Saturday Mashup (1/9/10)

(This is probably a first for me as it turns out, but this is what you do when juggling medically-related stuff such as what I’m currently dealing with...and again, posting will be sporadic, though I did manage to post over here also).

This LA Times post from last earlier this week tells us the following…

It's no secret that "Avatar" has been stunningly successful on nearly every front. The James Cameron-directed sci-fi epic is already the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time, having earned more than $1 billion around the globe in less than three weeks of theatrical release. The film also has garnered effusive praise from critics, who've been planting its flag on a variety of critics Top 10 lists (it has earned an impressive 83 score on Rotten Tomatoes). The 3-D trip to Pandora is also viewed as a veritable shoo-in for a best picture Oscar nomination when the academy announces its nominees on Feb. 2.

But amid this avalanche of praise and popularity, guess who hates the movie? America's prickly cadre of political conservatives.

...

To say that the film has evoked a storm of ire on the right would be an understatement. Big Hollywood's John Nolte, one of my favorite outspoken right-wing film essayists, blasted the film, calling it "a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC cliches that not a single plot turn, large or small, surprises.... Think of 'Avatar' as 'Death Wish' for leftists, a simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy where if you freakin' hate the bad guys (America) you're able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all."

John Podhoretz, the Weekly Standard's film critic, called the film "blitheringly stupid; indeed, it's among the dumbest movies I've ever seen."

Well, guess what? This tells us the following…

LOS ANGELES — Blue-skinned aliens are helping Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. see green.

The runaway global success of James Cameron's 3-D spectacle, "Avatar" – his first feature film since the record-breaking "Titanic" in 1997 – has prompted analysts to lift earnings estimates for News Corp., the owner of movie studio 20th Century Fox.

It's fairly rare that a media conglomerate's bottom line is affected by a single movie, but with more than $1.1 billion at box offices worldwide, partly boosted by higher 3-D ticket prices, "Avatar" has the potential to be the biggest of all time.

And if anyone out there believes that Rupert The Pirate (aarrrgghh!) gives a damn about right-wing ideological purity if it affects his profit, then I’m sure those individuals also believe that the Titanic (speaking of Cameron) will bob up to the surface any day now.

(And the answer to the question is no, I haven’t seen it – with the cost of a family night at the movies, I’ll probably wait until it comes to cable.)

Also, as the stories broke this week all over about the decisions by Dem U.S. Senators Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd not to seek re-election, I found myself wondering why the decision by Dem Colorado Governor Bill Ritter to do the same thing was considered as part of a trend that forecasted supposedly diminishing fortunes for Obama and U.S. Congressional Democrats (how many stories were there with pictures of all three featured prominently with portents of doom and gloom?). Basically, my question is why anyone would think any gubernatorial race has that kind of national impact by itself.

This was the opening paragraph in the WaPo story on Thursday…

Democrats have long known that 2010 would be a difficult year politically, but the decision by embattled Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) not to seek reelection, along with similar announcements by another longtime senator and a once-rising star among Western governors, brought home that reality with unexpected intensity Wednesday.

Now, let’s compare that with the coverage of a Republican governor who decided to step down not too long ago; here is the first paragraph of that story…

Sarah Palin, the Republican Alaska governor who captivated the nation with a combative brand of folksy politics, announced her resignation yesterday in characteristic fashion: She stood on her back lawn in Wasilla, speaking into a single microphone, accompanied by friends and neighbors in baseball hats and polo shirts.

And by the way, here is more comedy from the Palin story (particularly funny when you read this)…

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele said later in a statement that Palin is "an important and galvanizing voice" in the GOP and will help the party's gubernatorial candidates this fall in Virginia and New Jersey.

And you have to read almost to the very end of the WaPo story to find the following…

The decision by one of the Republican Party's most popular grass-roots politicians to leave office sent shockwaves through the GOP, a party still reeling from its 2008 electoral losses and from the sudden falls of Sen. John Ensign (Nev.) and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, two stars once considered presidential hopefuls.

Talk about burying the lede!

And finally, this New York Times story from Wednesday tells us the following…

A federal appeals court panel on Tuesday strongly backed the powers of the government to hold Guantánamo detainees and other noncitizens suspected of committing terrorist acts.

In a sweeping opinion, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the presidential war power to detain those suspected of terrorism is not limited even by international law of war.

The story tells us that the individuals primarily responsible for this travesty (aimed directly at recent Supreme Court decisions favoring detainee rights, as the Times tells us) were Judge Janice Rogers Brown (who, as noted here, has shown a “persistent and disturbing hostility to affirmative action, civil rights, the rights of people with disabilities, workers' rights, and criminal rights,” and has ruled “based on extremist ideology that ignores judicial precedent, including that set by the U.S. Supreme Court”) and Brett Kavanaugh, who, as noted here, previously tossed a lawsuit from detainees alleging that they were tortured by U.S. military contractors.

Sadly, the foul, fetid Bushco reign lives on.