Carrie Fisher says she's beginning to shoot her scenes for Star Wars 7 very soon -- in March or April.

In case you didn't hear, the Star Wars 7 script is being rewritten to focus on the original characters. The first draft featured them in a supporting role, passing the torch to the new younger heroes. Abrams decided he wanted one last hurrah with the old characters, so the script will now feature the young characters in brief introductory sort of appearances, while focusing on the older guys.

I don't know. Aging isn't fun.

Peter Mayhew -- Chewbacca -- went through his old pictures and posted a lot of hitherto-unseen photos from the shoots of the various movies.

What's better than Slave Girl Leia? Well, Slave Girl Leia and her twin.

That's her stunt double, of course.

Some people like making Star Wars action figures but put into a different contest or genre. For example, this guy Sillof made some cool Steam Punk Star Wars figures.

Well now he's made Wild West Star Wars figures, which, I gotta be honest, are sort of like the Steam Punk ones, but with less fantasy styling. I don't want to say "realistic," per say, but he imagines Chewbacca as just a big, strong Indian who wears a bear skin (including the head).

And here's his take on Boba Fett.

It's subtle. Like, too subtle.

Below, Bill Hader does some Star Wars impressions.

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Posted by: Ace at 03:49 PM | Comments (142)
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Obama's going to talk about income inequality a fair amount.

He won't, however, be talking about the rising inequality between the Ruling Class and its various major domos and mandarins and the rest of the country that Washington supposedly "serves."

Since the economic collapse of 2008, Washington D.C. and its surrounding areas have remained nearly untouched. In fact, Washington is booming as the rest of the country continues to suffer. The median household income in Washington D.C. is close to $20,000 higher than the median household income in the United States.

...

The wealth that has turned Washington D.C. into a boomtown, while creating an extreme income gap with the rest of the country, is a direct result of massive government spending.

Supporting charts and quotations at Pavlich's article (linked above). She also mentions this...

As Obama continues his income inequality crusade, here's an important reminder: the gap between rich and poor has grown to its widest since the Great Depression under his leadership.

This last point is explored thoroughly by the awful crazy gun nuts of the Volokh Conspiracy, now annoying the crap out of emotionally volatile progressives on the pages of the Washington Post.

Jim Lindgren writes:

If we want more income equality, should we return to the economy of George W. Bush?

Other things being equal, income equality is better than inequality. But other things are NOT equal. The easiest way to make incomes more equal in the short run is to have a recession.

Much has been made of growing income inequality since 1979, but very little attention has been paid to which of the four presidental administrations preceding Barack Obama increased income equality and which ones reduced it. In short, the two presidents whose terms involved improving income equality were the two George Bushes and the two whose terms were associated with worsening after-tax income equality were Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. It is probably not an accident that the two presidents in whose administrations the GDP grew the most were the two presidents whose time in office coincided with worsening income equality.

The president under whom the poorest quintile enjoyed the largest increase in after-tax household income was George W. Bush. And the two administrations under whom the richest quintile and richest 1 percent fared the worst were the two Presidents Bush. Among Barack ObamaÂ’s four immediate predecessors, the two biggest income equalizers were George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Just to be clear, I am not pining for the good old days of the economy of George W. Bush.

But George W. Bush was the most successful of our recent past presidents in achieving very substantial increases in incomes for the poorest quintile (+18.4%), while keeping gains for the richest quintile and richest 1 percent at modest levels. For example, under Bush the Younger, the incomes of the richest 1 percent rose only 6.5 percent in eight years, compared to a staggering 84 percent under Clinton and 91 percent under Reagan.

If you would rather have Bill Clinton’s economy than George W. Bush’s economy – and I definitely would – then as a practical matter you probably don’t care overmuch about income equality.

Again, evidence is amassed at the link itself.

Would anyone prefer George W. Bush's shrinking income inequality, with some but not great income growth, over Reagan's or Clinton's growing income inequality, but with great income growth among all income quintiles?

This jibes with the Margaret Thatcher clip I linked earlier. A rising tide will lift all boats -- some more than others.

A somewhat rising tide may lift those boats in roughly equal ways. But virtually everyone will be poorer than they otherwise could be.

Why support that? Why is that such a terrific goal?

Of course, either of these alternatives is superior to the one The Emperor Obama has blessed us with, an economy in which not only is there barely any income growth, but in which almost all of the meager growth is captured entirely by the richest 1%, as almost none of the lower 99% have experienced any income growth whatsoever, and most have actually fallen backwards.

As a rising tide will lift all boats, so will an incompetent tide scuttle them all.

Thanks to @tsrblike and BB.

That's Racist: @benk84 linked this in the morning dump, but it's really good and I'd like to post it again. more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:50 AM | Comments (229)
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I actually disagree with him on his two examples of Hurt Feelings fake outrage -- over Andrew Cuomo's "no place for extremists" in New York statement, and Huckabee's clumsy phrasing of "controlling their libidos" as an alternative to birth control -- but his general point is, of course, spot on. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 AM | Comments (242)
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Why?

As I'm sure you all know, while the Constitution requires the President to deliver a state of the union report to Congress (Article Two, Section 3, Clause 1), it does not specify that this should be a live speech. And until FDR, I think, the requirement was observed by sending over a written report. (Update: Drew informs me it was Woodrow Wilson who brought the personal address back. Apparently Washington had delivered the address personally, but Thomas Jefferson stopped that practice early, and the personal address did not begin again until the twentieth century.)

It should also be noted that almost all State of the Unions are actually unconstitutional, inasmuch as they are not candid reports on the state of the union at all.

They are political advertisements. Especially in bad times -- and Obama has misgoverned the country in an extended period of bad times -- the State of the Union is as dishonest a document as one could wish.

A "state of the union" report, is, by definition, a document describing the current and near-past conditions of the country, not a prospective hypothetical as to what the President hopes to do (or pretends to hope to do) in the future.

We should simply scrap the process -- and perhaps Congress can help by demanding an actual candid, honest State of the Union report, and holding the President's feet to the fire for false or misleading statements made in pretending to satisfy this Constitutional requirement.

Kevin Williamson is himself sick of the practice.

The annual State of the Union pageant is a hideous, dispiriting, ugly, monotonous, un-American, un-republican, anti-democratic, dreary, backward, monarchical, retch-inducing, depressing, shameful, crypto-imperial display of official self-aggrandizement and piteous toadying, a black Mass during which every unholy order of teacup totalitarian and cringing courtier gathers under the towering dome of a faux-Roman temple to listen to a speech with no content given by a man with no content, to rise and to be seated as is called for by the order of worship — it is a wonder they have not started genuflecting — with one wretched representative of their number squirreled away in some well-upholstered Washington hidey-hole in order to preserve the illusion that those gathered constitute a special class of humanity without whom we could not live.

It’s the most nauseating display in American public life — and I write that as someone who has just returned from a pornographers’ convention.

Margaret Thatcher at Question Time. Why do we allow our Presidents to just order us around and speak uninterrupted as if they were Emperors?

@tsrblike sends this great Thatcher response to a socialist, which could be ably applied to tonight's Carnival of Lies. It's also an example of a more democratic political spectacle-- Thatcher is not shielded from questions or criticisms. Like any other citizen, she is exposed to them.

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Posted by: Ace at 10:00 AM | Comments (291)
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Gutfeld wants you to die. Like most Republicans, I guess.

Text below, but it's better to watch -- video after the jump. He announces the rules of the game with a desperate weariness that sells the bit.

“Every time he says ‘folks,’ drink. Every time he says ‘fair share,’ drink. Every time he says ‘extraordinary,’ drink. Every time he brags about working tirelessly, drink. When he frets about lack of compromise, drink. If he says, ‘Bring me a bill, and I’ll sign it,’ drink. When he brings up the middle class, the people he’s ruining, drink. Every time he says, ‘It’s the right thing to do,’ drink. Every time he cites someone that his policies have helped, drink. If she’s in the audience, drink some more. Every time he says, ‘I never said it would be easy,’ drink. If he says that after mentioning ObamaCare, drink again. If he says ObamaCare’s rough start was worth it, drink. And every time he reminds us that running a country is really hard, say, ‘Yeah, we can tell,’ and drink … Finally, each time you feel like you’re being screwed, drink. And if you still buy anything from this gas bag, then you deserve the world’s worst hangover, and enjoy it, ‘cause you built that.”

Tonight we're going to just have an Open Thread on the SOTU. I and the cobs discussed doing a live blog, and the consensus was that basically, TFG isn't worth that much of anyone's time. It will be an hour and a half of complete bullshit, and after the first twenty long minutes, saying "bullshit" to everything just becomes lifeless, predictable, and mechanical, like Obama's speechifying itself.

And what's more: This will be the same SOTU he's given now four (or is it five?) times before, except with a little more emphasis on income inequality and some more threats to act unconstitutionally.

If I watch, I'll comment. But I'll probably check out after twenty minutes.
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Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (406)
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Today, Jan 28 marks the 28th anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle Challenger and her crew. Yesterday on Jan 27, 19 years earlier a fire broke out in the Apollo 1 command module during a launch test that killed the three crewmembers scheduled to fly that mission a month later. Two dates next to each other on a calendar separated by almost 2 decades.

4 days from now on Feb. 1 will be the 11th year since the breakup and disintigration of the space shuttle Columbia in the skies over Texas during their re-entry.

47 years seems like a very long time, but to put that into context it was a mere 66 years from the Wright Brothers first successful flight at Kittyhawk to Neil Armstrong's first step onto the moon.

There were other training accidents. Almost a year before the Apollo 1 fire, astronauts Elliott See and Charlie Bassett died when their T-38 trainer crashed into the McDonnell Aircraft building at Lambert Field in St. Louis where their Gemini space capsules were being built. And later in October of that same year astronaut C.C. Williams died in another T-38 crash in Huntsville.

Over at Meathead, Mollie Hemingway asks some interesting questions about risk aversion and meaningful accomplishments in the space program. Her basic point is if we expect to accomplish great things we have to become more comfortable with the idea of people dying in space.

I'm not sure I agree with her entirely but I absolutely do agree NASA has become just another large overfed federal agency - mostly interested in self-preservation and funding. You can argue for more private sector involvement (I would) but if it's just NASA letting out contracts that's still the government. To be effective and competitive it'll have to be done without NASA writing the checks.

I don't know if we should get more comfortable with the idea of people dying in space so much as we should understand the nature of the job means the risks are greater. Hemingway mentioned in her twitter feed she was surprised so many astronauts agreed with her. I'm not. They're aggressive and passionate about what they do, they train hard, and they're usually pretty smart. They know the risks far better than most and still choose to do the job.

Roll call below the fold: more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 12:45 PM | Comments (247)
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Remember when the left spent 8 years complaining about "unitary executive" (a term almost none of them understood) and signing statements?

Good times, good times.

President Obama, in the first of potentially many executive actions tied to his State of the Union address, will unilaterally increase the minimum wage for workers under new federal contracts to $10.10 an hour, from $7.25, in an effort to build momentum for a minimum wage hike for all Americans.

The executive order, which had been pushed by progressive Democratic lawmakers, applies to all contractors performing services for the federal government and would affect more than 2 million employees, according to an administration official.

Is it constitutional? What difference at this point does it make?

But don't worry, John Boehner is on the case.

The House GOP "will continue to look closely at whether the president is faithfully executing laws, as he took an oath to do,” Boehner told reporters after a meeting of the Republican conference. “We’re going to watch very closely, because there’s a Constitution that we all take an oath to, including him, and following the Constitution is the basis for House Republicans.”

Asked what the House would do if lawmakers determined Obama skirted the Constitution, Boehner said only, “There are options that are available to us.” Republicans, he said, would discuss them at their annual retreat, which begins Wednesday in Cambridge, Md.

Apparently those options include passing an amnesty bill that would give Obama a desperately needed achievement going into the midterms.

Someone sent in an "Ask the blog" question about why we don't use the flaming skull much anymore. I don't remember if we answered it during the podcast or not but we did talk about it. Basically while there's so many things coming from this White House that things which would have been shocking to the mind a few years ago are now routine. Combine that with a lack of any interest in responding by Republicans and people are just becoming numb to the lawlessness of this administration. Contra that idiot George Lucas, this is actually how democracy (or in this case a constitutional republic) dies.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:11 AM | Comments (383)
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Mark Steyn has some thoughts on the SOTU for you.

Posted by: andy at 03:03 AM | Comments (311)
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• Brian Ross Runs Over NYC Pedestrian
  
• Ex-Republican Senator Endorses Democrat Over Republican In Senate Race
  
• Steyn: The State Of The State Of The Union
  
• Tu Quoquo Ad Hitlerum
  
• Idiot With A Phone And A Pen To Raise Federal Minimum Wage
  
• State Of The Union Empty Suit
  
• Another Poll Showing Hagan In Big Trouble
  
• The Downside Of A Speedy Primary
  
• GOP Congressman Is Bringing Father Of Seal Killed In Benghazi To SOTU
  
• 69th Anniversary Of The Liberation Of Auschwitz
  
• Media Shocked Obama Has Not Lived Up To His Own Hype
  
• The Worst Republican In The World And Seven Things You Can Do About It
  
• Be On The Lookout For An Evil Pope Sporting A Goatee
  
• Neat Little IPhone Trick
  
• Cool Diagram Of Dog Breeds
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:12 AM | Comments (538)
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Chuck Schumer Wants Tracking Devices on Autistic Children

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has proposed a far-reaching new law that would force taxpayers to cover the costs of placing tracking devices on autistic children after 14-year-old autistic child Avonte Oquendo was found dead last week. The tracking devices would not be implanted, but would instead be attached to watches, ankle bracelets, belts, or shoelaces. "The program would be completely voluntary for parents and run by local law enforcement," Schumer's office announced.

...Studies show that approximately half of autistic children wander away from supervised areas. The legislation would grant $10 million for the program.

Well I know some families with autistic children who have to be constantly vigilant or else their kid will take advantage of an unlocked front door and wander far off into the neighborhood. And it's my understanding that the Secret Service uses a similar tracker to find VP Joe Biden whenever he wanders off.

But even if it's a good idea at the family level for autistic children to wear these trackers Schumer completely fails to explain:

1. Why is this the business of the federal government?
2. Why do we need a law covering this?
3. Why should the taxpayers cover the costs of these devices?

Somewhere along the line a lot of the American people have bought into the assumption that just because something is good in a nice-to-have way, it must automatically involve the federal government paying for it. Now Schumers are always going to be Schumering because it's their nature but sadly this bill is likely to pass with bipartisan support. Because the children.

Also in News You Can't Use: Can Whales Be Autistic? And will they need to be tracked as well?

NYT: Fear the Power of the Koch War-Zeppelin

Only a few weeks into this midterm election year, the right-wing political zeppelin is fully inflated with secret cash and is firing malicious falsehoods at supporters of health care reform.

A right-wing war zeppelin? That's a good idea. I like that. We'll start the ball rolling and get funding approved at the next VRWC meeting Koch-willing.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:44 PM | Comments (466)
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