Last Call: At The Movies

Legendary film critic and movie historian Roger Ebert lost his battle with cancer today, passing at the age of 70.

Ebert, 70, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and who was without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic, died Thursday in Chicago. He had been in poor health over the past decade, battling cancers of the thyroid and salivary gland.

He lost part of his lower jaw in 2006, and with it the ability to speak or eat, a calamity that would have driven other men from the public eye. But Ebert refused to hide, instead forging what became a new chapter in his career, an extraordinary chronicle of his devastating illness that won him a new generation of admirers. “No point in denying it,” he wrote, analyzing his medical struggles with characteristic courage, candor and wit, a view that was never tinged with bitterness or self-pity. 

On Tuesday, Mr. Ebert blogged that he had suffered a recurrence of cancer following a hip fracture suffered in December, and would be taking “a leave of presence.” In the blog essay, marking his 46th anniversary of becoming the Sun-Times film critic, Ebert wrote “I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers hand-picked and greatly admired by me.” 

Always technically savvy — he was an early investor in Google — Ebert let the Internet be his voice. His rogerebert.com had millions of fans, and he received a special achievement award as the 2010 “Person of the Year” from the Webby Awards, which noted that “his online journal has raised the bar for the level of poignancy, thoughtfulness and critique one can achieve on the Web.” His Twitter feeds had 827,000 followers. 

The one word I can use to describe Ebert is this:  honest.  He was honest in his reviews, both scathing and praising, honest with his cancer and his desire to keep going long after other people would have given up, and most of all honest with himself, smoothly passing on his prolific writing duties to a new generation of film historians employed as writers for his website.  He honestly recognized technology as both tool and hindrance for film, and in spreading its virtues across the planet.

Honestly, he will be missed.  More on Ebert from The Grio's Adam Howard, Sci-fi author John Scalzi, and President Obama.

The Nullification Game

Yesterday's story about North Carolina Republicans signing onto a bill that would invoke the Tenth Amendment in order to establish a state religion was never about establishing a state religion, but all about nullification, specifically nullification of the country's first black President, and people concentrating on the theocracy angle are in part missing the bigger threat here.

If the logic that the Tenth Amendment trumps the Supremacy Clause holds true (despite a good 60 years of Supreme Court precedent that the greater good of the nation outweighs a state's right to simply ignore federal laws) then we no longer have a United States of America, but a disunited country.  We've fought wars over this concept, guys.  Some 150 years after states went to war against each other over this, the Republican party is increasingly moving toward this poisonous position once again.

"Washington can't tell us what to do" has become "We won't enforce their laws" in turn becoming "We no longer recognize the laws we don't like" and is going towards "We'll fight like hell to be free of you."  Texas grumbling about secession, North Dakota passing clearly unconstitutional abortion restrictions and daring Washington to do something about it, now we have North Carolina challenging the Bill of Rights and making a huge court fight out of it.

There's no real downside to constantly overloading the courts with these battles, because all it takes is one win to open the door, and then chaos reigns.  There's four votes to have the Tenth Amendment be the predominant tenet of the law, nullifying the federal, on the Supreme Court.  These are the same jokers that came within a whisker of overturning Obamacare completely on these same grounds, and whom believe that corporations are entities with free speech rights that can only be expressed by being able to use unlimited funds to buy our election system.

So no, I don't put nullification past them.  This is all part of the ALEC playbook anyway: relentlessly challenge anything remotely liberal in court until it either becomes unenforceable or is overturned.  So far it's working out rather well for them, only being stopped by a thin margin of occasional capricious wisdom on the part of Justice Kennedy and the ego of Chief Justice Roberts not wanting to go down in legal history as the biggest goat ever.

That ain't much to rest a country on.

[UPDATE]  Looks like the national public outcry was so massive that North Carolina's state House Speaker, Republican Thom Tillis is promising that he will not bring the bill up for a vote:

A House resolution supporting the creation of an official religion in North Carolina will never come to a vote, officials said Thursday.

House Speaker Thom Tillis' office said House Joint Resolution 494 was dead.

So, looks like we won this round.  The next, well...

The Merchant Of Menace

Adidas, you're horrible, horrible people.

Kevin Ware broke his leg during an Elite Eight game on Sunday. Louisville handled it in classic, major college athletic fashion, by exploiting sentiment for profit. “Rise Up # 5″ Final Four t-shirts are already for sale on the team website. Proceeds benefit…the Louisville Athletic Dept and Adidas. Just shameless.

Damn right there is.

StupidiNews!

• Connecticut's state legislature has passed and Gov. Dan Malloy is expected to sign into law today strict new gun safety measures in the wake of the Newtown mass shooting.
• Students at a rural Georgia high school are organizing the school's first racially integrated prom this year after decades of "traditionally" segregated separate proms.
• South Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia are recalling nearly 2 million late model vehicles due to safety concerns with brake lights.
• The notion of Ohio Dem Sen. Sherrod Brown as chair of the Senate Banking Committee has the banking industry up in arms as NY Sen. Chuck Schumer remains silent about his plans for the seat.
• Disney has opted to shutter game developer LucasArts and license out the Star Wars franchise to other game developers.

Last Call

Josh Kraushaar makes the case as to why Mark "Appalachian Trail" Sanford is in real trouble in this special election against Elizabeth Colbert Busch.

Sanford’s personal problems are the biggest reason the seat will be in play. There’s a long list of House seats flipping in the wake of scandal: Anthony Weiner saw his Queens district flip to Republicans in the wake of his sex scandal. One month after winning a Republican primary in March 2006, an indicted Tom DeLay opted not to run for reelection, recognizing there was a good chance he’d lose despite representing one of the most Republican seats in the country. That same year, Rep. Don Sherwood couldn’t overcome the blowback from news that he choked his mistress, coughing up his ruby-red district in northeast Pennsylvania. All those seats were considered safely in one party’s corner, until scandal struck.

Second, special elections are notoriously unpredictable.  Democrats won several seats in the heart of the Deep South in 2008 off-year elections, and Republicans picked up a seat in Hawaii just before the 2010 midterms. Like all special elections, the race will turn on which side can generate more enthusiasm from the base.  Given Sanford’s high unfavorable ratings, it’s very possible a lot of Republicans will choose to stay home, giving Democrats an opportunity to win the turnout battle.

Third, even though the race is taking place in South Carolina, the Charleston-based district favors country-club Republicans over social conservatives. That could play to Sanford’s advantage -- these voters may be more forgiving of his sins -- but it also suggests they’d be more receptive to voting for a moderate Democrat than their more evangelical counterparts in the western part of the state. The district nearly elected an openly gay businesswoman, Linda Ketner, who took 48 percent of the vote in 2008 against then-Republican Rep. Henry Brown.

I honestly think a lot of Country Club Repubs are going to be horrified to be represented by Sanford.  The guy's damaged goods, and if you're playing the influence game, honestly, how much clout is Sanford going to have on the Hill if he wins?  Meanwhile, Colbert Busch is a business-friendly Democrat, and frankly as Kraushaar says, a lot of them will be okay with that on the social stuff anyway.

We'll see, but I stand by my theory that for this race to be a tossup in a blood red district shows just how awful of a candidate Sanford is.

North Carolina's Turn On The Rack, Again

Boy, North Carolina Republicans are really going straight for the insaneotrons, aren’t they.

A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.

The bill grew out of a federal lawsuit filed last month by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In the lawsuit, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.

But FREEDOM and DON’T TREAD ON ME so we’ll ignore the First Amendment part that says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” and all that.  But it gets even more awesome, now with LIBERTY:

House Bill 494, filed by Republican Rowan County Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford, would refuse to acknowledge the force of any judicial ruling on prayer in North Carolina – or indeed on any Constitutional topic:

“The Constitution of the United States does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional; therefore, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the power to determine constitutionality and the proper interpretation and proper application of the Constitution is reserved to the states and to the people,” the bill states. “Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion.”

The Tenth Amendment argument, also known as “nullification,” has been tried unsuccessfully by states for more than a century to defy everything from the Emancipation Proclamation of the Civil War to President Obama’s health care reforms to gun control.

So yeah, Tenth Amendment nullification, the South’s favorite “I can’t hear you Washington lalalalala” argument since 1828.  At this point we’ve got people actively saying that the Union doesn’t matter, that 150 years of precedent and a war fought over the issue doesn’t matter, and that states can do what they want so screw you.

It doesn’t actually work this way.  Or at least it didn’t before President Thugheart X Reparations came to power in his illegal Kung-Fu and waffles junta.  Now all of a sudden we’re dusting off the Fort Sumter gameplan again.  Sure, let’s keep up that outreach, GOP.

And lest we think this is a nowhere bill written by a couple of dinks from Salisbury who will get politically disappeared, it seems the GOP here is quite serious about passing this, as we see at the end of the article:

Eleven House Republicans have signed on to sponsor the resolution, including Majority Leader Edgar Starnes, R-Caldwell, and Budget Chairman Justin Burr, R-Stanly.

This one could get ugly.

Time To Police Yourselves, Folks

The GOP assault on government services continues, as a Georgia town compels residents to own a gun to protect themselves.  We can't afford cops while we're cutting taxes for the rich and destroying government services, we'll just make you defend your own homes from criminals.

The town of Nelson, Georgia, followed through on its proposal to require residents to own a gun Monday night following a unanimous vote by the city council.

WGCL-TV reported that the law will apply to heads of household, with exceptions built in for the disabled, mentally ill and those objecting to gun ownership for religious reasons. Convicted felons will not be allowed to own a firearm.

“If anything should happen that they would need to use a firearm, [now] they are backed up by their government, their city government,” council member Edith Portillo told the station.

Now, the city council says the ordinance is symbolic and won't be enforced, mainly because Nelson, Georgia has about 1,500 people and city council members outnumber the number of cops.  Or in this case, cop.  Singular.  (He's overworked.)

But the whole point is now, if there's any issues with crime, Nelson City Council can say "Well, did you have a gun in the home?  You didn't?  Guess that's too bad."  How long before this law becomes not "symbolic" but actual law, and in a place much larger than Nelson?

Won't be long in red state America, folks.

StupidiNews!

• Former disgraced SC Republican Governor Mark Sanford has won the GOP runoff ahead of next month's special election for SC-1's congressional seat.
• After losing tens of billions during the housing depression, mortgage giant Fannie Mae recorded a $17.2 billion profit in 2012 on the road to paying back taxpayers.
• The NRA's "School Shield Task Force" is recommending armed law enforcement officers in every US public school.
• British bankers are trying to get around EU banker bonus caps by redefining who qualifies as a "risk-taker".
• California state Democrats are introducing legislation to force companies to disclose what personal information they've collected on state residents.

Last Call

The GOP minority outreach plan continues, and the Republicans' "secret weapon" this time around is Raffi Williams, son of FOX pundit Juan Williams.  Evan McMorris-Santoro:

A significant part of the Republican Party's future rests on the shoulders of Raffi Williams, the 24 year-old son of Fox News' Juan Williams.

Not long after RNC chair Reince Priebus admitted his party has been unable to appeal to the youth and minorities, Raffi Williams got the job of selling the GOP to youth outlets and the African American press as a Deputy Press Secretary.

He admits making young and black voters consider voting Republican is a tall order. But Williams told BuzzFeed a visible African American media outreach program can reap political rewards for the GOP beyond the black vote.

"I think it's a slow process. If you expect us to get a ridiculous amount of African Americans in the next election, that's not going to happen probably," he said. "But we can start to make inroads, and the more inclusive we are as a party the better optics we get to other demographics as well — not just African Americans — and that helps us in the long run." 

What Raffi Williams and the rest of these go-getters haven't figured out yet is that the problem isn't reaching African-Americans, Latinos, LGBT Americans, and other minority groups, it's the people in the GOP currently reaching us with messages that we're distinctly second-class and not worth the GOP's time, or worse, that we're enemies of America.

You have Raffi Williams out here wanting to make the case that Republicans are good for minorities, and yet we can't hear your message over the volume of hate coming from the people up top making the decisions.  All we think Republicans want to do is attack the nation's first minority President as lazy, stupid, and evil.  Republicans want to undo everything he's done, even when they agreed with it up until the point he said "this idea from Republicans is a good one and I want to incorporate it into this legislation."

In other words, until Republicans show me they have a goal other than being assholes who only care about the one percent, who want to make it more difficult to vote, more difficult to get and keep a job that pays enough to keep you out of poverty, and who assume all black people are lazy, shiftless bastards who need to be uplifted by your morally and intellectually superiority, I really don't give a damn who delivers your message.

Have a seat, Raffi.  You need to be working on your own broken party before you even think about outreach to anyone else.  Your messenger is meaningless until you change the message.

The GOP Voter Suppression Plan Continues

Add Arkansas to the list of red states taking the right to vote away from people for the crime of being Democrats, to battle "voter fraud" that doesn't exist.

Arkansas legislators passed a law Monday requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, overriding Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe's veto of the bill, which he called an expensive solution to a non-existent problem.

The Republican-led state House voted 52-45, largely along party lines, to complete an override that started in the GOP-controlled Senate on a 21-12 vote last week. Only a simple majority was needed in each chamber.

"We are trying to protect the integrity of one of the most fundamental rights we have here in America," said state Rep. Stephen Meeks, a Republican from Greenbrier and the bill's House sponsor. House Speaker Davy Carter, a Cabot Republican who did not vote for the bill when it passed the House last month, supported the override.

Sure they are.  The fact that it will "stop in-person voter fraud" which never happens, but it will also prevent thousands of mostly minority, poor, elderly, and college-age students from actually voting, all groups that vote Democratic, is just an unintended consequence that just happens to be enacted every single time by Republican legislatures across the country.  It's just a staggering coincidence, I'm sure.

Republicans insist on spending millions to "protect the integrity of the vote" and to spare no taxpayer expense to stop a non-existent "epidemic" of in-person voting fraud, but then argue that early voting, expanded in-person absentee ballot voting, and weekend voting especially the Sunday before the election is an expense that no state can afford because it's wasteful government spending.  

Creating additional hoops to jump through to vote, vital government function.  People actually voting, wasteful government spending.  There's your modern GOP at the state level, folks.

Study For Your Supper

Tennessee Republicans move forward with legislation to strip welfare money from kids who don't get good enough grades:

Two Tennessee lawmakers introduced legislation that would tie welfare assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to the educational performance of students who benefit from it, and the legislation was approved by committees in both the state House and Senate last week.

Under the legislation brought by two Republicans, a student who doesn’t not make “satisfactory progress” in school would cost his or her family up to 30 percent of its welfare assistance, the Knoxville News and Sentinel reported.

Now, it seems amending the bill to allow exceptions for kids with disabilities is enough of a sop in order to allow the state to punish the rest of the poor kids, who must be poor because their parents are lazy.  Here's the fun part:

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Turner of Nashville said parents of children with “undiagnosed learning disabilities” could suffer because of the bill and, even if a child is performing poorly in school, “the kid still has to eat.”

Turner also said the bill apparently does not apply to home-schooled children and, “I guess a person who wants to get around this just can say ‘I’m home schooling my children’.”

Surprise!   Of course the bill doesn't apply to home-schooled kids.  We know they have involved non-lazy parents because they're home-schooled!  The fact that the overwhelming majority of home-schooled families vote GOP has nothing to do with it.

Oopsie.  Still, the point of the bill is to punish "those people" for being poor, so they stop being lazy working at their $8 an hour job 40 hours a week and get a second job like a real American, so they'll have even less time at home to become involved with their kid's schoolwork.  That'll teach em to be poor people!

StupidiNews!

• North Korea's latest provocative move is to restart its nuclear reactor program, mothballed since October 2007.
• Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz is claiming that expanding Medicaid for states through Obamacare will result in states having to close schools and release criminals early.
• A federal judge has rejected a bid by Wall Street banks to halt Stockton, California's bankruptcy proceedings, meaning they will continue.
• Average unemployment in the 17-country Eurozone reached a record high 12% in the first quarter of 2013, signaling additional problems ahead.
• Roadrunner, the first supercomputer to break the one trillion operations per second scale and the world's fastest in 2009, will be taken offline and destroyed by the Department of Energy.

Last Call

This should be the point where I post some elaborate April Fools' joke about me selling the blog to raise money to go to New York and profess my undying love for Jennifer Rubin or something, but I got nothing right now other than I hope you didn't buy your kids baby animals for Easter.

Pet horror stories are a staple of the post-Easter season in the United States, day animal control and rescue officials. The Easter holiday brings out the duckling, chick, and baby bunny lovers in people. They make an impulse buy, the recipient goes wild with joy for a day, but the honeymoon soon ends and parents scramble to surrender the animals.

Animal rescue staff, traditionally inundated with calls from regretful parents following Easter, are asking consumers to stop and think before buying an animal for Easter, and with good reason.

If, and it’s a big if, the animal doesn’t die from all that Easter excitement, now there’s a growing and soon-to-be mature duck, chicken (worse, a rooster), and rabbit on your hands.

A pubescent rabbit is not one to cuddle. Females are prone to running in circles, lunging, and grunting, says Anne Martin, shelter director for House Rabbit Society’s headquarters in Richmond, Calif. And if you purchased a male? “The boys will spray urine ... all over the place,” says Ms. Martin, who owns six rabbits and adds that a mature rabbit is a fantastic pet. But they can be quite alarming for a new pet owner whose supplier did not warn them.

Suppliers are also known for selling bunnies that have been taken away from their mothers too soon, says Mary Cotter, vice president of the House Rabbit Society.    

Ducklings and chicks have their own drawbacks, says Susie Coston director of the Farm Sanctuary shelter.

Like bunnies, ducklings and chicks are extremely fragile. If a child plays with them like a toy instead of fine china, they are likely to die from over-handling, Ms. Coston says.

And that's not a joke.

Shooting Yourselves En El Pie

The post-2012 election GOP "Latino outreach" continues to be one of the most miserable political relations failures in history, and the latest component of this house of cards is the fact that a big chunk of the Latino electorate sees Obamacare as something that directly benefits the Latino community, something that the GOP wants to take away.

Latinos, who have the lowest rates of health coverage in the country, are among the strongest backers of President Obama's healthcare law. In a recent national poll, supporters outnumbered detractors by more than 2 to 1. Latinos also overwhelmingly see guaranteeing healthcare as a core government responsibility, surveys show.

Yet congressional Republicans continue to make repeal of the 2010 Affordable Care Act a top agenda item and have renewed calls for deep cuts in health programs such as Medicaid, which are very popular with Latinos.

"Obamacare is a colossal mistake for our country," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said recently in a speech on the Senate floor. "It needs to be pulled out by its roots."

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Alexandra Franceschi expressed confidence that Latinos would ultimately recognize that the law raises costs and burdens businesses. "We're going to do a better job explaining why this law is negatively affecting all Americans, including the Hispanic community," she said.

And I'm sure it will be successful.  Note the red states with the largest Latino populations are now quickly trying to embrace Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, states like Texas and Florida.   Latino voters don't think Obamacare is a "colossal mistake".

But they think Republicans are.

Good luck with that, GOP.  Meanwhile, keep on confusing Hugo Chavez with Cesar Chavez and using vulgar racist terms while vowing to block immigration reform yet again. (and that's just the last couple of days.)  Also, vow to repeal a law that two thirds of Latino voters approve of in Obamacare, and go ahead and block gun control legislation that 84% of Latinos support.

Then ask yourselves why Latinos vote Democratic.  I can't imagine why.

Ashley, Alison, And The Turtle, Part 4

The Ashley Judd sage continues here in the Bluegrass State as Judd campaign adviser and former state Treasurer Jonathan Miller takes to the Daily Beast to say that Big Dog isn't responsible for Judd being pushed out...but KY Blue Dogs who duped the press (and apparently bloggers like me) into thinking he was involved are very much responsible for her decision not to run.

The past several weeks had seemed like a dizzying blur of false testimony, as the national media seized any morsel of news or gossip to sate its ravenous appetite for Ashley Judd stories. As the actress contemplated whether to move back to Kentucky and challenge Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, I was alternating with Congressman John Yarmuth as witness for the defense against a steady stream of salacious recriminations.

The prosecution was assisted in nearly every article by the same handful of Democratic professionals railing against the prospects of a Judd candidacy, promoting instead the potential Senate candidacy of Kentucky’s young Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes. While many may legitimately believe that Grimes is the better candidate, many of those who have been quoted impugning Judd, or have done so on background, also have personal motives: some stand to profit from a Grimes campaign, some may have been trying to redress perceived “disses” by the actress, and some may be aiming to keep Grimes out of the 2015 gubernatorial race, where she could undermine their preferred candidates.

Miller claims that Judd never uttered the phrase "I have been raped twice, so I think I can handle Mitch McConnell" because he was at the dinner where she was supposed to have said it.  I believe him here, and that false charge has Mitch McConnell's grimy fingerprints all over them. 

But then Miller says this:

The second Big Lie involved the Big Dog. The national media began to press the narrative that former President Bill Clinton was trying to force Judd out of the race in favor of a Grimes candidacy because Grimes’ father, Jerry Lundergan, had been a longtime Clinton supporter and had helped Clinton win Kentucky twice in the 90s.

There’s no doubt that the whole Lundergan family had developed a deep bond with the Clintons ever since Jerry emerged as Hillary’s loudest Kentucky supporter in her 2008 presidential bid. And just because, as a Clinton campaign staffer in 1992 and an administration official in 1996, I don’t remember Lundergan’s involvement, it doesn’t mean he didn’t help the former President win Kentucky on those occasions.

But I can personally attest to one prominent Kentucky supporter of the Clinton/Gore reelection campaign: Ashley Judd. Indeed, that’s where we first met. And Judd’s close relationship with both Clintons continued through Hillary’s 2008 bid, when the actress campaigned with Bill in Texas. He later returned the favor by providing the cover squib for Judd’s 2011 memoir, All That is Bitter and Sweet.  So it’s not surprising that Ashley informed our Louisville dinner group that the former President had privately urged her to run against McConnell, offering his complete support for her prospective campaign.

ABC News ultimately cleared up the record, but by then the narrative was set—the most popular national figure for Kentucky Democrats was opposed to a Judd candidacy, providing further oxygen to the anti-Ashley conflagration.

So at this point, we have at least one Judd supporter who says the Clinton/Judd split was manufactured and sold in order to get her out of the race.  Here's my question:  if that's true, why didn't Clinton say anything?  The one guy who could have put Miller's claim to rest was the Big Dog himself, and indeed if that's the case, President Clinton would have had every reason in the name of Dem party unity to nip this in the bud.  Instead, silence.

The problem is while Judd may have been a Hillary backer in 2008, Jerry Lundergan was a far bigger one across the board.  What raises my alarms that this may be miller's sour grapes is his ending:

But pity Alison Lundergan Grimes, the primary beneficiary of the anti-Ashley putsch. Like most Judd supporters, I hope Grimes runs, defeats McConnell and enjoys a long and successful career in Washington. But there are two other equally plausible—if not more probable—scenarios: One, Grimes gets drubbed by McConnell, whose ruthless, take-no-prisoners campaigns have ended the political careers of four of his last five opponents. Or two, Grimes opts out of the race for another campaign, leaving McConnell with no serious opponent.

All the while, I imagine McConnell sitting back, watching the antics with his sly, tight grin, enjoying how a small group of Democrats duped the so-called liberal media into creating the false narrative of a Democratic civil war. Only a master politician could get so damn lucky.

Yeah, first, those aren't the words of somebody trying to make a logical argument against the Clinton hose job.   Second,  if it's a 'civil war' it ended in about a week and was totally one-sided.  Judd rolled over hard, fast enough I might add that I think she wasn't ready for the hell that Mitch was going to unleash upon her.

Luck had nothing to do with it.  If anything, this piece seems a bit self-serving on Miller's part.