Gun Free Zone

Anthony Sabatini is a Republican member of the Florida Legislature. He represents the state’s 32nd House district. The 32nd District of Florida encompasses mostly South Lake County and some of North Lake County, Florida. Sadly that is not my district, why?

Here is the text in case you have issues with the photo.

State Representative Anthony Sabatini
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board requested a candidate interview with me for the purpose of issuing an endorsement. Here is my reply letter below:
Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board
633 N. Orange Ave.
Orlando, FL 32801
Re: Candidate Interview
Good Afternoon,
Thank you for your interest in interviewing my candidacy for re-election to the Florida House. However, because the political leanings of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board fall on the political spectrum somewhere between those of Hugo Chavez and Antifa, I politely decline to be interviewed by the Board. Furthermore, as a matter of policy I have denied interview requests this cycle from any left-wing organization with a palpable and demonstrable hatred of President Trump—the Sentinel is not alone in this distinction.
Respectfully, as a candidate who believes in freedom and trusts individuals to manage their own lives, an endorsement from any group or institution that seeks to massively increase the role of government in every aspect of Floridian’s lives (like the Orlando Sentinel), or to destroy our free market economy through endless interventions (like the Orlando Sentinel), or seeks the total and final erosion of individual liberty (like the Orlando Sentinel), or that desperately seeks to conform the beliefs of all elected officials to left-wing precepts (like the Orlando Sentinel), is not something to be sought, but rather something to evade at all costs.
For these reasons, an endorsement by the Sentinel or any other news outlet with similar quasi-Marxist views would have an effect more analogous to an act of defamation than a trustworthy recommendation.
Finally, its clear the major issue plaguing the media (id est “Fake News”) today is that the front page of the newspaper has become identical to the back page. “Editorializing” the once straight forward news has become more popular than ever, resulting in an almost all-time low in the public’s trust of the media—41% according to a recent Gallup Poll. Submitting to an interview with the Editorial Board would have the effect of encouraging this gross trend of “editorializing” the news, when newspapers need—more than ever before—to cast opinion aside and report “just the facts.”
For these reasons, I politely decline your request.
Sincerely,
Anthony Sabatini
Florida House of Representatives, District 32

Oh Sweet God, That is gonna leave a firm imprint in their ego which is locates somewhere in the rear.

Well done Mr. Sabatini, well done.

Dame Diana Rigg has passed.

For those in my generation, I have to quote a buddy of mine in Facebook:

Watching her in a catsuit catapulted a lot of teen boys into early puberty.

That she did and forever we loved her.

Kristina Narayan was arrested at the Portland #antifa riot where firebombs were thrown at people. She’s the legislative dir. for the Ore Democrat speaker of the House @TinaKotek. Kotek recently denounced Portland Police in a letter. https://t.co/4HLjSn67bv https://t.co/fz1dSHF3Bo pic.twitter.com/Y7L48opdMs

— Andy Ngô (@MrAndyNgo) September 10, 2020

A VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT IS LITERALLY A VOTE FOR ANTIFA!

J. Kb. beat me with his post, so I am going to do my post from another point of view.

At the end of the day, Hollywood dances at sound of  the bell of the cash register and not the chants of political cult members. This is why Hollywood made distribution deals with the Nazis till they overplayed their hand and their income went to zero.

And I do not care if you are an independent producer, unless you have the cash up front for a movie, banks will not take risks on you to do a film about a Black Islamic transgender pretzel vendor in Alabama who must bravely overcome the rejection of the local peewee badminton team.  That shit does not sell and banks hate to lose money and so will the producer when the loans come due.

In case anybody wasn’t paying attention, the Emmy’s are pretty much now the equivalent of a Girl Scout Merit badge in mushroom recognition: It is nice to have, but we can deal with it. Take for example NCIS which has been popular and making money since 2003 but has been nominated to the Emmys three times and won none. And how many Emmy winners went on to be cancelled after a season or two?  How long did it take for the Emmys to understand cable and then streaming? By the time they got with the program, it was too late.

And the Oscars have been politically correct for a long while now. You wanna win the statuette? Make a movie about somebody with a physical defect trying to overcome life or a woman or a minority that is a victim or gets victimized or weak sauce like that. Go ahead and check the list of winners let’s say for the past 30 or more years and see how many of the movies have a plotline like that? And no, it is not overcoming that is celebrated but the Social Justice behind.

The challenge to come is if people will get back to theaters and spend money there or will they spend the money at home. The streaming services are learning what works and what doesn’t and trying to produce either mass quantities (Netflix) or high quality (Amazon) and the benefited for this experimentation is the public.  (Apple and Disney are still getting their feet wet. $30 for streaming Mulan? Are you nuts?)

When TV became “official”, for the longest of times it was considered a sign of failure in the business for someone from Hollywood to work in TV.  Over half a century later, I really don’t see Hollywood surviving without the home telescreen and I believe the silver screen will not make it and neither are the Oscars.

The Academy Awards has become more and more of an intolerable wokefest every year, and ratings for viewership have dropped consequently.

Back in 2015, #OscarsSoWhite started trending over complaints about the lack of diversity in Oscar nominees.

Personally, I thought that the Academy would add categories like: Best POC Actor/Actress, Best POC Supporting Actor/Actress, Best Film with a Majority POC Cast, etc.  I was wrong, they went the other way.  The new announcement is that to be considered for Best Film, the cast and crew must meet a diversity quota.

Today, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced new representation and inclusion standards for Oscars® eligibility in the Best Picture category, as part of its Academy Aperture 2025 initiative. The standards are designed to encourage equitable representation on and off screen in order to better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience. Academy governors DeVon Franklin and Jim Gianopulos headed a task force to develop the standards that were created from a template inspired by the British Film Institute (BFI) Diversity Standards used for certain funding eligibility in the UK and eligibility in some categories of the British Academy of Film and Television (BAFTA) Awards, but were adapted to serve the specific needs of the Academy. The Academy also consulted with the Producers Guild of America (PGA), as it presently does for Oscars eligibility.

For the 94th Oscars (2022) and 95th Oscars (2023), submitting a confidential Academy Inclusion Standards form will be required for Best Picture consideration, however meeting inclusion thresholds will not be required for eligibility in the Best Picture category until the 96th Oscars (2024).

For the 96th Oscars (2024), a film must meet TWO out of FOUR of the following standards to be deemed eligible:

STANDARD A: ON-SCREEN REPRESENTATION, THEMES AND NARRATIVES
To achieve Standard A, the film must meet ONE of the following criteria:

A1. Lead or significant supporting actors

At least one of the lead actors or significant supporting actors is from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group.
• Asian
• Hispanic/Latinx
• Black/African American
• Indigenous/Native American/Alaskan Native
• Middle Eastern/North African
• Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander
• Other underrepresented race or ethnicity

A2. General ensemble cast

At least 30% of all actors in secondary and more minor roles are from at least two of the following underrepresented groups:
• Women
• Racial or ethnic group
• LGBTQ+
• People with cognitive or physical disabilities, or who are deaf or hard of hearing

A3. Main storyline/subject matter

The main storyline(s), theme or narrative of the film is centered on an underrepresented group(s).
• Women
• Racial or ethnic group
• LGBTQ+
• People with cognitive or physical disabilities, or who are deaf or hard of hearing

The other categories are:

• • STANDARD B: CREATIVE LEADERSHIP AND PROJECT TEAM
  • STANDARD C: INDUSTRY ACCESS AND OPPORTUNITIES
  • STANDARD D: AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT

The details for those are essentially the same for the first category, except they apply to the crew, the interns, and the audience (who the film is intended and marketed to).

Fine, if that’s what they want to do to themselves, so be it.

We will never see a movie like Saving Private Ryan, Dunkirk, or 1917 nominated again, which will be sad.

The Left has taken Orwell’s 1984 as a how-to manual.  One of the scariest quotes from that book is:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

So how long after this goes into effect do movies that won Best Picture but don’t meet the current standard get hit with an asterisk and then memory-holed?  Particularly historical dramas.

It will be a shame when Holywood puts an asterisk by Schindler’s List Best Picture award for not being sufficiently diverse.

But what can you do?  The party is always right.

And suddenly there are no riots in the Country for a second night in a row.

Try find one.  With the exception of a small tussle with a dozen idiots in a corner of Normandy Avenue  L.A (I know that sounds familiar to some of you) that lasted as much as a fart in a hurricane,  all demonstrations last couple of nights have been sans-violence and even providing an ASL translator in Rochester.

Interesting, huh?

No trick-or-treating, no parties, no carnivals and no festivals. In light of the ongoing pandemic, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has issued new guidelines for Halloween https://t.co/s0ofnCwsYT

— KCAL News (@kcalnews) September 9, 2020

Instead of trick-or-treating, we just have masked youths loot candy from thier neighbors on October 31st.

Seems like a pretty easy way around that ban given California’s support of looters and rioters.