat tip: commenter “IrishOtter49”). The list is long. It would be a lot easier and shorter to list the times MacGregor has been correct.
(2) And speaking of disinformation (which we were), “X” has suspended 800 million fake accounts over the last year. Yes, you read that right: 800,000,000.
Elon Musk’s X said it had suspended 800m accounts over a 12-month period as it fights the “massive” scale of attempts to manipulate the platform.
The social media company told MPs it was continually fighting state-backed attempts to hijack the agenda on its network, with Russia the most prolific state actor, followed by Iran and China.
As part of the battle against such content, X suspended 800m accounts in 2024 for breaching its rules on platform manipulation and spam, although it did not reveal which of those suspensions related to foreign interference. X has approximately 300 million monthly users worldwide.
(3) Is this true? And if so, to what does it refer, and we will ever learn?:
Former Mossad official and JCFA researcher, @Sagivasulin2025, says: “I can say that big things have happened in Iran, on the scale of the beepers and perhaps even more. They may not photograph as dramatically, but over time we will hear about them, and they are no less amazing. There are also other significant things that remain up the sleeve.”
Prior to the beepers, it would be harder to believe. Now it’s much more easy to believe.
(4) About traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Trump has been working on the insurance problem [my emphasis]:
Iran’s mullahs thought they could weaponize the Strait of Hormuz; instead, Trump turned their maritime choke point into a pressure point on their crumbling regime and its enablers.
As Washington underwrites safe passage and “privateer” tankers steam through silently with transponders off, the ayatollahs are reduced to offering bribery coupons for “safe passage” to any government willing to dump U.S. and Israeli diplomats, advertising weakness to friend and foe alike.
(5) This is at least part of the reason the arts have gotten so crummy:
The problem for opera and ballet, and indeed for straight theater and musicals as well, is that they stopped looking for audiences and started looking for grants. A bunch of woke, rich White people can give you money to produce the first Inuit opera but it doesn’t mean anybody wants to see it.
And have you looked at the contenders for Best Picture at the Oscars this year? I had the misfortune to see a half-hour of the film that writer ranks as #2: One Battle After Another. It’s a half-hour I’ll never get back, but at least I didn’t pay money for the privilege. I plan to write a review soon. Suffice to say I think it’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen.
I plan to write a review soon.
I may or may not have already posted this review – can’t remember.
Just imagine if Plan 9 from Outer Space had better actors. It’s that bad.
And it will likely win “Best Picture”.
“… the times MacGregor has been correct” comprises a null set. Or, if you prefer Venn Diagrams, MacGregor’s predictions and reality would be two completely non-overlapping circles. Maybe not even on the same piece of paper. But I’ll say this for him: he’s consistent.
One Battle After Another was the first movie that’s made ever me walk out of the theater in the middle of it. And I was there with a free ticket in a very comfy chair with popcorn and treats – so my laziness and inertia were extremely strong.
It’s basically an Antifa masturbatory fantasy with high production values and A-list actors. About an hour into it I realized that I hated all of the main characters, despised what they claimed to stand for, and couldn’t stand another hour of watching them do dumbass things. Life is too damn short for that.
Maetenloch:
You liked it a lot more than I did 🙂 . And you lasted longer, too.
(2) Wow! That’s a big number.
(3) The idea that virtually everyone today carries a mobile phone, switched on, in their pocket throughout the day, is a stupendous surveillance possibility, for many reasons.
It used to be true in the early days of cell network technology that the cell provider could triangulate location very approximately solely through the pings that the phone emits to towers. Now apparently, that can be very precise, without the use of GPS.
And how hard is it for a nefarious actor to highjack the OS on your phone? Or other software trickery?
Also, many or most of modern automobiles are always connected to the internet, all of the time.
I would imagine that smart leaders within Hamas or Iran would rely of couriers exclusively and forego modern tech. But it would seem that this is not the case.
“As part of the battle against such content, X suspended 800m accounts in 2024 for breaching its rules on platform manipulation and spam, although it did not reveal which of those suspensions related to foreign interference. X has approximately 300 million monthly users worldwide.”
There is a mechanical engineer who posts at Althouse and he would insist that the correct way to express 800,000 is 800m.
In my electronics background that quantity would be 800k, and 800,000,000 would be written as 800M.
So you might be off by a factor of 1000. Since the article states X has approx 300 million accounts it would be hard to suspend 800 million of them.
Batemjo:
It’s 300 million ACTIVE accounts. The 800 million suspended ones are not active.
Speaking of movies I watched Sentimental Value on the plane to Phoenix (Spring Training). I thought it was very good, and Stellan Skarsgård was great. I hope he wins Best Actor. Not sure I’d recommend for everyone. A bit of an arty movie, and it’s in a foreign language, so patience is required, but ultimately it delivers.
Given the depraved state of cinema, akin to digging thru a mountain of excrement in hopes that there might be a nugget of gold buried within it, my attitude toward the Oscars has long been one of monumental indifference.
Recently vising my daughter and son-in-law, gentle manners required I sit thru an episode of the Netflix series “Dark Mirror”. I was appalled at the coarseness and nihilism.
And I have a great Spring Training story. I’m a Reds fan so I’m at the Reds game and we’re playing Cuba – the WBC is going on you know. Behind me are a bunch of guys who, I can tell from their conversation, are from Chicago. Eventually I turn around and strike up a conversation with them. They’re all in their Cubs gear. You see? They thought they were going to see the Cubs. We were playing Cuba. Missed it by one letter.
Heh, that’s a hoot, Mike!
The Choral looks promising. Haven’t seen it though I’ll be making an effort.
So Cubs fans don’t feel insulted, this was really all a Reds fan’s fault. He rents a place out there for the entire month of March. He invites his buddies from Chicago out for a few days with the added lure of, “We’ll go to a Cubs game.” This is the game he brought them to.
#1)
MacGregor can now join the illustrious company of likes of Al Gore et al and their 100% failure rate on climate predictions. Why anyone listens to these obvious morons is beyond me.
An even better link to the full thread of MacGregor being wrong:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/2031159778429252031.html
”They’re all in their Cubs gear. You see? They thought they were going to see the Cubs. We were playing Cuba. Missed it by one letter.”
As a Cardinals fan let me just say: LOL!
IMO, one thing we ought to do as a matter of course is to end the regular distribution of government grants to corporate bodies bar a half-dozen or so exceptions (inter-governmental agencies, state governments, territorial governments, county governments, municipal governments, school districts, Indian reservations) and make it the rule that the distribution to individual entities be according to formula and be an addition to the entity’s general revenue and not have strings attached except a franchise to audit. Irregular distribution of grants could go to these bodies and to private philanthropies for purposes of disaster relief, with the proviso that they could only go to hands-on service providers and could not be laundered to other agencies.
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Another thing we could do is enact some amendments to the law on business corporations which require that corporation revenue flow to a company’s employees, suppliers, lenders, shareholders, or constitute retained income. Grants to other corporations would be defined as a species of embezzlement. The company could have a ‘public affairs budget’ which would have to be approved at the shareholders meeting each year. It’s purpose would be to finance any sort of corporate communication not devoted to marketing the company’s products as well as financing staff lobbyists or contractual lobbying firms.
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Another thing we might do is amend the law on non-profit corporations to require that their revenue go to paying employees, paying suppliers, and retained income and that (by defualt) they be engaged in hands-on service provision. Exceptions granted subtypes might be as follows: political parties and contribution bundlers would be permitted to make contributions to campaign committees; charitable and religious bodies might be permitted to distribute cash, vouchers, insurance, comestibles, and fuel to individuals and households; and foundations would be permitted to make grants to other non-profits with the exception of political parties, contribution bundlers, campaign committees, advocacy groups, trade associations, and labor unions. Posit as well that foundations would be debarred from any activity other than making grants. It might also be the law that certain types of non-profit (contribution bundlers, campaign committees, foundations) would not be abiding but would have to liquidate under the supervision of a court within a certain period of time – say, within two years for a campaign committee, withing twelve years for a contribution bundler, and within sixty years for a foundation. Liquidation procedures would require the assets of the non-profit in question be apportioned among donors and / or distributed to hands-on service providers per instructions in its founding documents.
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Another amendment to public policy we can make is to scrape the sectoral preferences out of the tax code. That includes all manner of deductions and exemptions, those for philanthropic donations included.
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You might still leave certain preferences for philanthropies in place. Posit a state of the world where the tax liability of business corporations can be discharged by issuing new shares to a government fund or by paying a % of its total revenue stream. For philanthropic corporations, their liability might be a function of the compensation paid to their senior employees and easily reduced to nil by keeping compensation plans within a certain multiple of the national mean. You might also impose local property tax liability on philanthropies, but provide an avenue for them to apply for full re-imbursement from the state treasury (club service providers excepted).
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You might be able to improve the quality of the philanthropic sectors’ services by shutting off financial pipelines from sources other than individual households.
Our excellent host wrote: I think it’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen
My wife and I have had a long-running debate about whether the entertainment industry cares more about making money or about pushing left-wing politics. I think they care more about pushing politics.
This film would be yet another example. It’s the “worst movie (you’ve) ever seen” and yet it’s nominated for an Oscar. I’m seeing predictions it will win. I had the misfortune of watching Don’t Look Up (2021) which received four nominations including for Best Picture. Last year Emilia Perez won two out of thirteen (!?!) nominations.
They make awful films. Give awards to awful films. And get upset when we reject their awful fillms. There’s no gentle way to say this but the entertainment industry largely hates their audience. Schneider is right. And I say that as someone who loves opera.
There are people – and I include Tucker Carlson – who want to see us lose the war with Iran or have us suffer considerable causalities because that would hurt Trump politically.
I think that McGregor guy had a video of toilets overflowing on an aircraft carrier. According to him, it was intentional. And it allegedly delayed the ship. Supposedly, the crew was unhappy because they were at sea for a long time.
I recently rewatched “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.” A sailor was whipped for not saluting an officer.
Cornhead, when I was in, the deployments were 9 months, with no Internet.
I just read that we have destroyed most of Iran’s minelaying ships.
I also just read that there have been a lot more injuries to US troops. Well, I give it the 48 hr rule.
“I also just read that there have been a lot more injuries to US troops.”
You wipe out a nation’ s military – a country of nearly 100 million and that includes their navy, air force and 90% of their missiles – kill their leadership three times over and much, much more and in those 11 days you lose only 8 troops and another 140 injured. That was 5 minutes of combat on Iwo Jima. Not one plane lost by teh US or your ally Israel and Israel loses a dozen citizens.
There isn’t a military leader dead or alive who wouldn’t marvel at that.
Rick67:
I happen to have seen Don’t Look Up. It’s not good, but it’s an absolute masterpiece compared to One Battle After Another.
Modern Hollywood lost me as a customer a long time ago. I won’t be lectured to by people who don’t have a single good thing to say about America and then expect me to plop down $ to be insulted.
John, thanks for the update. Yes, we are lucky not to have very many casualties. But to the Left, one is too many. What people don’t understand, those that have not served, that the Peacetime Military is very dangerous. Things happen.
TommyJay on March 10, 2026 at 4:41 pm:
“I would imagine that smart leaders within Hamas or Iran would rely on couriers exclusively and forego modern tech. But it would seem that this is not the case.” I suspect many of the folks in the “third” world who have mastered modern technology, especially IT related, think of themselves as somehow special compared to their “normal” peers. They are at least the “equal” of the Western devil, etc., so they don’t expect to be bested by devils.
Sometimes bad movies still serve a useful purpose.
Given our slow moving and perhaps failing efforts to bring the lawfare Left and other anti-Jan 6 perpetrators to some measure of “justice” for their crimes, plus the border control lapses, etc., I have this strong and probably unrealistic desire for “justice”. Seeking to satisfy this unrealistic itch, I devote whatever movie streaming time I have to those films of a revenge or vengeance nature. Almost always a fantasy plot line where the male or female lead is a talented and trained law enforcement or military expert who has been wronged in some way. Thus a lot of (pretty) ridiculous weapons firing and hand to hand combat. My tolerance for fantasy tends to erode when the female lead or supporting character is fighting an obviously much stronger male, using her presumed grit and high quality training to stay in the fight and eventually win out, even when she has been thrown around, punched, etc. The same applies to where either the good or the bad guys are shot but still manage to carry on with only minor difficulty, even when their wounds are “pretty serious”. To each their own, I suppose.
Maybe an Inuit special forces guy performing in an opera while sorting out and stopping a terrorist plot? 🙂
Related (Better dread than dead…?)
“Recalling the Days of Dread;
“For 200 dreadful days, the Yishuv in “Palestine” waited to see if Hitler would realize his plans, aided by the Mufti of Jerusalem, to slaughter them all…”—
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/423738
– – – – – – – –
Inuit?
Gurkha, rather…(not sure if he sings, though…)
https://ssbcrackexams.com/bishnu-shrestha-the-heroic-gurkha-who-fought-off-armed-robbers-on-the-maurya-express/
Do you really think one casualty is too many for a liberal, most of whom despise the military? What they hate is that there aren’t more casualties they can politicize.
Regarding the Arts. Circa 2007, I remember reading a British writer who was claiming that the grotesque art that was showing up in Britain was part of a larger plot to make the British no longer proud of their own country. He was tying this to the ” Common Purpose” organization which he believed was a plot to strengthen the EU over British independence.
“The Cider House Rules” was absolutely one of the most nihilist movies I have ever sat through.
It’s basically abortion propaganda and you are supposed to view the murdering doctor as a hero.
As I recall the doctor commits suicide at the end.
Hell awaits such people.
“Mike Plaiss on March 10, 2026 at 4:07 pm said:
I plan to write a review soon.
I may or may not have already posted this review – can’t remember.
Just imagine if Plan 9 from Outer Space had better actors. It’s that bad.”
Plan 9 is so bad, it’s good.