And this was a year when supposed blockbusters like Endgame and Rise of Jaywalker were coming out to prop up those numbers. There aren't any mega blockbusters scheduled for next year so unless there are a crop of "come from nowhere" movies like Joker Hollywood is looking at another down year in 2020.
The thing to remember is that Gabbard is no longer running for the 2020 nomination. That is long over. She is only 38 years old when the top three Democrat candidates are in their late 70s. If the Democrats don't win this year they will not be returning in 2024. In contrast Gabbard will be 42, and the only Democrat that can now say "Told Ya So" if 2020 blows up in the Democrat's face. She is positioning herself to be the alternative to AOC or some AOC clone in 2024, when she won't have to face Trump.
This is like any other trial. If the prosecution doesn't show up the result is an immediate dismissal of charges. Mitch just needs to set a date and tell Nancy to be there and be prepared or there will be a summary dismissal of charges.
You might find that a lot of the globalists will be reluctant to jump into that fight. There is that old saying about there being a gun behind every blade of grass. You don't see the Europeans, Russians or Chinese clamoring to send troops into Iraq or Syria and those are countries with entire populations smaller than some of our states.
Look at it from the point of view of your average dictator. There would be over three hundred million Americans with more than one firearm per person that are desperately trying to kill each other. You know that at least some of them have nukes. They may not use them on each other, but they sure as hell will use them on you. Nobody is going to send their own troops into that kind of meat grinder.
Now what will happen is China and Russia will make bank selling weapons to both sides. They will also be more than happy sell weapons to South American and African "freedom fighters" who want to join the leftists in the US. Exactly in the way that Saudi Arabia and Iran equipped Palestinians to cause trouble in Iraq, but never actually sent their own troops into the war zone. They will keep that up until they have extracted every last bit of wealth out of the husk that formerly had been the United States. They will also take the opportunity to grab up all the little countries on their borders.
The one thing I worry about most would be the rise of Caesar Americanus. Like you said things would get very bad very quickly. It would only take a handful of determined people to bring down and keep down the electrical, road and railway networks using nothing more sophisticated than IEDs. So in six months the US starts to look a lot like Syria, but with really cold winters.
At that point some general is going to claim that if he is give unchecked power he can bring back the good old days. Just impose the Uniform Code of Civilian Justice (which is just the UCMJ with a word crossed out). Suddenly you have food, water, electricity, personal safety, heat in winter and a stable currency. Also nice military dictatorship with no freedom. But, after one Chicago winter without food or heat and that is going to seem like a really good trade off for most of the population.
This is not to say that Caesar Americanus is going to be unpopular. At least at first he will be extremely popular. Chaos and civil war sucks. They guy who ends that kind of suffering is going to get carved onto Mt Rushmore. The downside of dictatorship takes a bit longer to become obvious, and by then you are living in a dictatorship so good luck changing anything.
You say that as a joke, but in a very real sense I think it may become an issue in the near future. There are a lot of people on the left who hold their particular political positions for no better reason that its cool, or because holding the republican position is controversial. It doesn't require a lot of bravery to be PC.
However if that changes watch how fast the PC Gestapo crowd loses fans. Remember after 9/11/01 when all of a sudden none of the leftists were calling the troops baby killers any more. Because doing that would usually result in getting your ass kicked. Even where an ass kicking wasn't applied you would get shouted down and booed out of whatever venue you were in. The anti-war left vanished overnight because suddenly there were a real and concrete negative consequences to holding that view.
The number of people on the left who are willing to take even the most minimal negative consequences (think getting banned from reddit) for holding their views is tiny. Look at what is happening with the formations of militias in Virginia. If it starts to become obvious that trying to grab the guns carries a chance of real, immediate, and consequential negative repercussions expect the number of leftists volunteering for gun confiscations squads to go to nearly zero.
From the article.
According to the survey, voters in those districts oppose impeachment by 10 percentage points, 53-43, and would support a new candidate over the Democratic incumbent by 11 points, 47-36.
A plurality of voters, 38%, said that if their congressperson supported impeachment, it would make them less likely to re-elect that individual. Just 29% said supporting impeachment would make them more likely to vote for the incumbent.
"they want the Senate to continue the investigation. That’s what that really means, and that’s not gonna happen. And McConnell told ’em, “Hey, look, we don’t do the investigation. You make the case and you present the case to us, and we sit and decide it.”"
Best possible response from the turtle.
"A clear solid majority in both the House and the Senate will shut these cucks up for a few years."
Don't believe that for a second. The one defining trait of the left is that no leftist has ever admitted that they were wrong about anything. They will always double, triple, down on to infinity. People who are capable of self reflection and the capability to modify their beliefs to conform to objective reality very rapidly stop being leftists. That is where the old saying that a conservative is just a liberal who has been mugged comes from.
I'm probably a older than most of the people here and I remember the Reagan era. Even after a 49 state sweep they Democrats never shut up. Look at what is going on in Britain right now. The leftists were handed their worst defeat in 40 years and rather than self reflection their response was to riot and then make demands! Their first reaction to cataclysmic defeat was to make DEMANDS on the people who just defeated them.
We can and I hope will win. However that will only set up the next battle, because like the enemy in an old video game the leftists will just send another wave of useful idiots at us.
Because he is controlled. He will do what the bureaucrats tell him to do when the bureaucrats tell him to do it. They would vastly prefer horrible and controlled over hyper competent and independent.
Don't look at this like a normal human being. Look at it from the view point of a swamp creature. If Trump can finally break free he will clean out the swamp. If Sanders gets control he is going to replace the current swamp creatures with different swamp creatures more to his liking. All they care about is that whoever gets in will leave the swamp exactly the way it is today.
Just watched this and I would correct that Erupting volcanoes are not tourist attractions. Yellowstone is an active super volcano and when (not if) it cooks off everything West of the Mississippi is going to get buried. Of course it might not happens for 10,000 years (keeping in mind that all of human civilization is around 4,000 years) most people are willing to risk living in the potential blast zone.
Naples Italy and Portland Oregon are both doomed cities when Mount Vesuvius and Mount Hood have major eruptions again. Both are very much "active" volcanoes, they just aren't erupting. Vesuvius actually erupts quite frequently, but none of the ones in the last 1900 years has been as bad as the one that buried Pompeii in 79AD. For those that don't know ancient Pompeii is now in the suburbs of the modern city of Naples.
TLDR: There is a difference between active and erupting. The only way to get out of areas impacted by active volcanoes is to book a ticket with Elon Musk to Mars. Because there isn't anyplace on Earth that is safe from the eruption, or tsunamis (looking at you here New York) caused by said eruption, of at least one the planet's super volcano's. All of them are active, they just aren't erupting.
That was never the point of him running. He has siphoned just enough votes off of Pete Buttigieg to keep him from rising in the polls. He was starting to move up on Biden, and SURPRISE Bloomberg jumps into the race and draws away all the press coverage and takes just enough out of the anti-Biden vote to ensure he remains the front runner.
The Democrats figure they can lose half of them and still hold on to the House. For Nancy Pelosi and her deep state backers it is all a numbers game at this point. There are far more districts in the Democratic party that are vulnerable to AOC style insurgents then there are swing districts vulnerable to Republicans. The Washington / New York / Silicon Valley power brokers would much rather spend four years in the minority then be permanently excluded from power by a leftist takeover of the party by the leftist insurgents.
In a way that is the thing about Trump that frightens the Democrat establishment the most. Not the fear of a right wing insurgent. It is the proof that an insurgent can completely take over a party and exclude the former party elite from their positions of power. They see what happened to the Bush and McCain cronies and know the same would happen to them if Bernie Sanders or Yang were able to take over the party. The leftist elite know that they can lose and election to us and recover in a couple of years. If they lose to AOC they will be excluded from power forever.
Yet to a moral person that is exactly how you would expect them to act. The NATO leaders are people at the peak of political power. They are supposed to be tough. You shouldn't have to worry about hurting their feelings. A drill sergeant at Paris Island doesn't worry about hurting the recruits feelings because those recruits aspire to be U.S. Marines. In the case of both Marine recruits or heads of state, If they are the type who need to have their feelings protected they probably need to seek a different occupation.
Star Wars The Rise of SJW isn't going to flop. Disney simply has too much influence to allow any competition at the box office. Every "critic" in the paid shill media will be praising the movie. The key number will be if Star Wars the Rise of SJW gets beaten by Joker. Joker pulled in $1.06 billion on a $50 million investment. The Disney Star Wars movies started out strong with The Force Awakens pulling in $2.06 billion. The Last Jedi dropped to just $1.33 billion. That was a 35% drop from the previous movie. If they get another 35% drop with the Rise of SJW that would put them in the $850 million range. Well behind Joker on a movie that is likely to have cost ten times as much to produce.
Honey: Can we get one of these for back home?