Heading for Tahoe Donner

We are heading up to our Tahoe Donner place tomorrow.  Grandkids coming in on Sunday.  I will be blogging up there so stand by.  I will probably be giving my take on today’s news regarding health care and the contempt vote in the house.

For now, just let me give sincere props to John Roberts. 

I will leave you with one thing so juicy I can’t wait.  I was watching Cenk Uygur who had on this really wise law professor who observed that what is now the majority opinion was originally written as a dissent by Ginsberg and what ended up as the dissent was originally the majority opinion, but at the last minute Roberts jumped ship and ended up putting his name on the majority opinion!  The guy points out that the “dissent” is rife with references to Justice Bader Ginsberg’s “dissent,”  which of course does not exist!  Cenk says to the guy, how could they be so sloppy as to leave that in and the guy noted that it was deliberate by the “dissenters” to show that Roberts had stabbed them in the back – they would never allow such an obvious “mistake” unless they actually meant to.  Of course, if you know Cenk, that just blew his mind!

Later….

~ Tom

Andrew Sarris, R.I.P.

The great film critic, Andrew Sarris died on Wednesday at age 83.  Mick LaSalle, my favorite movie critic, wrote a beautiful “appreciation” column for Sarris, which you can read here.  I like the fact the the article was titled “appreciation” rather than “obituary.”  It inspires me to go back and read some of Sarris’ reviews.

As labor goes, so goes the middle class

Want to understand why the corporate right demonizes the labor movement and does everything it can to destroy unions?  Read this article and you will see.  It’s a very succinct summary, with solid statistics and facts underpinning it.

Cool Miles

I can never pass up a great picture of Miles.

And here’s a great picture of another cool guy: Viggo!

A lesson from Wisconsin

Like all good liberals I am pretty bummed about the results of the Walker recall in Wisconsin.  Based on everything I was seeing and hearing in the media, I really thought that this might be the beginning of a movement where righteous enthusiasm and “boots on the ground” could defeat the crushing force of right wing money. 

It reminds me of when I was playing on an “over 30” soccer team.  Our team was pretty much the worst in the league but we had a lot raw talent and fire.  Every once in a while we would get up a goal or maybe even two, but every time that happened the inexorable force of the other teams’ talent would overcome us in the end and we would lose.  But that is not the worse part.  Once that happens to you a few times as a team, a feeling of defeatism sets in and you lose that enthusiasm and fire, no matter how much you try not to;  you lose your confidence.  That is what I am afraid may be happening to the progressive/liberal movement.  How many of those fired up people we saw in the months leading up to election day will get it up again to put that much effort into the coming fall elections?  Are they now thinking, “why bother when the other side can outspend us by tens of millions of dollars and we’ve now learned that our boots on the ground will achieve nothing.”

Man, I need some cheering up.