The Rise of Skywalker: Star Wars Episode 9 2019

 I  got to watch this, on a Netflix disc, the other day.  We have from the old days, Carrie Fisher as Leia Organa, looking kinda over the hill, especially since she died before filming started and her presence is from film shot on the last Star Wars movie.  Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Daisy Ridley as Rey, Darth Vader Jr, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, R2D2, C3PIO, and a bunch of new faces that didn’t make much of an impression on me.  It’s long,  better than two hours.  Not much of a plot.  Lots of light saber duels, star ship shoot outs, crashes and smashes.  Darth Vader Jr has some kind of teleportation link with Rey, and keeps popping up, no matter where Rey is, and doing a light saber duel with her. 

   Rey’s outfit, white, is cute.  But the arrangement of a gauzy skirt, split in the front, and clam digger shorts could be improved. Either cut her shorts shorter and make the skirt more opaque, or cut the clam diggers as long slacks going down to the ankle. And skip the gauzy skirt.  

Overall:  meh. 

American funding created Corona virus in China

Steve Hilton, host of Fox News show The Next Revolution said this evening that the corona virus came from the Chinese Institute of Virology in Wuhan China.  It was the result of genetic manipulation of viruses harvested from wild animals, like bats.  The genetic manipulation was “gain of function” work intended to give the virus functions it lacked, such as the ability to go aerosol, and infect after a short or long period of floating around in the air. 

    This sort of research was deemed extremely dangerous.  The Obama administration forbade gain of function research in 2014.  The Trump administration added to the ban.

    Hilton revealed that the work at Wuhan was funded by an AMERICAN grant of $3.5 million.  The funding was set up by Dr Fauci, scientific advisor on Corona virus to both the Tramp administration and the new Biden administration.   The funding was granted AFTER the ban on gain of function research was announced.  In short Dr. Fauci created the Corona virus using US taxpayer money. 

   Steve Hilton did not know how the mutated virus got out of the Wuhan lab.  Might have been an accident, might have been deliberate.  The Wuhan lab has a poor safety record.

   This is the first time I have seen this story.  I thought I would pass it on.  My only source is Steve Hilton of Fox News.

Donald Trump's acheivements

Way back in the winter of 2007 and 2008, bone headed Wall Street banks managed to crash the global economy with too many "credit default swaps".  The resulting recession knocked our GNP growth down from 3.5% a year to zilch.  And Obama took office.  For the next 8 years Obama manage to hold GNP growth down below 2%.  He even got financial commentators to write that 2% was the right growth rate.  Then Trump took office.  He got our GNP growth back up to 3.5% where it belongs.  He brought the stock market up to new highs.  He brought unemployment down to 3%.  And when the Corona virus struck in 2020 he spearheaded operation Warp Speed that brought a vaccine into production in only a few months.  

  Not too shabby.

What do Democrats have against Winston Churchill?

 Barack Obama removed the bust of Churchill from the oval office upon his election victory.  This gained him a good deal of hostile commentary.  Donald Trump restored the Churchill bust in 2016.  Now we have Joe Biden removing the Churchill bust again. 

Churchill was the man who did more than anyone else to win World War II.  First he kept Britain in the fight.  Had Churchill not been Prime Minister it is very likely that Britain would have made a deal with Hitler.  Hitler offered such a deal, and it wasn’t totally unattractive.  Churchill refused to have anything to do with Hitler’s deal and instead inspired British resistance to Hitler. 

   Churchill convinced Franklin Roosevelt to do Operation Torch, the North African landings.  Torch resulted in an allied victory over the Germans nearly as big and the Russian victory at Stalingrad a few months before.  Churchill traveled to Moscow and negotiated with Joseph Stalin.  Churchill was instrumental in setting up the United Nations and NATO.  President John F. Kennedy bestowed honorary US citizenship upon Churchill.  The US Navy named a vessel after Churchill.  Churchill wrote a six volume history of World War II which was widely read in both Britain and America.

    It has been 75 years since World War II and memories have faded.  But I still admire Churchill.  Without Churchill Hitler might have won World War II.  We might still be coping with a Nazi government ruling all of Europe.

Putting the troops in a parking garage is awful.

 Governor Sununu has ordered the our troops home to New Hampshire.  We ought to meet them at the Manchester airport.  Assuming they will be flying home.  Let's hope they are, making the 11 hour drive from DC in Army trucks sounds unpleasant.  

  At least the concrete floor was fairly clean in the video I have seen.  Usually parking garages have big black oil and grease spots in each parking space.  The videos showed fairly clean floor.  But still, a garage is a garage and we ought to be treating our troops better than a garage floor, especially in our national capital.  I had more comfortable quarters during a combat tour in Southeast Asia during the Viet Nam war.  We had hootches, with insect screens and a decent latrine.

So we inaugurated Sleepy Joe Biden today

 On TV it looked reasonable.  The camera's didn't show the lack of spectators.  Biden spoke of improving unity, pulling the two sides together.  Sounds good, but will Biden actual do anything to unify the Country.  They say he has 17 executive orders ready to file today.  I bet they all repeal or cancel things that Trump did.   Unifying that is   

   Better would be to explain in detail just what each of the 17  executive orders will do.  And where it clearly reverses a Trump policy, give a rational, a reason, for doing so. 

   Another unifying thing Biden could do is call for an end to the Trump impeachment.  Most of us think losing the  election is punishment enough.  Ending the impeachment would sooth a lot of people.  Not a word of this came from Biden's mouth today

I suspect that Biden is just giving lip service to the unification idea.  I think he really wants to cancel out every thing that Trump did.  Just because Trump did it. 

Howcum no talk about Sherman Anti-trust??

 Been a lotta talk about Facebook and Twitter shutting off Donal Trump and what to do about it.  I have not heard any talk about using Sherman Anti-Trust to break them up.  Both of them are clearly monopolies and Sherman Anti Trust was intended to break up monopolies just for being big, they did not have to misbehave to fall under the hammer.  

   Of course, Biden's democrats like what Big Tech is doing, silencing the political opposition, so I don't expect them to make a move to break up Big Tech.