Let me make it plain. I don’t care about gay marriage. But then I don’t care about straight marriage either. I mean, since I’ve been married for 31 years, I’m pretty good at it, but I don’t think being married is all that big of a thing. The idea that one person can meet all your needs mentally, physically, intellectually and especially, sexually for the rest of your life always and forever strikes me as damn near impossible.
But if gay folks want to join me in the institution of marriage, why the hell should I be upset? There’s enough misery to share so come on down and get your share.
Like Barack Obama, my position on same-sex marriage had to evolve and what it evolved to was it is no business of mine who wants to get married. As long as its limited to two people of the age of majority, they can jump the broom and turn the two into one. More power to them. The greatest right is the right to be left the hell alone. I can’t think of a single credible reason to be opposed to gay marriage that doesn’t have bigotry and homophobia attached to it.
And I know I’m not hearing any noise from folks saying they are against gay marriage because it’s “unnatural” and if it keeps up there won’t be babies born.
If there’s two things there are no shortage of its babies and stupid people making babies they don’t love, won’t take care of and really don’t want. The biggest threat to heterosexual marriage are cheating, divorcing, spouse abusing, not ready to be married HETEROSEXUALS.
Never mind all the number of marriages that crash and burn in bitter divorce. Forget about all the wives being thumped by husbands. Let’s not dwell on all those men who slip their ring off along with their boxer shorts to cheat with some other man’s wife. We can focus on what a threat celebrity marriages are and how Kim Kardashian’s 72-days long drive-by nuptials isn’t even close to being the shortest on record. Try Cher and Gregg Allman’s eight-days of wedded bliss for making a total joke of holy matrimony.
Two women raising their kids together next door isn’t a “threat” to my many years of matrimony. Anyone who uses that as an excuse for their own shit being raggedy, has no business being married in the first damn place.
Let’s get serious here, people. Bruce and Dick putting a ring on it isn’t going to make one married couple break apart, so don’t use my situation to justify your issues with homosexuals, okay? The last group that can hide behind their fear of a gay planet are Blacks. If our right to vote were put up to a vote the way the right for gays and lesbians to get married has been, how many of the 50 states would take that right away, especially when there’s a Black man running for reelection? Rights should never be subject to who has the best 30-second ad.
As far as Obama coming out (after Joe Biden gave him a big-ass push out of the closet) for gay marriage, the obvious question is, “Evolution complete then?”
Those who were waiting for Obama to come out in favor of gay marriage will be pleased. Those who were waiting for Obama to come out in favor of gay marriage that don’t like Obama or gay marriage will howl like stuck pigs.
Those who are blind cynics that are in favor of gay marriage but don’t want to say anything nice about Obama being in favor of it too will grumble, gripe and grip that it’s too little too late, that he should have done it on Inauguration Day 2008 and that it’s purely pandering to an important Democratic base.
Everyone else? As you were. The sun will rise in the East and set in the West and by the time our kids are having kids, they won’t think twice about those two nice old guys who walk their dog and wave “hello” at their neighbors.
At least not in my neighborhood. Yours might have a problem with it.
“red” vs. “blue” perspectives on the president’s decision.
Tomorrow, I’ll get to President Obama coming out (finally) for gay marriage, but there are other things going on equally newsworthy.
Dissent is as American as apple pie. Then, there’s this…
ITEM:A monthly newsletter published by the Greene County Republican Committee in Virginia is raising eyebrows for including a column in its March edition that calls for an “armed revolution” if President Barack Obama is elected to a second term in November.
Among articles denouncing a University of Virginia initiative to implement a living wage for employees of the institution, questioning if Obama is “America’s Most Biblically-Hostile U. S. President?” and an op-ed slamming the GOP establishment with generous use of capital letters, RightWingWatch picks out a column from the newsletter’s editor, Ponch McPhee.
In it, McPhee urges readers to encourage other conservatives to vote in November. He goes on to warn that the consequences of not defeating Obama, a so-called “ideologue unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized,” would be dire.
“[W]e shall not have any coarse [sic] but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November,” McPhee writes. “This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue.”
A disclaimer at the bottom of the publication apparently attempts to account for this type of rhetoric, noting that the contributors do “not reflect the opinion of the Republican Party whole or in part” and are only representative of the “individual” — in this case, the editor himself.
ITEM: Members of a white supremacist skinhead group called American Front trained with AK-47s, shotguns and explosives at a fortified compound in central Florida to prepare for what its reputed leader believed to be an “inevitable race war,” prosecutors said Tuesday.
According to court documents, members of American Front discussed acts of violence that included causing “a disturbance” at City Hall in Orlando, shooting at a house and attacking an anti-racist skinhead group.
At least 10 members of the group, which authorities described as a militia-styled, anti-Semitic domestic terrorist organization, have been arrested in Florida since the weekend, including at least three people on Tuesday.
The felony arrest charges include paramilitary training, attempting to shoot into an occupied dwelling, and evidence of prejudices while committing an offense. The last charge falls under Florida’s hate-crimes law.
According to a court statement from Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Kelly Boaz filed in support of an arrest warrant, the group was led by Marcus Faella, 39, of St. Cloud, Fla. He and his wife, Patricia Faella, 36, were among those arrested over the weekend.
“Marcus Faella has been planning and preparing the AF for what he believes to be an inevitable race war. Faella has stated his intent during the race war to kill Jews, immigrants, and other minorities. Faella believes the race war will take place within the next few years based on current world events.”
Master Race misfits and morons.
Much of the information of the alleged plots came from an informant who infiltrated the group in mid-2010.
According to Boaz: Faella viewed himself and fellow members of the American Front as “protectors of the white race.” He regularly conducted firearms, explosives and military/tactical training at his rural property in Saint Cloud and in the swamps of a Florida wildlife management area.
Faella’s remote property was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by two pit bulls. It contained fortified entrenchments built from railroad timbers, cement piling and other materials.
Faella regularly held weapons training on his compound, where he also stored water, meals ready to eat and other survivalist-type supplies. During target practice he told participants to visualize the jugs of water they were shooting at as the heads of black people, which he referred to by the N-word.
ITEM:Investigators examining the bloody scene near Phoenix where an anti-immigrant neo-Nazi murdered four people, including a 15-month-old baby girl, turned up “chemicals and military grade munitions,” authorities just announced.
J.T. Ready, a 39-year-old former National Socialist Movement leader who formed the nativist, militia-like U.S. Border Guard, was the apparent shooter before taking his own life in the murder-suicide, Gilbert Police Sgt. Bill Balafas said in a statement released today.
“The evidence to this point, which will still be verified, is leading us to believe Jason Ready is responsible for killing the other four and subsequently taking his own life,” the police statement said.
Beside Ready, the dead were identified as his girlfriend, Lisa Lynn Mederos, 47; her daughter, Amber Nieve Mederos, 23; the daughter’s boyfriend, Jim Franklin Hiott, and Amber’s 15-month-old baby girl, Lilly Lynn Mederos.
“This horrific event began [Wednesday] at around 1 p.m. [MDT] when officers responded to a domestic fight call in the 500 block of west Tumbleweed in Gilbert,” the statement said.
“Upon arrival, officer located four deceased adults and one severely injured child,” it continued. “The child was transported to a local hospital where she was pronounced deceased.”
“Investigators obtained a search warrant for the residence and located hazardous chemicals and military-style ammunitions,” the statement said without offering specifics.
Ready, an ex-Marine court-martialed twice for bad conduct, was a current candidate for Pinal County Sheriff, claiming he was the “common sense” choice to combat the “horrific reality of terrible violence associated with illegal immigration.”
He previously talked about placing landmines on the U.S.-Mexican border where he and other armed vigilantes – he called them “Minutemen on steroids” – conducted patrols to attempt to apprehend undocumented immigrants.
Before leaving the NSM and starting his vigilante border group, Ready marched in a parade with neo-Nazi flags and held a picture of Adolf Hitler, whom he called “a great white civil rights leader.” He called Jews “parasites.”
Ready also had been a long-time close associate of former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, a now-recalled Republican politician. Pearce helped Ready join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and reportedly groomed him for a bid for political office.
ITEM:EUCLID, Ohio — Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney didn’t comment on a supporter’s assertion that President Barack Obama should be tried for treason at a town hall event here.
A woman in the audience expressed dismay that Obama was “operating outside the Constitution,” then said Obama should be tried for treason for violating separation of powers.
“I do believe he should be tried for treason,” she said to applause from the audience.
Romney replied that “I happen to believe that the Constitution was not just brilliant, but that it was inspired, and so was the Declaration of Independence,” avoiding the woman’s comment.
He then allowed her to clarify what specifically she thought Obama had violated, and the woman proceeded to spout references to Executive Orders, including one that she said involved the Secret Service restricting the rights of citizens to protest.
Romney, who is protected by a detail of Secret Service agents, said “I will be happy to look at what he has done about the Secret Service with respect to protests.”
It may seem strange to single out Mitt Romney for special attention, but his story is the one that bugs me the most.
Neo-Nazis, White supremacists, wannabee anarchists and that kind of lice bother me, but I know those guys are too far gone. Their cause means more to them than human life. They can’t be reached and they can’t live among decent, civilized folks. You regard them as threats and act accordingly.
These are not fake militants like the pseudo New Black Panthers who specialize in riling up Fox News viewers by talking smack and acting hardcore. These are serious people who are not simply skulking around in the bushes in military gear playing paintball on the weekend. They want a revolution and they’re willing to kill to bring it about.
This is the kind of domestic terrorism that bears watching. It doesn’t always have to be Islamofascists desiring to commit jihad against the infidels who need to kept under watch for when they decide to turn violent words into deeds.
The creep who says there may be a need for “armed revolution” if Obama is reelected is just a creep running his mouth. It’s the guys who don’t talk that are all in for practicing what they are preaching.
Then there’s Mitt. The man who would be president.
You don’t have to like the guy who has the job you want, but you should be able to summon enough courage to raise a hand and say, “Wait a minute, ma’am. I respect your right to your opinion, but President Obama hasn’t committed treason and that is nothing to applaud about. I think I can do a better job than him and I want to win, but the idea is beat the president on the issues, not destroy him and win at any cost.”
When John McCain told a supporter Obama wasn’t an Arab and that he was a decent man, it cost McCain nothing to do and say the right thing. Romney had his McCain moment and he blew it.
I can accept Romney as my president if he wins, but his refusal to stand up when it counts makes it impossible for me to ever respect him.
If you are so terrified of offending a potential voter you are too afraid to correct one of your supporters engaging in a baseless lie, that is hardly a profile in courage. When you get you right down to it, it’s simply the act of a coward.
New urban jazz keyboardist Bob Baldwin disdains the “smooth jazz” moniker, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t familiar with the conventions of the genre. He’s got ideas that don’t have a thing to do with cranking out infinite versions of the same old sound with a few new riffs. Baldwin is a bit more ambitious than that and with Betcha By Golly Wow: The Songs of Thom Bell he honors one of the most successful songwriters of 1970s soul music.
Though not intended as the successor to Baldwin’s last tribute recording, Never Can Say Goodbye: A Tribute to Michael Jackson (Trippin n’ Rhythm, 2010), the new album is tighter and more focused than last year’s Re-Vibe (Trippin n’ Rhythm, 2011) which meandered at over 70 minutes in length. Here Baldwin is working with superior material from Bell (and his collaborator, the late Linda Creed) and the results are reproductions that pay respectful homage to the originals even if they don’t quite match them.
Most of Bell’s biggest hits are included. “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time),” “Betcha By Golly Wow” and “People Make the World Go Round” became staples of soul music when The Delfonics and The Stylistics performed them and Baldwin’s interpretation augments his keyboards with contributions from guitarists Russ Freeman and saxophonists Gerald Albright, Marion Meadows and Paul Taylor, among other guest musicians and vocalists.
There are some curious choices in material as Baldwin bypasses Spinners smashes “I’ll Be Around” and “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love?” in favor of the corny “The Rubberband Man,” which is salvaged by Ragan Whiteside‘s flute and Paul Brown on guitar. Bell himself penned a new song, “Gonna Be Sweeter.”
“Break Up To Make Up” is the album’s centerpiece with Will Downing‘s vocals gliding over the scorching beauty of Albright’s alto sax and augmented by six background singers as Baldwin and the rock-solid rhythm section of drummer Buddy Williams and bassist Anthony Jackson keep everything in the pocket. Downing has lost a bit as he falters toward the end, but he’s still one of premier crooners working today. Vivian Green interpretation of “La La Means I Love You” is pretty impressive and she’s a vocalist deserving of wider recognition.
The creator of “New Urban Soul” chillin’.
If the album has a problem, it is that there is a certain coldness due the reliance upon electronic “bass and drums” instead of live musicians. It may be more efficient to employ synthesizers, but for anyone familiar with Thom Bell’s lush arrangements in his heyday, the change in instrumentation is noticeable and jarring.
Baldwin may have seized upon a blueprint to build his future recordings around. He can alternate between his original works, and tributes to other unsung songwriters whose success in crafting hits for others denied them some of the recognition they deserved. Potential possibilities could include the music of Gamble and Huff, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Maurice White, Prince or Stevie Wonder.
If he follows that career path and make albums as pleasingly solid as Betcha By Golly Wow: The Songs Of Thom Bell , Baldwin will be a very busy man for the next decade or so.
Tracks: Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time); The Rubberband Man; La La Means I Love You); Gonna Be Sweeter; Break Up To Make Up; You’re As Right As Rain; I’ll Be Around; Bell & Creed; Betcha By Golly Wow; People Make the World Go Round.
Personnel: Bob Baldwin: piano, bass, drums, percussion; keyboards, vocals, background vocals, horn arrangement; Russ Freeman: guitars (1); Ragan Whiteside: flute, vocals (1, 2, 6); Preston Glass: keyboards, loops, horns, clavinet, drums, vocals, additional keyboards (1-4, 6, 7); Dennis Johnson: drums (2), drum loop (4); Paul Brown: guitars (2); Vivian Green: lead vocals (3); Gemma Burns: background vocals (3); Will Downing: lead vocals (5); Gerald Albright: alto saxophone (5); Buddy Williams: drums (5); Anthony Jackson: bass (5); B.J. Nelson, Paulette McWilliams, Audrey Wheeler, Craig Derry, Curtis King, Vanesse Thomas: background vocals (5); Paul Taylor: soprano saxophone (6); Marion Meadows: soprano saxophone (7, 10); Tony Lewis: drums (8); Toni Redd: vocals (9); Bob Francheschini: saxophone (9); Onaje Allen Gumbs: arrangement (9); Chembo Cornell: percussion (10).
An event unlikely to be repeated in North Carolina.
The foes of same-sex marriage may be acting out of reactionary bigotry, but that doesn’t make them stupid. They learned well the lessons of the Proposition 8 playbook written in California and are employing the same tactics in North Carolina. Divide the Black and the LGBT communities and use one against the other.
When a light is shined into the dark corners of American politics, it’s never pleasant to see what scurries away. Last week, a federal judge in Maine unsealed memos from the National Organization for Marriage, one of the most prominent groups fighting against same-sex marriage.
They relate to a case filed over whether the group must disclose the donors that helped underwrite a 2009 ballot initiative that overturned the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage. The group uses its designation as a social welfare organization to avoid federal disclosure, but the memos dispel any notion that the claim has any legitimacy. National Organization for Marriage is a political group, through and through.
The documents brag about its “crucial” role in passage of Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage that was overturned by a federal appeals court. They describe the group’s use of “robo-calls” to scare residents in different states away from supporting marriage equality. They talk of a plan to “expose Obama as a social radical,” but the most appalling portions deal with the group’s racially and ethnically divisive strategies.
“The strategic goal of the project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies,” the memo says, describing an initiative called the “Not a Civil Right Project.”
The project’s goal, according to the memo, was to recruit blacks who opposed same-sex marriage to represent the group, and then “provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots.”
Another stated aim is to manipulate Hispanic voters by making the exclusion of gay people from marriage “a key badge of Latino identity.”
As North Carolinians head to the polls next week to vote on the fate of a state constitutional amendment to bar gay marriage and civil unions, the controversial measure can already claim at least one clear winner: The National Organization for Marriage. Exposed in March as seeking to drive a wedge between African-Americans and gay rights groups, the conservative group has found North Carolina — which is 21 percent black — a fertile playing field for its divide and conquer tactics.
Armed with both NOM money and strategic know-how, state level groups such as Vote FOR Marriage NC have deftly deployed the race debate to court black clergy and voters in their attempt to ensure that North Carolina is no longer the only Southern state whose constitution does not bar same-sex marriage. Passed by the legislature in September 2011 as “An Act to Amend the Constitution to Provide That Marriage Between One Man and One Woman is the Only Domestic Legal Union That Shall Be Valid or Recognized in This State,” the measure goes before voters for ratification on May 8 as Amendment 1.
”Our efforts have certainly involved a broad coalition of individuals and organizations, including African-American pastors,” said Rachel Lee, a spokesperson for Vote FOR Marriage NC. Although pro-equality forces have mounted an aggressive fight against the amendment, NOM’s cynical blend of rhetoric and religion has successfully placed ethnicity — as much as equality — at the heart of the pro-Amendment 1 campaign.
”NOM has injected race into this conversation as an explicit strategy to drive a wedge between blacks and gays,” said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, the nation’s leading marriage equality advocacy group. “Anti-gay forces have deliberately funneled money into North Carolina [African-American] churches to enlist their leaders as messengers of their agenda.”
Anchoring the push are pro-Amendment 1 black clerics from North Carolina and around the nation with strong ties to NOM, such as Maryland’s Bishop Harry R. Jackson, who’s also leading the effort to overturn his own state’s recent law granting gays the right to marry, and Philadelphia-based Rev. Herbert Lusk, who appears in one of NOM’s latest video campaigns, “Is Gay Marriage a Civil Right? African-American and Latino Leaders Speak Out.” In April, Rev. George D. McKinney of San Diego helped launched an initiative for NOM with the Coalition of African American Pastors to collect 100,000 signatures around the country on behalf of keeping marriage something restricted to opposite-sex couples in North Carolina.
Anybody want to take bets on how this money and manipulation plays out at the polls in conservative North Carolina?
The groups fighting the Right in N.C. are trying not to repeat the post-Proposition 8 blame game where gays slammed Black support for the ballot measure which only hardened divisions between the two communities.
Conservative groups have caught the most fire for fueling race-based animosity toward gay marriage, but progressive leaders have also played a role in stoking discord between the leaders of black and gay activist groups. The race question regarding same-sex marriage first cropped up in 2008, when California blacks — a mere 6 percent of state voters — were blamed by some gay leaders for the passage of Proposition 8 in the wake of reports in The Washington Post and CNN that exit polls showed seven in 10 black voters backing the measure barring marriage equality.
Although subsequent analysis found black support for Proposition 8 was only 6 percent higher than on average — instead of nearly 20 percent — the specter of black homophobia has loomed over the marriage equality movement ever since. “I certainly think the black community got a bum rap following the Prop. 8 vote,” observed veteran activist Stuart Campbell, executive director of Equality North Carolina, the state’s leading pro-LGBT non-profit. “And we had no one to blame but ourselves for not more effectively conveying our message to communities across the state.”
What is also distressing is the clumsy response by some pro-gay marriage groups where they have artlessly appropriated the iconic imagery of the civil rights era in an ham-fisted attempt to equate the two struggles.
Nonetheless, an anti-Amendment1 ad campaign by the group Every1Against1 confrontationally compares the battle for gay rights to the one by African Americans for civil rights in the segregated South. With its stark images of a water fountain, a lunch counter, and the back of a bus, the campaign brazenly re-imagines central scenes in 1960s Civil Rights fight. Insensitive — if not downright offensive — messaging such as this, said Moodie-Mills, “shows just how disconnected some LGBT groups still are on the ground.” Last week’s television campaign from pro-equality group The Coalition to ALL Protect NC Families featuring solely white faces didn’t help much either to bridge the divide. Coalition Campaign Manager Jeremy Kennedy acknowledged the omission, but attributed it to “limited economic resources” rather than an intentional attempt to put a white face on gay rights.
Is this the right way to win Black support for gay marriage?
What same-sex marriage advocates have seemingly been slow to realize is their opponents have put together a superior sales job by doling out dollars to greedy Black ministers to carry their anti-gay message to their congregations whom are not the most naturally receptive audience for gay rights anyway. The suspicion by Black churches that these are liberal White gays and lesbians pushing their social agenda on them is confirmed by ad campaigns that are as clueless as they are earnest.
Outreach is a one-on-one, face-to-face job and it can’t be dictated and directed from afar. I can’t think of anyone less interested in advancing the rights of the LGBT community than a middle-aged Black Baptist in the South. They already believe the same-sex activists are jock-riding the civil rights battles waged by Blacks and when they see the iconic images of segregation re-purposed on behalf of gay marriage, they aren’t going to be too thrilled by it.
These are people whom you have to look dead in the eye and show them, not tell them, why your fight is right and should be their fight as well.
If The Avengers had been a failure no one would have been shocked. Almost everything that happens on the screen has been seen time and again in other summer blockbusters, but this one goes somewhere no other has gone before. It draws from no less than five previous films (Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America and The Incredible Hulk) and incorporates key elements from all of them while simultaneously pulling off the unlikely feat of telling its own story so well-written and self-contained that it’s not necessary to have seen any of its predecessors.
The suits at Marvel Studios can exhale and pop the bubbly. The Avengers sticks the landing and pulls together almost flawlessly what could have been a car crash of clunky continuity and an unmanageable mess of too many characters, back stories and exposition into a superhero film that doesn’t just raise the bar but kicks it into the stratosphere.
Watching what got us to this point was an experience where none of the movies (still haven’t popped The Incredible Hulk DVD in the player yet) were bad, some were pretty good, Iron Man 2 was mediocre and none of them were outstanding. The Avengers is outstanding. It’s entertaining and energetic after it gets past a slow opening 30 minutes as director Joss Whedon takes time to assemble his heroes and villains before all the avenging takes off in the second and third acts.
I avoided the crowd at a 11:00 am showing with my wife (who loves her some Robert Downey, Jr.) and my know-it-all 17-year-old daughter who loves Chris Evans face and Chris Hemsworth’s arms. I would say Scarlett Johansson’s leather clad Black Widow and to a much lesser extent, the cameo of Gwyneth Paltrow ‘s narrow butt in shorts is supposed to thrill the fan boys, but they’re going to get their nerdgasms from the sight of The Hulk throwing down with Thor.
“Didn’t Hannibal Lecter start off like this?”
My expectations were not only met but exceeded by the two hours and 22 minutes we spent in the dark and my synapses have been doing a happy dance all day long. The Avengers has dethroned Spider-Man 2 as the second-best superhero movie of all time and by a WIDE margin. It can’t touch the force of nature known as The Dark Knight, but The Dark Knight Rises will have to be killing it to beat this.
This movie is a bad-ass thrill ride. It thinks big, it’s full of big set pieces, big fights, and yes, Virginia, even big laughs with lots of them coming from an extremely unlikely source.
What does a $200 million budget buy? Everything I think I could have dreamed of for The Avengers and then some. It’s eye-popping entertainment and yes, even Scarlett Johansson is given something to do besides be token eye-candy for the guys. Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is a great bad guy delivering his lines with Shakespehrian seriousness as he smiles like someone enjoying his own private joke. He’s a great schemer even if his master plan doesn’t really hang together. The movie takes some time to get going but once it does, it works wonderfully until the last minute.
Captain America calls the shots in the comic book, but this isn’t a comic book and the real genius isn’t just in the impressive action scenes (and they are extremely impressive), but the interaction of a group of geniuses, soldiers, monsters, spies and gods trying to figure out how to set aside their significant differences to stave off a greater threat. The bonding between Downey’s snarky Tony Stark and Mark Ruffalo’s surfer dude coolly contained scientist living a terrible double life works beautifully. Chris Evans has the worst costume and the burden of trying to make these highly combustible personalities work together. The Hulk and Thor are tough sells to pull off, but Captain America is the hero that holds it all together based upon his integrity and courage.
“Hulk want to renegotiate contract!”
Whedon knows how to balance out a diverse group of characters and do it such a way that nobody feels short-changed or disappears off-screen for extended periods of time. It’s a masterful bit of direction by him. He’s going to be able to write his own ticket after this one.
I can’t say much more about this movie but to say it’s much better than I could have hoped and I will be seeing it again. Oh, and after two movies where they couldn’t quite get the Hulk right, Whedon gets it right and then some. Hulk smash puny film up good!
This being a Marvel movie you must stay through the credits. There are two Easter eggs thrown in. One that only comic book geeks will get and another that is…kind of different.
One of my favorite war flicks is Patton and as portrayed by George C. Scott in an Oscar-winning performance, the old “blood n’ guts” general was tough, ruthless, focused like a laser beam on crushing his enemies and showing up his rivals. The fact that he was egotistical, vain, and maybe a borderline sociopath doesn’t deflect from George S. Patton’s brilliance as a military leader.
I can’t imagine Patton being effective in anything less than wartime conditions. What works on the battlefield would be disastrous anywhere else and particularly the “no retreat, no surrender” hardline stance. This is why the Republican Party’s “take no prisoners and make no compromises” view of how politics should be played seems to be no Republican son-of-a-bitch can win by treating the Democratic son-of-a-bitch as an enemy to be obliterated. Even though politics is said to be war without bloodshed, without the possibility of compromise it becomes every bit as brutal as war.
Two intellectuals, Thomas Mann and Norman J. Orenstein penned a very popular column for The Washington Post (which you might want to read before proceeding) and their central premise is our government is broken and if Republicans didn’t break it, they are vested in keeping it broken.
Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization.
Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.
An endangered species meets the president
It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.
The essay (which has been “liked” and shared over 100,000 times on Facebook, tweeted more than 2,400 times and received up to 5000 replies before the WaPo website stopped counting) is taken from the authors book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism. The popularity of the piece probably will sell a few more copies than a book with a clunky title normally would.
The idea that Washington has become a place where not much get done isn’t a new one. Post columnist Dana Milbank points out the House of Representatives has been in session only 41 out of 127 days in 2012 and will be on vacation for 17 of the remaining 34 weeks. On the rare occasions the House members are in town it’s only for three days.
Nice work if you want to call that work (to be fair, Milbank notes that over in the Democratic-run Senate…of the 87 votes, the majority were on just three bills: 25 on the highway bill, 16 on the postal bill and 13 on an insider-trading bill. Sixteen others were on confirmations.
What’s the problem with a Congress where nothing much gets done because one party considers “compromise” a dirty word (I see you over there Don)? If the GOP is successful in taking back the Senate and holding on to the House this fall you can bet you’ll see a lot more legislation than the 106 passed so far by the 112th Congress.
Even if President Obama wins reelection, if he finds he’s going to have to send congratulations to Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell he’s going to go through a lot of veto pens and Rolaids.
Even if you think a dysfunctional Congress that can’t pass anything but the most inoffensive and menial bills where its members regard the other side not simply as wrong on issues, but un-American isn’t a bad thing, there is no reason for anyone but the most blindly partisan to even run for office.
Why bother if you are a Democrat, you can’t reach across the aisle to your Republican colleague when he or she believes they were sent to Congress to spit in that hand. Allen West, whom Mann and Ornstein name-check has called his own Congressional representative, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, “vile” and “not a lady.” What the hell could they ever work together on to mutually benefit the people of Florida?
Let’s take the Republicans at their word the government really is the enemy. Is it really surprising they seemingly have no interest in assisting in the smooth functioning of an institution they don’t believe in? If a house divided against itself must fall how long before a bitterly rancorous House falls apart and brings the Senate tumbling down with it?
I have never been to Los Angeles. I don’t know anyone who lives in Los Angeles. Everything I know about Los Angeles comes second-hand. Yet it was 20 years ago my first gig as a paid freelancer came when I wrote about the 1992 L.A. riots after the acquittal of the police officers who beat motorist Rodney King.
I can’t read that article now without wincing. It’s earnest and sincere, but it’s overwrought, poorly thought out and badly written. It’s not that I regret what I said when I was in my mid-Thirties, and I am not afraid of being angry, I’m not that angry young man anymore.
I’m gratified former Time magazine correspondent Sylvester Monroe who covered the uprising in L.A. wrote a remembrance of where he was 20 years ago and what has changed since then.
The 1992 Los Angeles riots were one of the biggest stories of my career and among the most personal. I wasn’t just a reporter covering the worst civil unrest in modern U.S. history. I was also an African-American man and father of an adolescent son ever mindful of close encounters of the worst kind with the police.
Reporting on the six days of deadly violence and vandalism following the acquittals of four white L.A. police officers tried for the brutal, videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King resonated with me even more than the trial itself. In nearly 10 years as a Los Angeles correspondent for Time magazine, I was never stopped by the LAPD. As a young teenager, my son, Jason, was ticketed once for jaywalking. We paid a $50 fine and that was the end of it. But we both were always wary.
Twenty years later, relations between the Los Angeles police and the city’s black citizens are light-years beyond the tinderbox atmosphere that once prevailed, thanks to extensive police reforms, including a much-touted commitment to community policing, increased external oversight and more enlightened department leadership. Many black Angelenos now believe there has been so much progress that what happened in 1992 could not happen again. At least not in the same way.
One reason is that despite some ongoing racial tension, the people of Los Angeles generally get along much better than they did at the time of King’s famously plaintive plea: “Can we all just get along?”
“I do not feel it could happen again because [the police] are now accountable to us and want to be,” says Lawrence Tolliver, also black, who owns a popular barbershop just blocks from the infamous intersection of Florence and Normandie Avenues where white truck driver Reginald Denny was dragged from his truck and almost beaten to death by young black men right after the King trial verdicts. “If something like [the King beating] did happen today, it would be a lot different than in 1992. They would investigate it, and the current police chief would not let it get to that point. We have a lot more impact on the department now.”
The answer is, "Maybe, but it's not going to be easy."
That may be true for L.A., but not for every city around the nation. As Los Angeles marks the 20th anniversary of its riotous past, national attention is now firmly fixed on yet another racially charged assault. In the Trayvon Martin case, the Sanford, Fla., police did not shoot the unarmed 17-year-old black teenager. But police handling or mishandling of the case and how it is resolved in court could make Trayvon this generation’s Rodney King. For what has not changed in two decades is continued excessive force against black males (and females) by law enforcement officers and others who claim they were afraid for their lives.
If George Zimmerman is exonerated and rioting does occur, that would be unjustified and unfortunate, but not wholly unexpected. When there is one standard of justice for Whites and a separate and unequal one for Blacks and it is shrugged off as no big thing it breeds the lack of respect for the American system of justice and all its representatives that is decried by its most ardent defenders. If peaceful civil disobedience is denigrated as rabble rousing and counter-productive, then once legitimate means of redress are choked off, violent reactions become inevitable.
Americans are not people who quietly suffer their lot in life with hand-wringing and hushed voices. They raise hell about everything from high taxation without representation, unjust wars, government that becomes too big, bloated and intrusive and for civil rights and equal protection under the law. Faith in, and compliance with the rules and laws of a civilized society can only be maintained as long as they are equally and fairly applied regardless of race, color, creed, orientation, power, influence or connection.
If no one should be considered above the law then no one should be considered below the law. That includes Trayvon Martin as much as it does George Zimmerman.
King was everything Martin wasn’t. A large Black man with a criminal record who was breaking the law and might have been stoned then. King was a victim of police brutality while Martin faced off with an overzealous vigilante-slash-police-wannabee and.though King was a victim, he wasn’t entirely innocent. .
No one else should be hurt or die due to what happened one night in Sanford, Florida. The hope is justice will prevail and everyone involved will be treated in a fair and equitable way. But if anyone believes what happened in 1992 can’t happen again they have not paid attention to the bitterly learned lessons of Los Angeles very well.
Rodney King was not innocent, but he was a victim.
shark (noun) any of a group of elongate elasmobranch, mostly marine fishes, certain species of which are large, voracious, and sometimes dangerous to humans.
shark (slang) a lawyer. (Derogatory.) : Some shark is trying to squeeze a few grand out of me.
A guy in a bad trouble needs a good lawyer and now Zimmerman has one.
When George Zimmerman replaced his former attorneys with Mark O’Mara, the first thing he did was to go on television and express his sympathies to the family of Trayvon Martin. It was a departure from the bluster and self-promotion Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig engaged in and whose behavior toward their client was so unprofessional SLATE legal writer Emily Bazelon ripped them both in an article called, “George Zimmerman Needs A Good Lawyer.”
Mission more than accomplished. Zimmerman has a good lawyer in O’Mara and the way he’s working over the prosecution in the courtroom and the press on television, he’s real good., and he showed he’s earning his fee as he dropped two jaw-dropping revelations on how much better he is than Sonner and Uhrig in appearances on CNN and CBS.
(AP) ORLANDO, Fla. – George Zimmerman’s attorney says a website created to raise money for his legal defense has raised more than $200,000.
Mark O’Mara said on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Thursday night that he learned about the money on Wednesday and will inform a judge at a Friday hearing.
Zimmerman, who has been charged with second-degree murder in the Feb. 26 shooting of Trayvon Martin, was released from jail this week after paying 10 percent of $150,000 bail.
O’Mara says the bail amount may have been higher if the judge knew Zimmerman had raised $200,000.
Welcome to post-racial America. Where you can kill an unarmed Black kid and fools will send you nearly a quarter of a million dollars so you can beat the rap.
In another “better late than never” revelation, O’Mara now concedes his client’s “apology” might not have been the best move (at least now after the fact that it worked). Hey, not bad, slick. It only took you a week to figure out what a lot of us knew as soon as we heard it.
(CBS News) The attorney for George Zimmerman apologized for the apology his client offered to the parents of Trayvon Martin during his bond hearing last Friday, saying he did not understand the victim’s family would find the timing of his remarks inappropriate.
“We had reached out to see if we could do it privately,” attorney Mark O’Mara said on “CBS This Morning.”
Mark Strassmann reported that Zimmerman had asked for a private meeting with Martin’s parents before Friday’s hearing, which was rejected. Their lawyer, Benjamin Crump, said Thursday that requesting a meeting a day before the bond hearing was “self-serving.”
At the hearing Friday Zimmerman took the stand and, speaking to Martin’s parents, said, “I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son. I did not know how old he was. I thought he was a little bit younger than I am, and I did not know if he was armed or not.”
Crump told the press following the hearing that Zimmerman’s apology was poorly timed and insincere. “The apology was somewhat of a surprise because we had told them this was not the appropriate time, but they just disregarded that, and he went and pandered to the court and the media and gave a very insincere apology.”
O’Mara dismissed the notion that Zimmerman’s apology was aimed at the judge whose decision it was to release him on bail, but said he did not realize the family would think it inappropriate.
“My concern is, I didn’t realize that the way [Martin's family] had responded to me was through a press conference where they said it was too late or not an appropriate time,” O’Mara said.
“To be honest, had I known that – maybe had I seen the press conference – I’m not sure that we would have done it at the bond hearing, because the purpose of it truly was to get to the family and to respond directly to the family’s request. Had I known or been told that that wasn’t the time, it wouldn’t have happened. So, I apologize for that.”
To find justice, the Martin family will need the prosecution to better than they are doing.
This guy is disingenuous enough to be a Republican presidential candidate.
I’m pretty sure Tracy Martin and Sabrina Fulton would like to tell O’Mara exactly what he can do with yet another half-assed apology.
Let’s recap: Mr. O’Meara didn’t know his client’s website had raised over $200,000 until after he was sprung on a measly $150,000 bond and he didn’t know the “apology” his client made in open court to the Martin family was neither wanted nor appreciated until after he heard about it at their press conference.
I have to admit this guy is pretty slick. If O’Mara were any more oily he should have a pipeline shoved up his asshole and we could get gas prices under $3 bucks tomorrow.
I also have to admit I really thought O’Mara was more principled than the two ambulance chasers previously representing Zimmerman. Now I see he’s just a more polished version of the same sort of snake oil salesman. Unlike those clowns who looked like sleazy hustlers, O’Mara is smart, savvy and knows how to work the media as anyone know who watched the bail hearing post-mortems where it was proclaimed he crushed the prosecution like the Miami Heat beating up on a rec league basketball team.
O’Mara is killing it for his client. He ate the prosecution’s lunch at the bail hearing and served it back up to them. They had better step their game up quick because while they’re playing checkers, O’Mara is playing chess.
$200,000 won’t buy Zimmerman his own version of O.J. Simpson’s “Dream Team” legal counsel, but like 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea, it’s a good start. If he keeps kicking as much butt as he has O’Mara won’t need any other $400-an-hour attorneys to help him. So far he’s tap-dancing all over the other side and if perception is reality, the reality is O’Mara is winning the perceptions game.
Instead of worrying if the defense can find 12 jurors to acquit Zimmerman, it could be tougher to find 12 that will convict him.
For the sake of anyone hoping Zimmerman is convicted for the death of Trayvon Martin, they had better hope the prosecution steps up their “a’ game the next time they square off against O’Mara in court. Boy George has a real shark on his legal team and this one is a Great White.
