George Lucas sold them a cash cow
TBH Disney grossly overpaid for Lucasfilm.
The situation was that they paid 4 billion for Marvel Studios. But the difference was that when they bought Marvel, they were actually buying a production pipeline. Marvel had a over a dozen scripts being worked on, and a couple films in production. They were buying a movie making machine that frankly didn't need anything from Disney to keep printing money. That was worth 4 billion.
Lucas refused to sell for less than Marvel. But they had NOTHING. Clone Wars was winding down, and they had nothing new in the pipe and no screenplays anywhere close to being ready for preproduction. That 4.05 billion bought them a brand and nothing else. No production infrastructure, and nothing they could immediately put into action.
"you know maybe having Luke be a grumpy hermit that does nothing might not be the best thing"
Hamill and Fisher were only willing to return if Ford did. It was a polite "no" because they knew Harrison Ford would never do another Star Wars movie.
Then Disney offered to kill off his character and he signed.
So really, the lesson is, never count on others.
So the skip never sweeps
Aye.
In a sense it's a bit like the designated hitter in baseball, so the pitcher can focus on pitching the game. The skip is the one "playing" against the other skip, hence why they throw the last stone. They tried to call the preceding stones to make a situation they can work with.
Which Norm MacDonald?
Pre-woke 90's version who was funny, or post woke soon to be dead version who wasn't?
I'm old you bint. I remember SNL in the 80's. If I say the name Belushi you probably immediately think of the crap imitation version.
Yes.
But what differentiates mass murder through abortion from mass murder through war?
I remember Bush Jr and his contrived war with Iraq. It will take decades of clean behavior by the GOP before I give them a pass on having the moral high ground to call other people murderers without hypocrisy.
Because above all, I despise hypocrites. Not murderers, not SJWs, not communists... it's hypocrites. They're the worst sort of people.
(Shrug)
Going after abortion without tackling the larger economic problems is counterproductive.
You may not like it, but abortion does have SOME effect against poverty, despite its equal effect in facilitating bad decisions and risk taking.
What's particularly galling is that Republicans have repeatedly FAILED eliminate the more expensive incentives for people to act irresponsibly, like welfare. Abortion, for better or worse, "costs" nothing to the taxpayer, while housing assistance, food assistance, and direct payments cost quite a lot. I take a dim view of attempts to own the libs by killing abortion because it's an easier win than going after the money or fixing trade deficits.
Politicians screeching about dead babies does not reduce my tax bill, and I resent that the christian right has been able to monopolize conservatism for my entire lifetime over something so tangential to the actual role of government.
I DON'T CARE. If the cost of moving on to tackle real issues is dead babies, then so be it. That's why Trump was such a great Republican president, because his entire stance on abortion basically amounted to "appointing anti-abortion justices" and leaving it for the courts to sort out.
Know why the country went to shit?
Because we won WWII without any adversity, overbuilt with 60's technology, ran unreasonably high corporate taxes about 20 years longer than we should have, gave foundational industry jobs away to other countries to keep them in our sphere of influence, enacted LBJ's handouts, and spent patriotism in stupid fucking wars we shouldn't have been in.
Also McCarthy went after Hollywood when the real threat came later in academia.
Abortion is not a cause, it's a symptom. The decline enabled it.
Republicans who think they can stop the slide by stopping abortions could be outwitted by a fucking whack-a-mole machine.
I don't see anything wrong with his comments beyond political naivety.
"We're living in the age of cellphone cameras. Fuckups ain't tolerated!" -Smiling Jack, Vampire: The Masquerade
People this dumb need to get Darwinned out of politics. I am sick of our best hope for liberty resting on people who are too fucking stupid to understand that virtually everything that comes out of their retarded pieholes can and will be taken out of context at every opportunity.
You can have an opinion on abortion but there is no reason to share it to the press. Only go on the record for recorded votes, and offer no reasoning for your recorded votes.
MI Gov Candidate Attacked For Saying We Shouldn’t Encourage Rape Victims To Seek Abortion
Where does the GOP keep finding these fucking one-issue knuckledraggers?
The country is going to shit and Gen X is just repeating the Boomers obsession with abortion.
Yes; well, sort of.
Okay so Taiwanese politics are between the DPP and the KMT.
The KMT was in charge since the civil war, and it's supporters are old people. They were supportive of some ties with China. Because of this, their support collapsed among young people.
The DPP is the new top dog.
They are woke as fuck. But also nationalist as fuck. Their supporters are young, progressive, pro-America and extremely anti-China.
Basically, the DPP is the Democratic party with a MAGA foreign policy, and the KMT are literal Rinocons (and proud of it). That pro-China 25% are old KMT voters who remember 90's China.
This is all true.
But anyone who believes that China could invade Taiwan as easily as Germany invaded Czechoslovakia is mistaken. They have to cross a hundred miles of ocean, being in range of the Hsiung Feng III the whole way, MLRS rockets half the way, and guided Paladin fire the last third.
The sheer volume of guided anti-ship fire they'll soak up trying to cross that water will be like nothing that has been seen in the history of war ever.
It's kinda sad we have to actually explain this sort of stuff to youngsters now, ain't it?
Like, they've never actually sat down and thought about the implications of being able to casually obliterate an opponent and how that capacity isn't really all it's cracked up to be.
You can, but what warrants it?
You're assuming US gets involved, correct?
No, I'm not.
This is capacity they already have.
An attack by the PRC against the RoC would be the first time in history where a land army defeats a navy with just artillery. And it'd be as one-sided as the Battle of Surigao Strait.
You gotta understand TI, we have not seen a forced amphibious assault against hardened, dug in defenses in 70 years. If the PRC is dumb enough to try it they'll learn why Schwarzkopf made a FEINT amphibious assault against Iraq instead of a real one. 'Cuz with the artillery the world has now it would be a meat grinder for anyone trying it.
You just can't envision it because you've never seen a fight where a SINGLE land fired artillery shell from a traditional howitzer has a better than 50/50 chance of hitting a landing ship and killing everyone aboard, five miles offshore. That's the world of war we live in today. We just haven't seen a fight where that sort of capacity has been demonstrated, because we've been shooting goat herding terrorists for twenty years.
TI.....
The likelihood of Taiwan falling to the PRC is absolutely zero.
The straits would run red with blood and burning kerosene. Do you know how many DPICM rounds the RoC has for their M270's? How many hardened, silo launched antiship missiles they have?
It's a lot. It's a disgusting lot. Enough to burn the entire PRC navy ten times over.
Y'know that scene in Evangelion when all those massed launchers are firing off hammering an angel with a billion dollars worth of missiles? It'd be like that.
An attempt to take Taiwan by force would turn a hundred miles of water into a graveyard for ten million men. It cannot be done. ESPECIALLY now that they have GUIDED 155 mm artillery rounds. That's like hitting ships with WW1 secondary battery guns from high angles with the precision of a missile. Ships simply aren't built with armor against large AP rounds anymore, especially not China's cheapo fleet.
First thing that came to mind was the song from Caddy Shack and blowing up gopher holes.