Local Voters Will Deliver 1.5 Million
Petition Signatures to Offices of Sen. Rob Portman Telling Him: Do Your Job.

PCCC Launches Online Ads Statewide

Petitions gathered by Organizing For Action (OFA), Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), MoveOn.org Civic Action, UltraViolet Action, Color of Change, Daily Kos, Demand Progress, People For the American Way, Common Cause, NextGen Climate, Sierra Club, CREDO Action, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Donna Edwards, and Every Voice Action

Tomorrow -- March 3, 2016 -- local PCCC members will join supporters of ally organizations to deliver 1.5 million petition signatures to the Cleveland office of Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Hamilton County Courthouse in Cincinnati.

The petitions demand Portman and Senate Republicans follow the Constitution and do their job by allowing a fair process on the president’s upcoming Supreme Court nomination. The PCCC will also launch online ads in Ohio to hold Senate Republicans accountable for obstruction.

For some reason I can't for the life of me recall, I was thinking about the time I saw Leslie West of Mountain play at the Agora way back in the '70s. Why was I thinking about it? Oh, I know why: I was transporting to my crammed house the two wooden stools from my ghost of a record store along with a bunch of other junk I didn't want to leave to the advancing Mexican asbestos-removal army. And the memory just sort of seeped into my consciousness.

Because: Leslie West--whose band name was sort of his nickname and not for a powerful build which he did not have--walked out on stage with his awesome little vintage Gibson Melody Maker guitar and had to sit on a stool.

Because: he was so damned fat his legs couldn't support his humongous-ness. I remember estimating his weight pretty near 400 pounds.

And the stool? Well, the significance of that was how the stool, you know, sort ofdisappeared into him as he sat down on it. I mean, it looked like his body just sucked that piece of convenience furniture like Scotty beaming up Spock.Gone!

It’s election season, and already we’ve had two instances of those amusing quadrennial scuffles between Republican politicians and leftist musicians. Donald Trump repeatedly played Neil Young’s “Rocking’ in the Free World” at a campaign event, prompting a statement from Young’s camp that he was “not authorized” to use the song. Previously, the band Survivor sued Mike Huckabee over the use of “Eye of the Tiger” at a rally celebrating Rowan County, PA county clerk Kim Davis’ release from jail following a stint for contempt of court for refusing to marry same-sex couples. 

It’s a strange phenomenon, made more so by its reliability. Bumbling Republican candidate blasts song from campaign bus or whatever.  Artist sends irate cease and desist letter and copies the media. Politician quietly drops the song with vague apologies. Liberals pass it around as the latest evidence of the candidate’s brain damage, and get a good chuckle out of the whole thing. It’s extra fun if patriotic themes in the stolen songs turn out to be rather sarcastic, such as Young’s “Free World,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” or John Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses.” 

Marvel and Fox Studios’ R-rated superhero action/comedy Deadpool, a gamble of a movie that required some “leaked” test footage and a fan campaign just to get made, is now breaking box office records. In addition to a stellar opening weekend that surpassed any of Fox Studios’ other X-Men-related movies, as of this writing it’s on its way to becoming the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever.

This flies in the face of “common wisdom” in Hollywood that superhero movies just can’t make money without that under-17 audience. And while an R-rated superhero movie may never make as much as a kid-friendly, PG-13 Avengers, Deadpool proves that a good one can still outperform an average PG-13 one.

The problem is that some in Hollywood are learning all the wrong lessons from Deadpool’s success.

Two wildly imaginative worlds open up on area movie screens this week. Both mix gorgeous animated photography with important life lessons for kids old enough to appreciate them.

The more mainstream offering is Disney’sZootopia, the story of a plucky rabbit who’s determined to become the first member of her species to pin on a badge.

Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) grows up in an anthropomorphic world where all animals—predators and prey alike—have learned to live in peace with each other. Even so, not all of the old differences have been forgotten. When Judy prepares to leave her hometown to join the Zootopia Police Academy, her parents warn her to watch out for big-city foxes.

Wouldn’t you know it, her first day on the job brings her into contact with Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a sly fox who makes his living with schemes that fall just short of illegality.

Frustrated that her chief (Idris Elba) has assigned her to the parking patrol, Judy is determined to prove she’s capable of real police work. But her efforts backfire when she gets involved in a chase that nearly demolishes a neighborhood inhabited by tiny rodents.