While the Democratic race has become more competitive, Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican race. The big news of the week was that he received the endorsement of Sarah Palin, helping Trump win the idiot vote. (“You’re fired.” “I quit.”) Stephen Colbert discussed the endorsement in the video above, starting out by exclaiming “God, I have missed you.” It was a great day for comedians, except possibly for Tina Fey who might not want to be dragged back into that role.
Colbert showed how it would sound if Palin endorsed every candidate, after he tased the part of his brain that understands sentence structure.
Gallup has released their annual lists of the most admired women and men for 2015. These are basically measures of name recognition, with The New York Times discussing the methodology:
The poll tends to reflect names of people who have recently appeared in news headlines, said Frank M. Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. Rather than choose from a list of names, poll respondents offer whichever comes to mind.
“It very much reflects who has been in the news, and who people can recall at a short period of time when an interviewer asks them,” Mr. Newport said.
The sitting president is generally the most admired man, and with all the publicity surrounding her Hillary Clinton has dominated the list for most admired woman in recent years. Here is this year’s list:
This is hardly meaningful other than as a test of who is in the news. While Hillary Clinton is well ahead, she was still only mentioned by thirteen percent of those responding. As usual, the sitting president is on top of the men’s list, with seventeen percent mentioning him. Pope Francis was next after Obama at five percent, and then we see the effects of this year’s presidential race. Donald Trump edged Bernie Sanders, which is inconsistent with the polls showing that Sanders would beat Trump by a landslide margin.
The list of women is less dominated by political leaders for obvious reasons, with Malala Yousafzai coming in second after Clinton. Sarah Palin is still in the minds of some conservatives, with her being mentioned by one percent. Elizabeth Warren was also in a group of five mentioned by one percent. I imagine that, considering how much Palin has been worshiped on the right, Warren is doing well to tie her in this type of poll which rewards name recognition over other attributes.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! presents their take on Donald Trump’s first ad will be, making fun of the fact that we really don’t know what Trump plans to do as president other than building that wall.
The biggest problem I see with Trump building a wall on the border is that it might get in the way of people trying to escape a United States under the rule of Donald Trump.
Maybe we will learn more about Trump’s ideas. Sarah Palin is interviewing Donald Trump tonight. I can imagine the first two question:
Question #1. Why are you so awesome?
Question #2. Will I be able to see the wall from my house?
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), also a GOP candidate, are joining forces to do “something very big over the next two weeks in Washington.”
Speaking to reporters following a campaign rally in South Carolina, Trump said the event will essentially be a “protest” of the Obama administration’s “totally incompetent” nuclear deal with Iran. He also called Cruz a “friend of mine” and a good guy.”
Those who believe “it can’t happen here” have never heard of Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or Sarah Palin.
Martin O’Malley appeared on Face the Nation today, telling Bob Schieffer that he plans to decide by the end of May as to whether he plans to run against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Schieffer asked him why he plans to run:
O’MALLEY: Because I believe that our country faces big challenges.
And I know that leadership is important, if we’re going to turn these challenges into opportunities. I have 15 years of executive experience as a big city mayor and as a governor bringing people together to get things done. And I believe that I have the ideas that will help our country move forward to a time when our economy is actually working for all of us again, instead of wages declining.
There has been repeated mention in the media as to how Clinton has taken the unusual course of not meeting with the press (see here and here). O’Malley did not take advantage of this opportunity to criticize Clinton:
SCHIEFFER: What do you think of way she launched her campaign? All these Republicans are up there making speeches, kind of doing it the old-fashioned way. She gets in this little van and drives all the way out there. She’s given no interviews, as far as I can tell. She hasn’t had a news conference. Can you get the nomination that way? And how will you do it?
O’MALLEY: Well, look, I will let others talk — second-guess her strategies and tactics. And she can certainly defend herself. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Secretary Clinton.
I believe that the best way to campaign is one-on-one with people. You can’t forge a new sort of consensus, you can’t forge public opinion by following public opinion. And you have to engage with people in living room after living room, in luncheonettes and lunch counters. I think that is the best type of campaign is the one- on-one contact, where we actually talk about the better choices we need to make to get earnings to rise again.
So far Clinton has only received gentle criticism for the manner in which she has avoided the press, but if she keeps this up I would expect the press to discuss this more, as back in 2008 when Sarah Palin was hiding from the press. The Washington Post noted that O’Malley and James Webb appeared on the Sunday interview shows but Clinton was only represented by stand-ins.
The full transcript of Face the Nation is available here.
Donald Trump spoke of running for president before but many did not take him seriously, seeing it as a publicity stunt or ego boost. Earlier this year he claimed he was serious but few believed him, with most assuming he would continue with The Apprentice. The New Hampshire Union Leader now reports that Trump is dropping The Apprentice and is setting up an exploratory committee:
Donald Trump will launch a presidential exploratory committee Wednesday, the eve of the business mogul’s return to New Hampshire.
A senior adviser tells the New Hampshire Union Leader that Trump will not be renewing his contract with NBC for the reality television “Apprentice” series.
Combined with staff hires, Trump’s announcement that he will form an exploratory committee for the first time is a sign the billionaire is seriously considering running for the Republican nomination.
Trump as released this announcement:
I have a great love for our country, but it is a country that is in serious trouble. We have lost the respect of the entire world. Americans deserve better than what they get from their politicians – who are all talk and no action! I have built a great company, created thousands of jobs and built a tremendous net worth with some of the finest and most prestigious assets in the world – and very little debt! All Americans deserve the same opportunity. Our real unemployment rate is staggering while our manufacturing base is eroding on a daily basis. We must rebuild our infrastructure, control our borders, support local control of education, greatly strengthen our military, care for our veterans and put Americans back to work! We must stop other countries from totally taking advantage of our representatives who are being out-negotiated at every turn. I am the only one who can make America truly great again!
This reminds me of what Andy Borowitz once said: “If Trump can do the same magic that he did for NBC, the USA will be the #4 country in the world.”
To his credit, Trump was often critical of George Bush, but during the Obama presidency his political views aligned with the extreme right. He has provided far more material for comedians than serious political comment. He was a strong Birther, claiming Obama was not born in the United States. Jimmy Fallon was among the late night comedians who mocked Trump on this: “Hey, Congratulations to Donald Trump, who just welcomed his fourth grandchild! You could tell it was Trump?s grandchild because as soon as it came out, it demanded to see its own birth certificate.” Jimmy Kimmel quipped, “President Obama celebrated Passover with a Seder at the White House. This morning, Donald Trump demanded to see Obama’s Bar Mitzvah certificate.” Conan O’Brien added, “On Fox News, Donald Trump said Obama’s birth certificate could indicate that he’s a Muslim. Trump said he doesn’t trust anyone with a foreign-sounding name, and neither does his daughter Ivanka.”
“Donald Trump is here tonight,” the comedian in chief said, grinning. “Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is prouder to put this birth certificate to rest than The Donald. Now he can get to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened at Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”
Seth Meyers also joked about Trump at the dinner, including one joke which also mocked John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as running mate. He noted that Trump owns the Miss USA Pageant, “which is great for Republicans because it will streamline the search for a vice president.”
David Letterman mocked the idea of a Republican race with both Donald Trump and Sarah Palin in it in 2010:
Sarah Palin says she’s going to run for President in 2012. 2012. Donald Trump said he’s going to run for President in 2012 against Sarah Palin. Nice to know there will somebody equally unqualified…Now that would be some presidential race. You’ve got Donald Trump and Sarah Palin and the debates. Get there early and get some seats down front for those debates. ‘You’re fired, you becha.’
Trump joined the Global Warming denialists by asking, “It’s cold outside…so where’s the global warming?” He changed from pro-choice to opposing abortion. “People change their positions all the time, the way they change their wives,’’ according to the executive vice president of the Trump Organization.
Donald Trump will clearly make the Republican circus more amusing.
The reports I discussed yesterday regarding Hillary Clinton using private email as Secretary of State are leading some, such as Frank Rich, to wonder if Democrats need a backup plan for 2016. A follow up story in The New York Times reports how Clinton used her private email to thwart requests for information, including requests from Congress and Freedom of Information requests from journalists. These ethical breaches by Hillary Clinton are of particular concern taking place so soon after scandals in the Bush administration regarding private use of email, making many liberals besides myself question why Clinton could have done something so foolish.
As The Guardian summarized the significance of the news:
It leaves Clinton vulnerable to at least three lines of criticism: that she potentially broke fundamental rules governing the handling and security of state secrets; that she skirted around guidelines put in place to ensure historical accountability and transparency within high public office; and the political attack that she must have had something to hide.
Perhaps the most serious accusation facing Clinton is that she may have breached one of the fundamental tenets of classified information. J William Leonard, former director of the body that keeps watch over executive branch secrets, the Information Security Oversight Office, told the Guardian that if Clinton had dealt with confidential government matters through her personal email, that would have been problematic. “There is no such thing as personal copies of classified information. All classified information belongs to the US government and it should never leave the control of the government.”
The Associated Press is considering legal action in response to her failure to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests for email:
The unusual practice of a Cabinet-level official running her own email server would have given Clinton — who is expected to run for president in the 2016 campaign — significant control over limiting access to her message archives.
It also would complicate the State Department’s legal responsibilities in finding and turning over official emails in response to any investigations, lawsuits or public records requests. The department would be the position of accepting Clinton’s assurances she was surrendering everything required that was in her control…
The AP said Wednesday it was considering taking legal action against the State Department for failing to turn over some emails covering Clinton’s tenure as the nation’s top diplomat after waiting more than one year. The department has failed to meet several self-imposed deadlines but has never suggested that it doesn’t possess all Clinton’s emails.
Having checked more coverage in the media and blogosphere since my initial post, I was pleased to see that most liberal bloggers I read did question Clinton’s conduct. For example, rather than a partisan defense Steve Benen‘s post raised the same objective points:
There’s no shortage of problematic angles to this. Obviously, there’s the question of transparency and compliance with the Federal Records Act. Clinton wasn’t the first Secretary of State to make use of a personal email account – Colin Powell did the same thing during his tenure in the Bush/Cheney administration – but preservation rules have changed and Clinton apparently faced more stringent requirements.
There’s also the matter of security: as Secretary of State, Clinton sent and received highly sensitive information on a daily basis, including classified materials, from officials around the world. By relying on private email, instead of an encrypted State Department account, Clinton may have created a security risk.
Other liberal bloggers have been far harder on Clinton. Clinton is also receiving criticism on MSNBC, as opposed to the partisan defense we would expect in the reverse situation from Fox. Needless to say, conservatives tended to be quite critical, and hypocritical, usually ignoring the comparable use of private email by many Republicans, including officials in the Bush administration, Chris Christie, and Sarah Palin.
It was disappointing but not surprising to see that the Clintonistas did quickly get some writers out to defend Clinton. Typically their defenses were no more honest than a report from Fox. Defenses of Clinton tended to concentrate on the arguing that Clinton did not actually break the law. This is definitely a case of moving the goal posts and possibly also incorrect. The initial articles raising these concerns did note that Clinton may have broken the law and with the complexity of the regulations involved avoided a definite conclusion, but it was her conduct and judgment, not whether she was in violation of the law, which is the heart of the issue. The defenses of Clinton point out that Colin Powell used private email, but ignore the changes in regulations made in 2009 which “required that all emails be preserved as part of an agency’s record-keeping system.” Her defenders have also ignored the more stringent requirements put into place in 2011. As a consequence of these rules changes, John Kerry has used government email for his communications, as has Barack Obama since taking office in 2009.
Many of the other defenses of Clinton are rather trivial attacks on the journalist who wrote the story. The statements that these revelations came out as part of the Benghazi hearings is contradicted with finding a journalist who had reported on this previously. This is analogous to the debates as to who discovered America. Finding that someone had previously reported on Clinton’s private email does not change the substance of this story any more than discovering that Vikings beat Columbus to America substantially other facts regarding American history post-Columbus.
The rapid release of such dishonest defenses of Clinton by her allies is yet another reason why I would hate to see Hillary Clinton as president. I have always been disturbed by the degree of secrecy when she was working on health care reform, her push for war against Iraq based upon fictitious claims of ties between Saddam and al Qaeda, along with many questionable statements I’ve heard from her over the years. Electing Clinton would be a great blow to honesty and transparency in government. Democrats should be able to do better.
There is no question that Clinton was at least skirting the rules in effect when she became Secretary of State, if not outright breaking them. Her honesty has already been a serious question. Someone with a reputation for dishonesty and lack of transparency should have realized that this would only make matters worse. Her credibility, already in question, will be even lower when there is always the question of secret emails looming. Republicans will be able to drag out their hearings on Benghazi even longer because of this. If she runs against Jeb Bush she would be on the defensive over transparency after the release of his emails. Clinton has never been a very good campaigner, and her lack of judgment in this matter only raise.
The report in The New York Times that Hillary Clinton used a private email account while Secretary of State, possibly violating the law, has me wondering whether Hillary Clinton has learned anything during her years in public life. There is no doubt that the majority of attacks on Clinton from the right are bogus. To a certain degree these attacks even give her some protection among thinking people who have seen right wing attacks and conspiracy theories, such as those over Benghazi, constantly being debunked. However this does not mean that there are not people beyond the Fox sheep, including myself, who still have concerns regarding the judgement and integrity of Hillary Clinton. This only increases such concerns, along with concerns about secrecy and lack of transparency on the part of the Clintons.
Hillary Clinton followed the same procedures as Colin Powell before her, and many other politicians, such as Chris Christie and Sarah Palin, have had problems with using private email accounts. In contrast, John Kerry and Barack Obama use secure government email systems. Clinton’s actions look worse in historical context, following the scandals and reckless disregard for transparency during the Bush administration, just before she became Secretary of State. It is also reasonable to hold a Secretary of State, with aspirations to become president, to a higher standard than a corrupt Governor of New Jersey and the incompetent half-term former governor of Alaska. We have low expectations of people such as Christie and Palin, but should expect more of a potential Democratic candidate for president.
Hillary Clinton, if she has any real awareness of her public reputation, should have been aware of how this would have looked. Beyond the legal and security issues this raises, there is the simple question of whether she should have known better, even if no evidence of actual dishonesty is uncovered. Democrats should also have learned something about Clinton in light of her conduct during her 2008 campaign. In retrospect. Jeb Bush now looks far smarter for having released his email, despite the embarrassment of including some private information on constituents which should have been redacted.
The conservative movement has become totally divorced from reality, often denying science and facts to make their positions. Here’s just three examples from the past day.
Conservatives Hate Historical Facts
Conservatives hate actual American history as the facts contradict so many of their claims. As Joseph Ellis has explained, the Founding Fathers established a secular state with overlapping sources of authority and a blurring of jurisdiction between federal and state power. Conservative claims of states’ rights and claims that the United States was founded as a Christian nation do not hold up. Oklahoma has a unique answer to teaching all those inconvenient facts in Advanced Placement History classes. Republicans there want to eliminate the AP classes and replace them classes which include the Ten Commandments and three speeches by Ronald Reagan.
Some Conservatives Still Think Obama Is A Muslim
The American Thinker is still making the conservative claim that Obama is a Muslim. Their evidence is a picture of Obama with a raised finger:
Is President Obama a Muslim? A lot has been written about this, but if photographs speak louder than words, then a photo taken at last August’s U.S.-African Leaders’ Summit in Washington D.C. might shed considerable light.
It shows Barack Hussein Obama flashing the one-finger affirmation of Islamic faith to dozens of African delegates.
Steve M. gathered pictures of several other people who are also Muslims by this logic. The pictures include: Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Ben Carson, Scott Walker, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, Andrew Breitbart, and Pam Geller. Who knew that the conservative movement was infiltrated by Muslims to this degree.
Conservatives Still Lack Any Actual Facts To Support Their Arguments Against Obamacare
Bill Maher called them Zombie Lies. Conservatives lack any real facts to dispute what a tremendous success Obamacare has become so they tell the same lies over and over, even when repeatedly proven to be lies. They are lies which just don’t die, because conservatives don’t care about facts. Jonathan Chait reviewed the latest claims from Stephen Moore, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation. See the full article to see how Chait shows that Moore’s claims are demonstrably wrong and that, “There is not a single substantive claim in this column that appears to be true.”
Agents of SHIELD has come a long way from the first season. While they always hinted there was something special about Skye, they didn’t have the payoff on this plotline until the midseason finale with her conversion to an Inhuman. This might have major ramifications for her relationship with Coulson:
Executive producer Jeph Loeb says that the current Inhumans plotline has always been the plan for “Agents of SHIELD.” Like they always knew that Grant Ward was going to be HYDRA in Season 1, the seeds of Skye being something other were planned in the pilot.
“Once we started down that road hopefully you were coming along for the adventure, and now that you’ve come along for the adventure one of the things that’s so amazing about what’s happening on that show is so now we know she has gone through a transformation,” he says. “How is everyone going to react to that? And in the same kind of way you’re asking as an audience member, one of the things that I think is really valuable and one of the things that I think Jed [Whedon] and Maurissa [Tancharoen] and Jeff Bell and the writing staff really do have a great feeling for is they are audience members. The writers room sits around and tries to come up with, ‘What is it that you think we’re going to do and how can we then turn that on its ear in a way that makes it feel like it’s fun and valuable?'”
Blood says “SHIELD” has often gone in a different ways from what he expected. He says the latest script he read “just turned another corner,” and that audiences will “be surprised of a lot of stuff that’s coming up.” Because the SHIELD team doesn’t know about the term “Inhumans” like audiences do, Blood says “it’s going to be something that is unraveled.” He has yet to find out where the storyline is going.
The obvious turn would be that Coulson helps Skye — someone Gregg says is the “the person he cares about most” — through her transformation into an Inhuman. But what if he views her as a threat instead of an ally because of her new powers?
“His no. 1 job is to be responsible for SHIELD, which he views as being responsible for the safety of billions of people from things they don’t know about. That’s what SHIELD is. No matter how much he loves Skye — and it’s as much as you can love somebody — it’s the closest thing to a daughter he has. That’s a sacred trust,” Gregg says. “I hope he doesn’t get put in that situation [where she is a threat] because it would mess him up.”
He teases there will be trouble within SHIELD in the aftermath of Trip’s death and Skye’s transformation. “I don’t think the whole team is going to be unified behind what just went on, and it’s hard to blame them. He’s got a couple of people that he’s come to really trust,” Gregg says. “One of my favorite things about this season is that everybody comes up to me on the street really worried about Fitz and these new characters we introduced this year. Coulson also has these new people … he doesn’t have the same type of history with those people. It’s going to be hard to hold the baby brand new, on the run SHIELD together in the wake of what just happened.”
There’s also the question of Bobbi’s secret, which Blood says is as big a mystery in the second half of Season 2 as who the man with no eyes is. “I honestly think people are going to freak when they see some of the stuff we’ve been filming recently,” he says.
The 100 returned last week and the events of the fall finale continued to have a major impact on the characters. While I originally did not watch this show, thinking it was another CW show putting attractive young people in a sci-fi scenario which has been done before, I found that this was far better done than I anticipated.
Yes, it does have its attractive young cast members, led by Eliza Taylor as Clarke Griffin, who does an excellent job in the role. (Having binged on the first one and one-half seasons over a weekend, I did notice that Eliza Taylor does show less cleavage in the second season, which must have been a conscious decision by the producers considering that the characters couldn’t just run out to clothing stores in this post-apocalyptic world to change their wardrobe). There are also the CW love triangles, but they do not distract from the stories. Both the characterization and plot lines have been strong, even when going where other shows have gone before. Bustle and The Mary Sue both have posts on why you should watch the show.
CBS has chosen Melissa Benoist to play the lead role on Supergirl. Previous reports on the show have described it as more of a CBS procedural with Supergirl as a feminist investigating crimes, but with cross overs possible with the CW shows Arrow and The Flash.
CBS is showing success with another mixture between procedural and genre with Person of Interest. The show started out as a procedural show with a science fiction gimmick to propel it, and has evolved to what might be seen in the future as “a modern sci-fi epic that is considered a must-see show along the lines of Firefly or Battlestar Galactica…”
Many blogs and podcasts, along with this thread on Reddit, have looked at the question of how someone could get caught up with the show without watching all the old episodes. The purely procedural episodes of the first two seasons are mostly unnecessary to appreciate the more recent episodes since the show evolved into a more significant science fiction series, but it is hard to say exactly what can be skipped and must be watched as often early episodes would have a few minute segment towards the end to slowly develop the mythology in addition to the number of the week story.
There have been some posts, such as here and here, which might help in listing some of the more essential episodes. It would really be helpful if some of the other mythology segments which are only small parts of other episodes could be accumulated in a video.
Time looked at the politics of Parks and Recreation, which is concluding its run on NBC.
But there’s a big idea in Parks’ small-scale vision. In the frame of today’s politics, it might be a liberal notion, but it’s one that for much of the 20th century was centrist, and even championed by Republicans like park lover Teddy Roosevelt: that we need government to do things the private sector can’t or won’t, like preserving public spaces.
Shockingly, Parks has dared to suggest that while some civil servants might be bumbling–sorry, Jerry!–they can also be well-intentioned and competent. (This too wasn’t considered a liberal notion before the era when Ronald Reagan joked that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”) Leslie is comically tenacious–Poehler plays her as a cheerfully overprepared super-wonk–but she’s good at what she does and is driven by a fierce love for her hometown as well as its famous waffles…
Leslie can’t do it alone, though: she’s assisted by a network of co-workers and friends (played by a comedy-powerhouse cast, many of whom–like Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza and Aziz Ansari–have deservingly become stars). Even her former supervisor Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) admires Leslie’s commitment, even though he’s so libertarian, he once illustrated the evils of taxation to a fourth grader by eating 40% of her lunch. Parks argues not only that we need our neighbors’ help but that helping makes us better ourselves; it’s in the small-town, populist tradition of Friday Night Lights and It’s a Wonderful Life.
When I recently posted my list of top television shows of the year, I noted how little representation the major broadcast networks had on the list. Perhaps the biggest decline is being seen at NBC. They will soon be without two of their highest quality returning shows. Besides trying to run through Parks and Recreation as quickly as possible, Parenthood concludes this week, apparently with Lorelei Gilmore marrying Ray Romano. If it ends with Zeke dying, I’m imaging angry mobs storming Rockefeller Center. After these are gone they will still have some shows worth watching, most notably Hannibal, which I’m amazed a network is broadcasting, but the lineup of quality shows will sure be thin. Their announcements of upcoming shows is being greeted with far more snark than interest.
In the past NBC would often be the home of some of the highest quality drama shows on television, such as The West Wing, Friday Night Lights, I’ll Fly Away, and St. Elsewhere. They probably had better ratings success with some, but not all of their sitcoms, which included shows such as Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Community, 30 Rock, and Will and Grace. Going further back, it was also the home of some classic genre shows such as the original Star Trek and The Man From UNCLE. (We won’t talk about some of their more recent attempts at genre such as Revolution,The Cape and Heroes after the first season.)
So, what happened to NBC? I suspect that that it is a victim of otherwise good changes in television. Writers and producers for many high quality shows are now going to cable and streaming networks, where they can develop an audience without the need for netw0rk-level ratings. (In the case of Community, it is moving directly from NBC following cancellation by NBC, with the first two episodes to be streamed by Yahoo! on March 17.) It will be a challenge for NBC to attract this type of quality show in the future, and it is questionable as to whether they even care considering that lower quality shows will probably deliver higher ratings.
Increasingly cable or smaller networks owned by the major networks are offering higher quality shows than the major networks. FX and FXX are offering some of the best shows on basic cable. CBS has Showtime and CW, with The CW Network turning into one of the strongest networks, especially for genre, as it attracts a totally different audience than CBS. NBC/Universal have even lagged behind other cable networks which have produced better science fiction than its Syfy Network.
Syfy is finally trying to compete with hard science fiction. 12 Monkeys remains promising after the second episode, which aired Friday and was available for streaming last week. With Leland Goines dead, his daughter Jennifer becomes a major character. Her character in an insane asylum serves as an alternate version of the Brad Pitt character in the movie. As discussed previously, the television show can cover far more ground with changes such as having the ability to change time and with the Army of the 12 Monkeys playing a more significant role.
I saw a posted link here which supposedly allows streaming of the third episode for cable subscribers in the United States but it would not allow viewing through either my Charter or Xfinity account. I’m posting the link in case it works for other cable systems, or if it becomes active later. The first two episodes are available for streaming there.
Netflix has released a brief synopsis for their upcoming Marvel shows. While previous reports suggested that we might have to wait a year between shows, it looks like the Jessica Jones show (staring Krysten Ritter) will be out sometime later this year.
Daredevil
“Marvel’s Daredevil” is a live action series that follows the journey of attorney Matt Murdock, who in a tragic accident was blinded as a boy but imbued with extraordinary senses. Murdock sets up practice in his old neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen, New York where he now fights against injustice as a respected lawyer by day and masked vigilante at night. Coming April 10
A.K.A. Jessica Jones
Working as a private investigator in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, a troubled ex-superhero’s past comes back to haunt her in the live-action series, “Marvel’s A.K.A. Jessica Jones.” Coming 2015
Iron Fist
“Marvel’s Iron Fist” follows superhero and martial arts master Danny Rand in the upcoming live-action series. Coming soon
Luke Cage
In this Marvel live-action series, a street-fighting ex-con battles crime in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen as the superhero Luke Cage. Coming soon
The Defenders
“Marvel’s The Defenders” brings together Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Luke Cage in an epic superhero team-up in New York City. Coming soon
The Americans returns this week. Unreality Primetime has a couple spoilers on upcoming episodes. The season three trailer is above.
Can Henry be redeemed? The cast of Sleepy Hollow answer questions such as this in videos available here.
Melissa Raunch of The Big Bang Theory has received a lot of attention at Sundance for her raunchy sex scene in The Bronze.
“The Bronze” kicked off the 2015 edition of the Sundance Film Festival on a foul-mouthed note Thursday, sticking a dagger through the concept of hometown heroes and providing one of the raunchiest sex sequences in movie history.
The scene in question, one that involves pole vaults, cartwheels and pirouettes, was a constant source of amusement during a question and answer period immediately following the film’s premiere at the Eccles Theater.
“Right after this there’s going to be an audition for the sex scene in the sequel,” joked director Bryan Buckley.
Melissa Rauch, the star of the film and its cowriter along with husband Winston Rauch, said, “As for the sex scene, you write what you know.”
Her husband added that it gave the couple a chance to “show you what we do in our bedroom.”
Gallup reports that President Obama’s job approval has increased to 48 percent, the highest since August, 2013. This matches his disapproval rate, being the first time this gap has not been negative since September, 2013. They don’t give firm data to explain this improvement, but note that this partially can be explained by an improvement among Hispanics. They further speculate that the increase might be due to improved views on the economy, as well as people being more generous in their ratings around Christmas.
I wonder if other factors are involved, including his recent successes on foreign policy, the disappearance of the Ebola crisis in the United States which Republicans spread considerable misinformation about prior to the midterm elections, and the success of the Affordable Care Act.
As a sign of how desperate conservatives are to deny the considerable success of Obamacare in both expanding insurance coverage and making it more affordable, they are going further in cherry picking and distorting statements from Jonathan Gruber going back to 2009, with many conservative sites falsely calling him both the architect of Obamacare and its leading spokesman. Strangely, they don’t pay any attention to the far greater statements from him on the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. The Tea Party New Network, which is essentially a dishonest propaganda outlet like Fox but more honest about its political position, even defends Sarah Palin for her rants about death panels, and repeats all the other claims greatly distorted by conservatives. Their complaints about Obama’s poorly worded statements about keeping one’s own doctor or insurance are hardly meaningful considering that their policies would greatly increase the likelihood that people would lose their doctor and insurance, while Obamacare (even if unable to guarantee this will never happen in a market-based system) greatly reduces this risk.
Obama’s improvement in the polls could be a consequence of him becoming more aggressive after the midterm elections, no longer being fearful of taking actions which might place Democratic candidates at risk in red states (a foolish plan which backfired when it led to Democrats staying home). I believe that the Democrats would have still lost seats because of the seats which were up for grabs in 2014, but would have done better if they hadn’t run as Republican-lite. On the other hand, Dan Pfeiffer told Huffington Post that he believes that if Obama had not waited until after the election, his actions would have been overwhelmed by politics.
The big question is whether this is a transient bounce or if this improvement will continue. Either way his approval is certainly far greater than for Congress. The Republican Congress might give Obama an opportunity to gain further public support if the Republicans actually proceed to pass legislation pushing many elements of their agenda which will be unpopular with a majority of American voters.