Congratulations Sony

By Wade

I never thought I would say this, but I will not be seeing the next Spider-man movie. But Sony's done it. Fail is written all over this:

In a back story twist reminiscent of the evolution of "Superman" into "Smallville,"

That right there should be enough. Of course Raimi is all class:

“Working on the Spider-Man movies was the experience of a lifetime for me," Raimi said in a statement. "While we were looking forward to doing a fourth one together, the studio and Marvel have a unique opportunity to take the franchise in a new direction, and I know they will do a terrific job."

There is one shining ray of hope for the movie(emphasis mine):

[it] will be produced by "Spider-Man" veterans Laura Ziskin and Avi Arad of Marvel Studios.

After the cinematic abortion that was Spider-man 3 (almost as bad as X-3), I said I would give the Raimi crew another chance simply because of the brilliance of the first two. However, after this dick move by Sony, I vow that they shall not profit by me in this endeavor.

Blagojevich is (not?) Blacker Than Obama

By Wade

Sarah Palin may be a joke with air-time behind her now, but Blagojevich is a joke that stopped being funny a long time ago. I thought his disastrous appearance on the Daily Show was bad enough, but he and his hair are still finding their way into the headlines.

[Blagojevich] said in his Esquire interview:
I'm blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little Laundromat in a black community not far from where he lived...

"It was a very stupid thing to say," Blagojevich told Chicago station CBS 2 this morning. "Obviously, I'm not blacker than President Obama."

Remember Rod, the internet never forgets...

Also:

The White House had no official comment.

I wouldn't either.

Palin: Wrangled Rogue

By Wade

Sarah Palin signs multi-year deal with Fox news.

I'll give you all a moment to stop laughing.

The former governor of Alaska has signed a multi-year deal with Fox News to serve as a contributor across all Fox News platforms...

Needless to say, this is certainly a rogue move for such a maverick non-quitter. I'll bet she even finishes her term, I mean contract, since she's a real down-to-earth town hall main street average real folksy American who is real.

Some liberals are rightly sad about this. I share Paul Begala's sentiments:

"I do think maybe it suggests, sadly for Democrats, that she might not be running," said Democratic strategist and CNN contributor Paul Begala. "Democrats ... are pretty confident they can defeat Sarah Palin. She's not going to beat Barack Obama."

This tickled me, especially since, right before I saw this, I had just voted on a facebook poll asking if people would vote for Palin in 2012. What a joke she is.

All Eyes on Massachusetts

By Dave

It's looking like the senate race to fill Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts has gotten a little close for comfort, and it has huge implications for health care reform. If Democrat Martha Coakley loses to Republican Scott Brown,  Democrats will lose their 60th vote right at the 11th hour. To make matters more interesting, the polling is all over the map. The Boston Globe has a poll that shows Coakley up 15 points, PPP shows them nearly in a dead heat. Nate Silver gives an interpretation:

All of the polls have positives and negatives. And any of them could be right.

The average of the three polls shows Coakley up by 8 points. As I've written before, I would probably take "over" on that 8 percent number. Fundamentally, this is still Massachusetts, and unless the Democratic candidate has some sort of fatal flaw (Coakley is a bit boring, but that's hardly an unpardonable sin), it's just going to be a really heavy lift for the turnout to be lopsided enough to allow the Republican to prevail.

At the same time, while I'm taking the "over" on that 8 percent, I'm also taking the over on variance. Special elections are notoriously hard to predict. And we also seem to be at some weird sort of inflection point in the electoral cycle. You can point toward some evidence to make the case that the bottom is really falling out from Democrats, and you can point toward other evidence which suggests that the whole tea-party backlash, while not unimportant, is really just operating at the margins. So, I acknowledge that there is a fairly tangible shot of Brown winning -- higher than the 3-5 percent I assigned to him after seeing the Rasmussen poll, but lower than the 15-25 percent chance I gave him before seeing the Boston Globe result.

So, your guess is as good as mine. It sounds like Coakley has a reasonable chance of pulling this off, but it's not unthinkable that she won't. If she doesn't Democrats will either have to scramble to pass health care before Brown gets into office, which probably means the House will have to accept the Senate bill nearly as is. Or they will have to go back and see if they can pull in a Republican like Olympia Snowe (R-ME).

Creationism vs Evolution

By Dave

This, unfortunately, is what these type of debates end up sounding like...



Via Pharyngula

Sordid Political Tales

By Dave

Got your bowl of popcorn? Good, your gonna need it. New York Magazine has an excerpt from the ultra-juicy, super-gossipy Game Changer, a new book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about the 2008 election.

The excerpt deals with the wild, tragic insanity between John and Elizabeth Edwards and the affair that led to the implosion of the Edwards campaign. Seriously, it reads like a episode from a political All My Children, that's how crazy it is. But it's also kinda heart-breaking and by the end you can't help but feel really bad for everyone involved.

Not Safe For Anyone

By Wade

Words cannot describe. Just read it. Atlas Shrugged Updated for the Current Financial Crisis. Brilliant and mean-spirited, just the way I like it.

“A Debacle of Historic and Epic Proportions.”

By Dave

Just wow...

They knew Palin was that bad...and yet they tried to push her on us anyways...


Watch CBS News Videos Online

Via LGF

He's Even Proud of Himself

By Wade

Congressman Barret (R-SC) has this posted up on his site. Well, all I can say is that I guess it's not as bad as internment camps. Regardless, it's just another case of "round up the brown folk and ship 'em out." Not surprising from a South Carolina Republican. This is the same guy who sponsored the Complete the Fence Act, which is exactly what it sounds like.

If this bill is passed, it will deport all people from this country on any sort of visa, regardless of whether or not they've ever been involved with any sort of terrorism. Way to go, bonehead.

Daily Show Nails It

By Wade

They've had a good run of material these past few days with the Yemen bomber, but here's the segment that started it all in case you missed it. It is also, incidentally, from one of the best Daily Shows in recent memory. Enjoy.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Terror 2.0 by Yemen
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

As I Say, Not As I Do

By Wade

The New York Times has a new article about voluntary mortgage defaulting. Here's the meat of it:

John Courson, president and C.E.O. of the Mortgage Bankers Association, recently told The Wall Street Journal that homeowners who default on their mortgages should think about the “message” they will send to “their family and their kids and their friends.”

Businesses — in particular Wall Street banks — make such calculations routinely. Morgan Stanley recently decided to stop making payments on five San Francisco office buildings. A Morgan Stanley fund purchased the buildings at the height of the boom, and their value has plunged. Nobody has said Morgan Stanley is immoral...

Essentially, the banks are saying, "Wait a second! You're not allowed to do that, only we're allowed to, because it makes us money to do so!" Uh huh... just keep this in mind:

Brent White, a University of Arizona law professor, notes that a family who bought a three-bedroom home in Salinas, Calif., at the market top in 2006, with no down payment (then a common-enough occurrence), could theoretically have to wait 60 years to recover their equity.

No thanks.

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski

By Dave

This is awesome! Someone made a full length script of the Big Lebowski as if it were written by Shakespeare. Here is a taste:

WALTER
Youth, thou art entering a world of pain.
We know this document is home-work thine,
And that thou stealest cars—

THE KNAVE
And monies too!

WALTER
And monies, and this is thy home-work, boy.
Wherefore silence? What impudence is this?
Thou art killing thy father, Laurence! O!
This hath no end; he never will speak word.
I take thy parchment back, and turn to plans
Of secondary contingence. Look well.
Behold thy car, the corvette, crimson-stain’d,
And see what befalls sinners evermore.
[He raises his sword, and smites the car]
This befalleth when thou firk’st a stranger ‘twixt the buttocks, Laurence! Understand’st thou? Dost thou attend me? Seest thou what happens, Laurence? Seest thou what happens, Laurence? Seest thou what happens, Laurence, when thou firk’st a stranger ‘twixt the buttocks?!
[Enter CLOWN]
This be what befalleth, Laurence! This be what befalleth, Laurence!

H/T Kottke

Even More Avatar

By Wade

This is a fairly long, extensive article detailing the differences between a scriptment Cameron wrote right after Titanic and the Avatar that we've seen on the big screen. If you don't feel like reading the whole thing, the bullet points at the beginning cover most of it, but here's a few sections I felt would have given the movie a different perspective(in the original script Jake was named Josh):

...an Earth where the people aren't just urban, they've completely and utterly lost touch with anything green. Keep this in mind, because this is one of the guiding elements of what makes Josh fall in love with Pandora.

Josh's cramped apartment has a huge TV screen that takes up an entire wall. It's on this TV that we learn about the state of the environment in the wake of a news report about the death of the last lion outside of captivity. Then Josh watches a report on a massive fire on the Boston subway that asphyxiated one hundred commuters; soon we'll learn one of those commuters was his twin brother.

This sort of contrast would've made the amazing environment of Pandora all the more startling.

They want the Na'vi to work in Pandoran refineries - it's cheaper to refine the metals they mine on site, making them weigh less, before shipping them back home.

In Project 880 the billions spent on Avatars means saving trillions on workers.

I don't know if this is any less stereotypical evil corporation, but it does add an outsourcing element to the exploitation of the indigenous.

...first he discovers how deadly Pandora is - as he is disembarking from the shuttle there's a shriek from the jungle and giant sentry guns spray fire into the darkness. Immediately we see that Hell's Gate is a place that is under constant siege.

I like this a lot, giving the planet a feeling more akin to a creeping vine constantly searching for a way in to strangle the foreign body.

What these guys tell Josh that's really interesting (and answers a huge number of questions from Avatar) is that RDA is chartered by the ICA - Interplanetary Commerce Administration - the future Earth trade regulating body. This charter allows RDA to exploit any moon, planet, etc they want, but they must follow strict rules, chief among which is they are allowed a limited military presence and no weapons of mass destruction.

RDA games the system in Project 880, as opposed to being just monolithically evil in Avatar. This is how it happens in the real world, too.

Josh Sully tells the Earth that Pandora will give any humans that return a disease that will wipe out humanity.

And this answers some of my biggest questions: namely, why wouldn't the big evil corporation just come back with more firepower and obliterate all life on the planet to get their shiny rocks?

If you have the time and the inclination, the whole thing is worth reading. As I've said before, I'm a sucker for "what ifs".

Are Democrats "Dropping Like Flies"?

By Dave

Steve Benen, at the Washington Monthly, says not anymore than Republicans:

In the House, 14 GOP incumbents have decided not to seek re-election, while 10 Democratic incumbents have made the same announcement. Does this mean Republicans are "dropping like flies"?

In the Senate, six Republican incumbents have decided not to seek re-election, while two Democratic incumbents have made the same announcement. Is this evidence of a mass Democratic exodus?

Among governors, several incumbents in both parties are term-limited and prevented from running again, but only three Democrats who can seek re-election -- Parkinson in Kansas, Doyle in Wisconsin, and Ritter in Colorado -- have chosen not to. For Republicans, the number is four -- Douglas in Vermont, Rell in Connecticut, Crist in Florida, and Pawlenty in Minnesota. (Update: the GOP number is five if we include Palin in Alaska.)

So, to review, Republican retirements outnumber Democratic retirements in the House, in the Senate, and among governors. The preferred Republican/media meme of the day doesn't match up well against reality.

If anything, I think this just goes to show that given the recession and the enormity of problems facing the nation, now is a bad time to be an incumbent from any party.

Why Was It a Surprise?

By Dave

Something has been bothering me about Ritter dropping out. According to the Post,  

U.S. Sen. Mark Udall and U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette announced they would call a meeting of Democrats in the state's congressional delegation, along with Colorado Democratic Party chair Pat Waak, for 1 p.m. today to "discuss how to go forward as a party."

Does this scare anyone else? Everyone seems totally blown away. Could it be that literally no one knew?! That Ritter didn't talk about this with anyone. How could it be if he was feeling this way, why wasn't he working to ensure that the most qualified Democrats in the State were lined up ahead of time? Why wasn't he convincing Romanoff to run for Governor, instead of waging an insurrection against Sen. Bennett?

If Ritter wants to spend time with his family, that's totally fine. If he doesn't want to run for reelection, also fine. But why was this a surprise to party insiders? Why wasn't handled better?