Thursday, May 28, 2009

Up, Up and Away

Pixar goes 10 for 10
How does Pixar do it? An amazing string of classic, critically-praised, hit films...

Toy Story - 1995
A Bug’s Life - 1998
Toy Story II - 1999
Monsters Inc. - 2001
Finding Nemo* - 2003
The Incredibles* - 2004
Cars - 2006
Ratatouille* - 2007
WALL-E* - 2008
Up - 2009

* Won Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

The Academy Awards didn’t not have a best animated feature category before 2001. That first year they passed over Monsters Inc. to give the first award to Shrek - which was a crime in my opinion.
The Academy messed up again in 2006 when they passed over Cars and gave the Oscar to Happy Feet.

A good day at the Texas Legislature

Texas Democratic Senators held together today and rejected the reappointment of rightwing lunatic Don McLeroy to be the chairman of the Texas State Board of Education. That is wonderful news for all of Texas’ school children. The bad news is that Rick Perry is still the governor and there is speculation that he will simply try and elevate the equally looney Cynthia Dunbar to the chairmanship now. But nevertheless, I am proud of the Texas Democrats for standing up for public education in our great state. As for the Republicans.... well, there is nothing I can say that is suitable to print on my blog.

In other good news, lawmakers were able to salvage the CHIP expansion legislation and the windstorm insurance legislation by adding them as amendments to House bills. Meanwhile the Republicans Voter ID bill that was the cause of the delays is now dead as is Jeff Wentworth’s criminally moronic guns in schools legislation. Thank GOD!

Knocking down attacks on Sotomayor

While it seems clear that Sonia Sotomayor will sail through her confirmation hearings with little opposition, there will still be concerted efforts by some Republicans to tear down her nomination with the ultimate goal of trying to force President Obama to spend his political capital in her defense. And also as a fundraising tool to help motivate the Republican base, naturally.
To that end I expect we will see a lot of the same attacks repeated over and over again. So here are a few links to help counter some of those attacks.

About that out-of-context quote where she seems to say that Latina women are better at making decisions than white men: Conservative blogger Rod Dreher looked at the whole speech and determined that he was wrong to jump to that conclusion:
I was wrong about Sotomayor speech - Crunchy Con

As for the conservatives on the Supreme Court reversing some of her appeals court rulings: Rachel Maddow obliterates that one completely.

And the charges of being an “activist judge” are taken apart here.

An interesting side note, it turns out that Sotomayor is only the seventh person to be nominated to the Supreme Court by a Democratic President in last 57 years. By contrast, there have been 17 Supreme Court positions filled by Republican presidents during that same period. The current nine-member court has just two justices appointed by a Democrat.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Obama picks Sotomayor

Obama picks Sotomayor for Supreme Court

WASHINGTON (AP) - Officials tell The Associated Press that President Barack Obama intends to nominate federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor (SUHN’-ya soh-toh-my-YOR’) as the first Hispanic to serve on the Supreme Court.
Sotomayor, 54, would succeed retiring Justice David Souter if confirmed by the Senate. The officials spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because Obama has not yet announced his decision.


WooHoo! What do you know? Obama took my advice!

This is great news if true because it puts a well qualified person on the Supreme Court while satisfying three key constituencies all at the same time: Women, Hispanics and Liberals.