Just a head's up in case you're interested.

Director Mike Judge’s new animated television series “The Goode Family” is a send-up of a clan of environmentalists who live by the words “What would Al Gore do?” Gerald and Helen Goode want nothing more than to minimize their carbon footprint. They feed their dog, Che, only veggies (much to the pet’s dismay) and Mr. Goode dutifully separates sheets of toilet paper when his wife accidentally buys two-ply. And, of course, the family drives a hybrid.

It's on ABC at 9 PM.

Here's the thing: It's not going to be anti-liberal. It can't be. No one can write a show starring unlikable, unsympathetic characters. Not only is that a commercially awful idea, but writers and producers themselves can't manage it -- imagine writing scripts every week for characters you personally don't like. It's a hard thing to do.

30 Rock tosses out a lot of cheap jokes about Republicans. But archliberal Alec Baldwin plays a gonzo Republican, and the character is too likable to do service as an anti-Republican mouthpiece. Among other things, he's the smartest and wisest character on the show.* It's kinda hard to really slam Republicans via a Republican character when that character is the smartest, wisest, and also funniest. In an unintentional way, 30 Rock is actually kinda pro-Republican. The political jabs at the Baldwin character's expense are too usually too silly to be credited as serious (he's on the Committee to Re-Invade Vietnam, for example) and the rest of the time the character is too busy being cool, being loyal to friends, etc., to make for much of a scare-figure.

And so it will be with The Goode Family. Mike Judge certainly intends some kind of spoof of liberals, but the fact that these liberals are the show's main characters will make that spoof very soft indeed. Really aggressive political parody relies in no small part on dehumanizing the opposition (or at least failing to consider their humanity much at all); any tv show is going to mostly about the humanity of its main characters.

I'm not saying don't watch the show or anything. Mike Judge is a funny guy, and the show might be good. I'm just sayin' -- don't expect any sort of genuine red meat. A few barbs, sure, but ultimately the characters are going to be shown as warm and trying to do what they think is the right thing, and that sort of empathy for them is going to blunt the attacks down to almost nothing.

Another Example: Spinal Tap. Yeah, supposedly the movie is spoofing these guys. But the characters are so lunkheadedly lovable that the movie basically becomes and advertisement for heavy metal.

* I guess the Jack McBrayden character might be the funniest. A Bible-thumping southern boy who, again, is so likable (without doubt he's the most unselfish, idealistic, and ethical character on the show, even if he's naive to the point of diagnosable mental retardation) that he is not a particularly useful vehicle for attacking the religious right.

Posted by: Ace at 05:52 AM | Comments (1)
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On tape, making a cash offer -- or at least speaking of cash contributions expressly in relation to getting an appointment -- though he's denied dong that. Under oath.

Forget it, Jake. It's Chicagotown.

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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:03 AM | Comments (1)
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Can things get worse in Korea? Yes, yes they can.

North Korea's military says it considers South Korea's participation in a U.S.-led program to intercept ships suspected of spreading weapons of mass destruction tantamount to a declaration of war against the North.

The communist North's military said in a statement Wednesday that it will respond with "immediate, strong military measures" if the South actually stops and searches any North Korean ships under the Proliferation Security Initiative.

This follows other North Korean provocations in the wake of response to their nuke test.

North Korea, facing international sanction for its nuclear test this week, has restarted a plant that makes bomb-grade plutonium, a South Korean newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Pyongyang also appeared to have fired off a third short-range missile late on Tuesday after it added to tensions with a launch of two others earlier in the day, the South's Yonhap news agency quoted a unnamed government source as saying.

The immediate cause of the North's threats is the South's decision to join the US founded Proliferation Security Initiative.

South Korea had long resisted U.S. pressure to join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), which was created in 2003 by President George W. Bush and includes more than 90 countries that have agreed to stop and inspect suspicious cargo on sea and land.

Seoul was reluctant to rile North Korea, but North Korea's second nuclear test nudged Seoul Korea to change its policy.

..."Inter-Korean relations have hit rock bottom," said Yun Duk-min, professor of international politics at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, a government think tank in Seoul. "So it is the right thing to join PSI, even if North Korea reacts with resistance."

Who is going to blink?

When a Crazy Man With A Gun Tells You He's Going to Shoot You, The Smart Move is to Act as Though He Really Will Do it [Gabe]:

Look, if we had taken Hitler at his word in the early 1930s, WWII and the Holocaust would never have happened. But instead of acting as though he really meant what he said, the European Powers claimed that he was really just being belligerent to score political points.

This holds true for North Korea today. "Oh," they scoff, "Kim is just trying to score more loot from China and lower sanctions from the U.N. He's not really a threat to anyone; half his country is starving. Besides, North Korea makes threats all the time."

Only, the half of his country that isn't starving is the military. And he has used his loot to build devastating weapons. And he doesn't have anyone left to score political points off of. Kim is not running for reelection. He doesn't have to find seats in a parliament or consolidate power. He's got nowhere to go but out and down the peninsula. With all the demonstrations over the past few days he's expending his military resources faster than anything we've ever seen.

Would he really do it? Kim may well believe that with a nuclear deterrent he can force South Korea to integrate on his terms. Those missiles can't reach the U.S., but they can reach Japan. He obviously thinks that there is something to be gained from all this. Declaring the Armistice over with a phone call rather than a missile is a good sign. But there's a reason he's doing this now and not six months ago.

President Obama is going to issue a statement in the morning with vague reassurance about how seriously he takes the situation and then he's going to defer to the UNSC's bland statement of condemnation. Kim knows this. In fact, it's the reason he's doing this now. Obama's going to vote "present" on this one.

If we give in, it means the end of sanctions. If we give in, it means the end of the nuclear talks (which, frankly, wouldn't be much of a loss). But we have to consider the likelihood that he's not just doing this to get better terms and that he might actually intend to go to war. Do we take him at his word? And if we do, does that mean we back down while he develops more nuclear weapons and sells the technology to our enemies?

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Notice: Posted by permission of AceCorp LLC. Please e-mail overnight open thread tips to xgenghisx@gmail.com. Otherwise send tips to Ace.

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I did not see this coming.

Theodore B. Olson, the U.S. solicitor general from 2001 to 2004 under President George W. Bush, and David Boies, a high-profile trial lawyer who argued on behalf of former vice president Al Gore, filed the suit May 22 in U.S. district court on behalf of two California gay couples.

... “For a long time I’ve personally felt that we are doing a grave injustice for people throughout this country by denying equality to gay and lesbian individuals,” Olson said in an interview with The Advocate. “The individuals that we represent and will be representing in this case feel they’re being denied their rights. And they’re entitled to have a court vindicate those rights.”

When pressed about his service with the Bush administration, which in 2004 endorsed an amendment to the U.S. constitution that would prohibit same-sex marriage, Olson said he was personally against the amendment at the time, though he made no public statements on the matter.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:10 PM | Comments (1)
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I honestly never thought I'd see this in my life time.

With the United Auto Workers agreeing Tuesday to take a much smaller stake in GM than originally expected, the automaker has about 19 percent of its equity with which it could potentially sweeten the pot for bondholders. But the Treasury is reportedly planning to fork over as much as $50 billion in debtor-in-possession financing to help the cash-bleeding company through its restructuring, The Wall Street Journal said late Tuesday. In return, the government could demand up to 70 percent of GM's equity, the paper said, citing people familiar with the matter.

All of this is still being negotiated and bond holders aren't happy with the proposed debt for equity swap, so this process is a long way from done.

GM says it needs 90% of bondholders (who unlike in the case of Chrysler are unsecured) to approve the plan and avoid going Chapter 11.

"It's nowhere near 90 percent," said Kip Penniman, analyst for KDP Investment Advisors. "If GM announced they got low single-digit participation, it would be a slap to GM and the absolute response to the Treasury-mandated offer. ... A cynical person would say that the offer was set up to ensure GM would go into Chapter 11 and provide the government a scapegoat."

Always have an enemy to blame, it's the Obama way.

Frighteningly related...Gabe blogged earlier about possible political considerations in the Chrysler dealership closings. Well, here's more, including a Chrysler dealer on FNC who says he's in 'the upper 2% of dealers' and is being closed. (via Slublog's Twitter feed)

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First, if it's being organized by the President of the United States it is by definition not a "grassroots movement." Idiots.

"Grassroots" connotes a spontaneous, local gathering of like-minded people who are usually every-day Joes rather than typical political activists. It is a bottom-up formation--"We the people believe"--rather than to the all too common top-down, "Let me tell you what you believe," favored by politicians.

So when Obama sends an email to all his Obamatons that "On June 6th, in thousands of homes across the country, we'll gather to launch our grassroots campaign for health care," he has completely missed the point. He (and, never forget, his minders) want the media to report that this is a grassroots movement because that type of thing sounds good on TV.

I suspect that part of it is penis envy for the actual spontaneity of the Tea Parties. Wouldn't it be nice if his side actually had grassroots support, he thinks? Not to mention what grassroots he had, especially on the Far Left, is trickling away as he reverses every promise he made on the campaign trail.

Second, this isn't even astroturfing. With astroturfing they actually pretend that they're not being directed by a politician or lobby. Here, there's no attempt to hide anything. Obama says its a grassroots movement, therefore--facts be damned, words be damned--it's a grassroots movement. For Obama and the media, that's enough. As somebody joked in comments yesterday (I think), "I have said it; so let it be written; so let it be done."

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:39 PM | Add Comment
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The Didden case makes Kelo look downright conservative.

The facts:

In 1999 Port Chester established a redevelopment area, in which new projects could be built only after getting approval from a village-designated private individual, Gregory Wasser, to whom the municipality inexplicably delegated its regulatory authority. In 2003 two owners of a plot within the redevelopment zone, Bart Didden and Domenick Bologna, asked Wasser for permission to build a CVS pharmacy. According to Didden and Bologna, Wasser responded: Either pay me $800,000 to build, give me a piece of the action, or I'll have the village take the property. The day after they spurned the offer, Port Chester did indeed start the takings process. Wasser then arranged for Walgreen to develop the site.

This little episode represents a sorry example of what political actors can legally do with unchecked condemnation power. Why, one might ask, wasn't Wasser's land grab an unconstitutional taking for private purposes? (Didden sees it as extortion; Wasser defends his actions as promoting urban renewal.)

The ruling from Sotomayor's Second Circuit? The One-Paragraph Wonder strikes again:

[T]he Second Circuit panel on which Sotomayor sat did not raise an eyebrow. Its entire analysis reads as follows: "We agree with the district court that [Wasser's] voluntary attempt to resolve appellants' demands was neither an unconstitutional exaction in the form of extortion nor an equal protection violation."

Note that the opinion was unsigned, and we have no evidence that Sotomayor wrote it. But she was on the panel, and she agreed with it.

Posted by: Ace at 01:40 PM | Add Comment
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Forgive me if this was already linked by a coblogger. I want to call it out and highlight it. This will be the main attack on Sotomayor, both on her racist reasoning and her lack of intellect and thoroughness.

It's not merely where she comes down on a reverse-discrimination case -- it's the reasoning, or rather the complete lack of any reasoning, that leads to that conclusion.

She and Obama make much of her "empathy." With a record like this, it's no surprise that they're making the case on her feelings rather than, say, her "thorough and masterful understanding of the Constitution."

U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee, voted to deny a racial discrimination claim in a 2008 decision. She dismissed the case in a one-paragraph statement that, in the opinion of one dissenting judge, ignored the evidence and did not even address the constitutional issues raised by the case.

The case, Ricci v. DeStefano, involved a group of 19 white firefighters and one Hispanic firefighter who filed suit in 2003 claiming that the city of New Haven, Conn., engaged in racial discrimination when it threw out the results of two promotion tests because none of the cityÂ’s black applicants had passed the tests.

Each of the plaintiffs had passed the exam. The case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.

...

U.S. Appeals Court Judge Sotomayor issued an order that affirmed Arterton’s decision, issuing a one-paragraph judgment that called Arterton’s ruling “thorough, thoughtful, and well reasoned,”

But according to dissenting Judge Jose Cabranes, the single-paragraph order issued by Sotomayor and her colleagues ignored over 1,800 pages of testimony and more than an hour of argument--ignoring the facts of the case.

“(T)he parties submitted briefs of 86 pages each and a six-volume joint appendix of over 1,800 pages; plaintiffs’ reply brief was over thirty pages long," Cabranes wrote.

"(O)ral argument, on December 10, 2007, lasted over an hour,” Cabranes explained, adding that more than two months after oral arguments, Sotomayor and the majority panel upheld the lower court in a summary order “containing a single substantive paragraph.”

Cabranes criticized Sotomayor and the majority for not explaining why they had sided with the city in their new opinion.

“This per curiam opinion adopted in toto the reasoning of the District Court, without further elaboration or substantive comment, and thereby converted a lengthy, unpublished district court opinion, grappling with significant constitutional and statutory claims of first impression, into the law of this Circuit,” Cabranes wrote in his dissent.

Judge Cabranes also said that SotomayorÂ’s opinion failed to address the constitutional issues of the case, saying the majority had ignored the facts of the case as well.

“It did so, moreover, in an opinion that lacks a clear statement of either the claims raised by the plaintiffs or the issues on appeal. Indeed, the opinion contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at the core of this case,” the judge criticized.

“This Court has failed to grapple with the questions of exceptional importance raised in this appeal,” Judge Cabranes concluded. “If the Ricci plaintiffs are to receive such an opinion from a reviewing court they must now look to the Supreme Court. Their claims are worthy of that review.”

In fairness, she did cite the seminal case of I Know You Are v. But What Am I?

A serious case deserves more a more serious argument than "Because I Said So." She couldn't make the case -- the contortions, evasions, and deceptions of liberal heavy hitters like William Brennan were beyond her intellectual grasp -- so she just wrote "Shut up, that's why."

More at the link. This is the juiciest case, but there are more.

Intellectually Incurious? Bear in mind, President Bush was derided by the left for years for lacking, it was claimed, the inclination and ability to seriously think through difficult questions, preferring to simply announce outcomes as "The Decider."

And Sotomayor...?

Posted by: Ace at 01:04 PM | Comments (21)
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