Friday, March 10, 2023, Delray , Florida


Notes From My Journal

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Oscar Winners for 2023

Okay. I know you’ve been dying to find out. Here are my picks for this year’s Academy Awards.

 Best Movie 

* What Will Get It: Everything Everywhere All at Once

* What Should Get It: All Quiet on The Western Front

None of the nominated “Best” movies were great. But Tár, All Quiet, and Everything Everywhere were the top contenders. All Quiet should get it because it was good at doing a much more ambitious job. But Everything Everywherewill win because it won Best Picture in most of the other contests, and the Academy Awards generally follow suit.

Best Director 

* Who Will Win: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All at Once

* Who Should Win: Steven Spielberg, The Fabelmans

It’s going to be a contest between Spielberg and Kwan/Scheinert. The latter will win, I think, because the Best Director Oscar usually goes with the Best Picture. Moreover, this year Kwan/Scheinert took the top prize from the Directors Guild of America. I don’t think they deserve it, because the primary job of a director is to make everything about the film feel emotionally true. Spielberg did exactly that with Fabelman’s, whereas Kwan/Scheinert failed to do it with Everything Everywhere.

Best Cinematography 

* Who Will Win: James Friend, All Quiet on the Western Front

* Who Should Win: Frank van den Eeden, Close

Cinematography is the distinguishing feature of film making. If a movie doesn’t have great cinematography, it shouldn’t be considered for Best Picture. Most of the nominees for Best Picture had excellent cinematography, but I’m guessing All Quiet will win because of its scope. I would, however, have given the award to van den Eedenm, which you would understand had you seen the movie.

Best Actor 

* Who Will Win: Brendan Fraser, The Whale

* Who Should Win: Bill Nighy, Living

The Academy likes actors that take on transformative roles. And the most obvious actor that did that last year was Brendan Fraser in The Whale. He did a good job, especially considering he was working in a fat suit. But in terms of pure performance, I can’t see anyone deserving Best Actor more than Bill Nighy.

Best Actress 

* Who Will Win: Michelle Yeoh, Everything Everywhere All at Once

* Who Should Win: Cate Blanchett, Tár or Andrea Riseborough, To Leslie

If Michelle Yeoh wins it, I will be disappointed. Her performance was adequate, but hardly challenging. The award should go to one of two actresses that beautifully executed two much more difficult roles: Cate Blanchett or Andrea Riseborough.

Best Supporting Actor 

* Who Will Win: Ke Huy Quan, Everything Everywhere All at Once

* Who Should Win: Brendan Gleeson, The Banshees of Inisherin

Ke Huy Quan had Hollywood fame as a child actor in The Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Coming back now in the movie that is expected to win Best Picture, he’s a sentimental shoe-in.

Best Supporting Actress 

* Who Will Win: Jamie Lee Curtis, Everything Everywhere All at Once

* Who Should Win: Kerry Condon, The Banshees of Inisherin

Jamie Lee Curtis was terrific. Without her, Everything Everywhere would have been much less funny. But I’d give the nod to Condon for her finely tuned dramatic role.

Best Original Screenplay 

* What Will Win: The Banshees of Inisherin

* What Should Win: Triangle of Sadness

Best Adapted Screenplay 

* What Will Win: Women Talking

* What Should Win: All Quiet on the Western Front

Women Talking is a script that celebrates victimhood. Plus, Hollywood likes actors that write screenplays. So, I’m guessing that Sarah Polley will take the Oscar home. But it’s a tight race.

Best Animated Film 

* What Will Win: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

* What Should Win: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

They are both very good and deserving. But I’m guessing that Guillermo del Toro is more popular with the voters.

Best Documentary Feature 

* What Will Win: Navalny

* What Should Win: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Best International Feature 

* What Will Win: All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany)

* What Should Win: Argentina, 1985 (Argentina)

As a best-picture nominee, All Quiet is almost certain to win. I thought Argentina, 1985 was the better movie.

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News & Views

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The Penalty for Rape in Canada Is… What? 

Ever since Justin Trudeau became Canada’s leader, he’s been showing the rest of the world what it looks like to advance the sort of woke political agenda that is just getting underway in the US.

One of his party’s key aspirations has been to dramatically lower the number of Canadians that are imprisoned. And they have made progress. Mostly by changing the criminal code. Many of the crimes that were considered felonies are now treated as misdemeanors.

How far have they gone? How about giving convicted rapists ankle bracelets instead of sending them to jail? Check it out here.

It’s Happening Faster and Faster! 

I wrote about the rapidity of AI development in the Feb. 24 issue. I said then that it is advancing faster than I believed possible. Here’s a short talk by Jordan Peterson on this topic that will probably scare you.

Our New Aviation Tsar! 

The most obvious problem with making equity (equal outcomes) a top criteria for hiring is that, sooner or later, you are going to be forced to hire unqualified people. This was hilariously obvious in the Biden administration’s recent appointment of a new Aviation Tsar. Watch this clip of Ted Cruz hammering the guy and answer this: Are you comfortable knowing that he’s the one that will be determining aviation safety standards from now on?

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Worth Considering

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The COVID Response. What We Got Wrong.

 New Questions, New Answers 

As some readers have noticed, I’ve been devoting an increasing amount of space to all the misinformation we were sold about COVID. That’s not because my interest level has increased. It’s because – now that the Congress is actually investigating what we were told vs. what happened – new discrepancies being revealed every day.

There is much more coming out than I could possibly follow in a few hundred words, twice a week. So, I’m going to cover several items in each issue over the next several weeks. Then I’ll publish one long bonus issue that summarizes everything.

In the meantime, here is some of what’s been going on…

* The Origin Debate: It is now all but confirmed that COVID-19 originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, where they were conducting gain-of-function research on the virus. And it is becoming clear that much of the funding for this research came from the US. 

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, are leading the investigation. They are also seeking testimony and information from Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance; Avril Haines, director of National Intelligence; Dr. Francis Collins, acting science adviser to President Joe Biden; and Xavier Becerra, secretary of Health and Human Services. Click here.

* The WHO: Despite all the misinformation that came out of the WHO, member states are negotiating an accord that will give the WHO centralized authority in future pandemics. Republican senators are pushing back. 

The draft accord, which would be “legally binding” on all 194 member nations, gives the WHO the authority to declare pandemics and submits member countries to “the central role of the WHO as the directing and coordinating authority on international health work” once a pandemic is declared. Click here for Meryl Nass’s explanation of the key points.

This isn’t just stupidity, it’s evil. Almost every recommendation the WHO made in response to the pandemic was not just wrong. It was stupidly and completely wrong. The CDC and their Deep State supporters got behind those damaging stupidities to get Joe Biden elected. That makes sense to me. But why would they want to continue to do more harm by mandating that future WHO recommendations become US law? Click here and here.

* The Vaccine Risks: They knew. Why didn’t they tell us? 

Despite the now irrefutable evidence that COVID vaccines don’t work but do have potentially dire side effects, the CDC continues to recommend that everyone get the shots. Click here.

Contrary to what the mainstream press has been telling us, it’s now clear that the CDC knew about the cardio-vascular risks of the mRNA vaccines more than two years ago.

In December 2020, the CDC launched a service called V-Safe, which listed adverse reactions to the mRNA COVID vaccines. Included in that list were such symptoms as fever, chills, and pain. But some adverse reactions – e.g., pericarditis, myocarditis, transverse militis, and seizures – which are now being included in CDC literature, were not included.

You could theorize that the CDC did not include these scarier reactions to the vaccines because they didn’t know about them then. But that isn’t true. In October, two months before the V-Safe list was released, the CDC gave a presentation of “adverse effects of special interest.” And it included – yes – pericarditis, myocarditis, transverse militis, and seizures.

Click here for a short video about how the mRNA vaccines got FDA emergency use authorization, despite the fact that the studies said the risk of serious adverse events was greater than the reduction of hospitalization risk.

You can expect many more “shocking” revelations in the coming weeks and months.

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Readers Write

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Why I keep doing what I do… 

“I’m 14 years old and I’m curious to learn about ways I can earn money. I play soccer and am very dedicated to it. My goal is to become a professional. So along with getting good grades in school, I have two practices and a gym workout of some sort every day. Which doesn’t leave too much time for a regular job. My parents work very hard, and if I could earn any money at all, it would be to pay for my soccer, because it’s very expensive. Could you please give me some pointers on where to start and how to be successful in terms of money? I would be very grateful if I could learn from your perspective. Thank you so much for your time!” – MZ

My Response: You have four things working for you: (1) You recognize that building wealth is not easy. (2) And that the time to start building it is now. (3) You are a hard worker. (4) You are only 14.

The last is the strongest thing in your favor. Because if you begin now, you have decades ahead of you to earn money without taking unnecessary risks. To get you started, I’m going to send you a copy of Automatic Wealth for Grads, which I wrote specifically to give young people like you guidance on moving forward with your ambitions. I’m also going to send you a copy of The Pledge, which will give you a blueprint for successfully accomplishing all your objectives.

Please keep me updated on your progress.

 

“I’ve been following you since 2010. I moved to the US from Canada where nobody talks about the ‘market’ let alone have it play a daily part of life like in the US. Your newsletter(s) were my first guidebook to investing…. I also enjoyed what you wrote about living a richer life. Spending time with your wife, traveling, food, wine, etc. Those essays were fun and extremely practical!” – DB

 

Oops!

 AS’s comment in the Readers Write section of Tuesday’s issue should have read:

“‘Unchained Melody’ was covered by so many different bands and singers. It was written by an incarcerated man, which, to me, gives it even more passion. I’ve listened to it hundreds of times, and it was never done better than by The Righteous Brothers. It still gives me goosebumps.”

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