Stromata Blog

Feel Good Story of the Day: Nobody Buys Tickets to Rob Reiner’s Latest Flick

Since Archie and Edith kicked the moocher out of their house, Meathead has drifted through life making movies whose appeal has become steadily more selective. His latest, God & Country, was released on February 16th. IMDB offers this synopsis:

 

From director Dan Partland and producer Rob Reiner, GOD and COUNTRY looks at the implications of Christian Nationalism and how it distorts not only our constitutional republic, but Christianity itself. Featuring prominent Christian thought leaders, GOD and COUNTRY asks this question: What happens when a faith built on love, sacrifice, and forgiveness grows political tentacles, conflating power, money, and belief into hyper-nationalism? Directed by Dan Partland. Produced by Rob and Michele Reiner.

 

Was the public waiting for this warning against the fearful menace of “Christian Nationalism”? Evidently not. On its opening weekend, the film grossed $30,415 in 85 theaters. Through this weekend, the gross is $60,464. Some high school musicals have done better.

 

Those who love to revel in schadenfreude can find it in abundance here.

“As God is my witness, I thought aid packages could fly!”

From The Telegraph:

Air-dropped US aid packages struck and killed five Palestinians in Gaza after their parachutes failed to open properly, according to reports.

Footage circulating on social media appears to show several packages plummeting to the ground from a transport aircraft.

Either the videos circulating on Gaza social media are authentic, which would be pretty bad, or they are fakes, which would be worse, showing that Hamas wants to scare ordinary citizens away from the air drops. That would make it all the easier for terrorists to appropriate this “humanitarian assistance”.

Soon Hamas will have Americans to shoot at, as our troops construct the dock through which Joe Biden will channel more aid to Israel’s enemies.

Quote of the Day: Biden vs. Israel

Philip Klein, “Biden Delivers the Most Anti-Israel Presidential Speech in History”:

After a perfunctory mention of October 7 and the hostages, Biden then launched an extended attack on Israel’s response to the war and the conditions in Gaza that accepted, whole cloth, Hamas casualty figures that his own administration had previously questioned as unreliable. For those keeping score, his description of the events on the day of October 7 lasted 42 words (or 77 if you count his shout-out to the hostage families present at the speech). The part of the speech describing the “heartbreaking” conditions in Gaza, demanding that Israel do more, and describing U.S. aid efforts in Gaza was 214 words.

Speaking of aid. At the start of his speech, Biden spoke of the “unprecedented moment” we’re in – and in his survey of momentous world events, he made the case for the need for the U.S. to support Ukraine. And he pitched his hare-brained scheme to have the U.S. military build a port in Gaza to facilitate more aid. At no point did he make the case for the component of the security bill that would provide aid to Israel.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Quote of the Day: Jack Smith, the Delegitimizing Machine

Rich Lowry, “The Jack Smith Wreckage Is Just Beginning”, discussing Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump and the Supreme Court’s decision to consider Trump’s immunity claim:

The lamentations and denunciations over the past few days have been remarkable, but we ain’t seen nothing yet – whichever way Smith’s case bounces.

If Trump is convicted in the case and loses the election, Trump and his allies will have a ready-made argument that the election was rigged – a Biden-administration prosecutor rushed the case to trial on a political timetable to get the result, a felony conviction, that all the polling said would hurt Trump’s prospects most.

If there is no trial before the election and Trump wins, the Left will have a ready-made argument that the election was illegitimate – the MAGA court did Trump’s bidding by delaying the proceedings, or ruling in the former president’s favor on some question of law; the public was denied crucial information that would have been provided by a trial; an insurrectionist was allowed to skate when he shouldn’t even have been on the ballot, etc.

Jack Smith, in short, is a delegitimizing machine. His prosecution is a stick of TNT in the middle of an already fraught election.

If Jack Smith wanted a civil war, what would he do differently?