Hullabaloo

Saturday, March 13, 2010

 
Saturday Night At The Movies


Of butcher boys and green-eyed ladies

By Dennis Hartley

















Child of nature, friend of man.


With Saint Patrick’s Day coming up in a few days, I thought I’d help you “get your Irish up” and drive the snakes out of your media room with my Top 10 recommendations…

The Butcher Boy-A real gem from director Neil Jordan, featuring one of the most extraordinary performances I have ever seen by a child actor (Eamonn Owens is like a midget Brando). Hard to describe, the film is sort of a distant cousin to An Angel at My Table or Heavenly Creatures. The difficult and dark subject matter is handled with judicious compassion. Both heartbreaking and savagely funny, this is worth seeking out.

The Commitments-“Say it leoud. I’m black and I’m prewd!” Pulling together a cast of talented yet unknown actor/musicians to "portray" a group of talented yet unknown musicians was a stroke of genius from director Alan Parker. This "life imitating art imitating life" trick works wonders. In some ways a thematic remake of the director’s own 1980 film Fame, Parker transplants the scenario from New York to Dublin (look fast for a sly reference when a band member sings a parody of the Fame theme). However, these working class Irish kids don't have the luxury of attending a performing arts academy; there's an undercurrent of economic downturn, with most band members “on the dole” . The acting chemistry is superb, but it's the musical performances that really win you over, especially from (then) 16-year old Andrew Strong, who has the soulful pipes of someone who has been drinking a fifth and smoking 2 packs a day for decades. In 2007, cast member Glen Hansard popped up again as the co-star of the surprise low-budget hit, Once, a lovely (if a bit over-praised) character study that would make a good double bill.

The General-Brendan Gleeson explodes onscreen like an Irish Tony Soprano in his turn as real-life gangster Martin Cahill. According to the script, Cahill was a bit of a latter-day Robin Hood figure to some Dubliners (one suspects some degree of artistic romanticism on that count). Regardless, Gleeson makes quite an impression in his first major role. Jon Voight (!) is an unexpected delight as Cahill’s law enforcement nemesis. Written and directed by the eclectic John Boorman, who adapted from the novel by Paul Williams.

In Bruges-OK, full disclosure. In my original review, I gave this 2008 Sundance hit a somewhat lukewarm appraisal. But upon a second viewing, I realized that I had “missed something” the first time around, and have now decided that I actually like this film quite a lot (happens sometimes…nobody’s perfect!). A pair of Irish hit men (Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell) botch a job in London and are exiled to the Belgian city of Bruges, where they are ordered to lay low until their piqued Cockney employer (an over the top Ray Fiennes) dictates their next move. What ensues can be perhaps best described as a tragicomic Boschian nightmare (which will make more sense once you’ve seen it). Written and directed by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, who deftly demonstrates the versatility of the word “fook” (as a noun, an adverb, a super adverb and an adjective).

Into the West-Here’s another sleeper worth seeking out, from one of the more deft (and underappreciated, IMHO) “all-purpose” directors working today, Mike Newell (Dance With a Stranger, Enchanted April, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Donnie Brasco, Pushing Tin). At first glance, it falls into the “magical family film” category, but it carries a subtly dark undercurrent with it throughout, which keeps it interesting for the adults in the room. Lovely performances, a magic horse, and one purty pair o’humans (Ellen Barkin and Gabriel Byrne, real-life spouses at the time). What more do you want?

My Left Foot-This was the first (and best) of three rewarding collaborations between writer-director Jim Sheridan and actor Daniel Day-Lewis (1993’s In the Name of the Father and 1997’s The Boxer were to follow). This 1989 biopic about Christy Brown, a severely palsied man who became a renowned author, poet and painter despite daunting physical roadblocks makes for an incredibly moving film. What makes this film unique within its genre is that it avoids the audience-pandering trap of turning its protagonist into the cinematic equivalent of a lovable puppy (see Rainman, I Am Sam); Brown is fearlessly portrayed by Day-Lewis “warts and all” with all his peccadilloes laid bare. As a result, you quickly acclimate to Day-Lewis’ physical tics, and begin to see past them, allowing Brown to emerge as a complex human being, not merely an object of pity. That is a mark of a truly great actor, and Day-Lewis quite deservedly picked up an Oscar. Brenda Fricker also earned her supporting Oscar as Brown’s mother. It’s easy to overlook 13-year old Hugh O’Conor’s contribution as the young Christy, but it is an important one.

Odd Man Out-An absorbing film noir from the great director Carol Reed (The Third Man, The Fallen Idol). James Mason is excellent as a gravely wounded Irish rebel who is on the run from the authorities through the dark and shadowy backstreets of Belfast. Interestingly, the I.R.A. is never referred to directly, but the turmoil borne of Northern Ireland’s “troubles” is most definitely inferred by word and action throughout F.L. Green and R.C. Sherriff’s intelligent screenplay (adapted from Green’s original novel). Unique for its time, it still holds up remarkably well as a “heist gone wrong”/chase thriller with strong political undercurrents. The great cast includes Robert Newton and Cyril Cusack.

The Quiet Man-A John Ford classic. I was never a huge John Wayne fan, but he’s damn near perfect in this role as a down-on-his-luck boxer who leaves America to get in touch with his roots in his native Ireland. The most entertaining (and purloined) donnybrook of all time plus a fiery performance from the gorgeous Maureen O’Hara round things off nicely. Although quite tame by today’s standards, I’ve always thought the romantic scenes between Wayne and O’Hara to be surprisingly tactile and sensuous for the time. The pastoral valleys and rolling hills of the Irish countryside have never looked lovelier onscreen, thanks to Winton C. Hoch and Archie Stout’s Oscar-winning cinematography.

The Secret of Roan Inish-John Sayles delivers an engaging fairy tale, devoid of the usual genre clichés. Wistful, haunting and beautifully shot by the great cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who captures the misty desolation of County Donegal’s rugged coastline in a way that frequently recalls Michael Powell’s similarly effective utilization of Scotland’s Shetland Islands for his 1937 classic, The Edge of the World. The seals should have been nominated for a special Oscar for Best Performance by a Sea Mammal.

U2-Rattle and Hum-An outstanding, artfully produced rock doc from director Phil Joanau (State of Grace). They’re a band from Dublin, y’know. P.S.-Fook the Revolution!


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Dennis Hartley 3/13/2010 05:30:00 PM |

 
Peas In A Pod

by digby

This op-ed by Howell Raines, former editor of the NY Times, in which he wonders why the media refuse to confront their rivals FOX news as the propaganda arm it is has been getting a lot of circulation. Setting aside the sheer chutzpah of the man who refused to apologize for being Newtie's little lapdog during the Whitewater scandal (they didn't need FOX on those days because they had the paper of record doing their dirty work for them), the answer to his question seems fairly obvious to me. The rest of the press doesn't want to come down too hard on FOX because in a shrinking journalistic universe there is a diminishing number of places to work these days.

And anyway, what makes Raines think that the NY Times has a problem with Fox in the first place? Judging from the ACORN scandal, they don't see much of a problem even with a totally phony group of liars like Breitbart?

Building on the work done by Bradblog and Media Matters on this issue, FAIR came out with an advisory last week which should make the Times cringe with embarrassment. Here's just the most recent evidence of their journalistic malpractice on this story:

--On March 2, 2010, under the headline, "ACORN's Advice to Fake Pimp Was No Crime, Prosecutor Says, "the Times reported: "The ACORN employees in Brooklyn who were captured on a hidden camera seeming to offer conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute creative advice on how to get a mortgage have been cleared of wrongdoing by the Brooklyn district attorney's office."

But the story the Times continues to tell is wildly misleading, as a review of the publicly available transcripts of his visit (BigGovernment.com) makes clear. O'Keefe never dressed as a pimp during his visits to ACORN offices, seems to never actually represent himself as a "pimp," and the advice he solicits is usually about how to file income taxes (which is not "tax evasion"). In at least one encounter (at a Baltimore ACORN office), the pair seemed to first insist that Giles was a dancer, not a prostitute.

In the case recounted in the March 2 Times story, the transcripts show that O'Keefe did not portray himself as a pimp to the ACORN workers in Brooklyn, but told them that he was trying to help his prostitute girlfriend. In part of the exchange, O'Keefe and his accomplice seem to be telling ACORN staffers that they are attempting to buy a house to protect child prostitutes from an abusive pimp.

Throughout the months the Times covered the story, it made a major mistake: believing that Internet videos produced by right-wing activists were to be trusted uncritically, rather than approached with the skepticism due to anything you'd come across on the Web. O'Keefe and the Web publisher Andrew Breitbart refused to make unedited copies of the videotape public, and with good reason: A more complete viewing, as the transcripts show, would produce a much different impression.

This isn't just about O'Keefe and Giles misrepresenting how they looked when they went into those offices. They misrepresented what they said and what the ACORN workers were responding to. There's no excuse for the Times refusing to acknowledge this and at this point, the Times' refusal to acknowledge how badly they handled this story is a scandal in itself.

Perhaps we should begin to ask whether or not the press isn't questioning the right wing noise machine's propaganda simply because they agree with it?


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digby 3/13/2010 04:00:00 PM |

 
I have refrained from writing much about this because I'm so angry at the Catholic hierarchy at the moment that I'm afraid I might say something I'll regret. But I can't resist this, from Pam Spaulding:

At one time you might have thought what you’re about to read was an extreme looney-toon statement, but given the vortex of evil coming to light—the criminal pedophile priest protection enterprise sitting at Benedict’s door of responsibility, the pimping out of undocumented immigrants, members of the Vatican choir, Papal Gentlemen and seminarians...it’s like a bad novel come to life.

Well, this story is like a novel, The Exorcist. The Vatican’s exorcist-in-chief, who was the basis for the priest in the film, thinks there’s evil inside those walls and he’s not shy about saying it.

Pam goes on to talk about the horrifying mess the Vatican is facing and writes:

I think the public relations staff have such a nightmare on their hands—who knows when a coerced rent boy’s going to emerge to tell tales of priests in all sorts of compromising positions, or more papers implicating Cardinal Ratzinger emerge that show he repeatedly allowed children to be raped and pedophile priests to remain free to victimize more?

Oh boy.

She mentions the fact that the Pope is considered infallible which means there's not much anyone can do about this short of some very dicey Dan Brown novel kind of stuff. But that raises a question for me: if the Pope is infallible and it turns out that he was involved in the pedophile priest scandal, as now looks likely, does that mean that pedophilia would now be considered an act ordained by God?

*I suppose I should regret saying that too, but I don't. The Church hierarchy has a lot to answer for these days . And nobody seems more unhappy with all this than observant Catholics themselves.


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digby 3/13/2010 03:30:00 PM |

 
Kabuki Play

by digby

Michael Isikoff and Michael Hirsh are on to something here, when they call Liz Cheney "Palin with a pedigree." I hadn't thought about it that way, but Cheney is also a somewhat youthful mother of five who sells herself as a living example of traditional family values from a position of powerful and famous political celebrity. It's a trick only the right wing could possibly get away with, but their history is filled with such hypocritical women.

But this I find even more interesting:

It's telling that no one at the Palazzo seemed very concerned that Liz, daughter of Dick, had just four days earlier appalled many in her own party's establishment. Her conservative advocacy group, Keep America Safe, had launched a nasty assault on seven Justice Department lawyers who had defended Guantánamo detainees. The ad branded the Justice lawyers "the Al Qaeda Seven" and asked, in ominous tones, "Whose values do they share?" To many critics within and outside the GOP, the attack smacked of McCarthyism for seeming to impugn the loyalty of lawyers who—like all members of their profession—sometimes represent unpopular (and guilty) clients. Nineteen conservative lawyers later issued a statement denouncing the ad. Among them were Ken Starr and top officials who had served in the George W. Bush administration. "I was horrified," says John Bellinger, Condoleezza Rice's former chief counsel.

Like father, like daughter, it seems. Much as Dick Cheney staked out the far right wing of the Bush administration, winning the respect and gratitude of GOP hawks despite his low popularity nationwide, Liz seems eager to make her reputation by unnerving her party's moderates. In another era—one less driven by ideological extremes—the vicious attack ad might have sunk her political career. But now it may have only turbocharged it. Cheney's aides could barely contain their glee last week at the ruckus they had stirred up. "For $1,000, we've driven the debate for over a week," said one political adviser, who asked not to be identified because the group, co-led by conservative commentator Bill Kristol, wanted to speak only through official statements. Or as one of Liz Cheney's biggest fans, Rush Limbaugh, put it on his radio show: "It sure as hell got everybody's attention, didn't it?" (Cheney herself did not respond to a request for comment.)

It was not a mistake. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Bill Kristol was, you'll recall, the man who wrote the memo back in 1994 urging total obstruction of Clinton's health care bill. He is a master at moving the debate to the right. Similarly, the Cheneys have been on the attack since the day Obama was elected and have been extremely successful at forcing them off their position and re-normalizing the neocon position in the mainstream media.

Everyone on the left feels very smug about having all those right wing lawyers brush Cheney and Kristol back. But they shouldn't. Cheney's charge about the Obama Justice Department lawyers is "out there" and according to Cokie's law that means it's no longer beyond the pale. And from the sound of this article, the conservative establishment understands that very well.


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digby 3/13/2010 02:00:00 PM |

 
They Never, Ever Quit

by digby

Say what you will about the right, but you have to admit that they are tenacious and use every opportunity, win or lose, to organize and advance their agenda:

Several Religious Right activists and California state legislators have unveiled a new effort to take control of the court system "across San Diego County and eventually America" via elections through a new organization called "Better Courts Now", arguing that Proposition 8 would not have even been necessary if the state had the proper judges:

Assemblyman Joel Anderson, R-La Mesa, and one of his predecessors from the 77th Assembly District are among those appearing in videos for a new Chula Vista-based group that is urging conservatives to elect local judges who value "life and traditional family."

The website, BetterCourtsNow.com, also includes testimonials from at least one person affiliated with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a group that has been in the center of political battles over gay marriage in California and around the country.

"It’s important that we unify our votes so we ensure that solid men and women of high morals, who will not legislate from the bench, are elected to office," Anderson says in a 97-second video. Later he adds, "We are in full agreement that we need to get behind BetterCourtsNow.com."

They understand something the left doesn't ---- this is a fight that never ends. It's easier for them because they are temperamentally suited to permanent battle. But it doesn't change the fact that there is never going to be a permanent armistice in the march for human progress. After all, we just went through the bloodiest century in history, fighting all this out on the world stage and yet the war, by other means, continues. It's the nature of our species. Liberals had better recognize that it's going to take vigilance, creativity and persistence just to protect the progress that's been made, not to mention any further advances. The reactionaries, authoritarians and sadists never rest.


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digby 3/13/2010 12:30:00 PM |

 
Security Clowns

by digby

So, it looks like Michael Chertoff's DHS relied on wingnut organizations to keep them apprised of allegedly leftwing threats to the nation. And not just any rightwing organizations: David Horowitz's Frontpage Magazine's paranoid "Discover The Network" project.

This does not surprise me in the least. Michael Chertoff proved long ago that he was a fool:

They held a seminar at the Heritage Foundation with the shows actors and producers featuring Chertoff and Limbaugh in which Chertoff said:

SECRETARY CHERTOFF: ...In reflecting a little bit about the popularity of the show "24" -- and it is popular, and there are a number of senior political and military officials around the country who are fans, and I won't identify them, because they may not want me to do that (laughter) I was trying to analyze why it's caught such public attention. Obviously, it's a very well-made and very well-acted show, and very exciting. And the premise of a 24-hour period is a novel and, I think, very intriguing premise. But I thought that there was one element of the shows that at least I found very thought-provoking, and I suspect, from talking to people, others do as well.

Typically, in the course of the show, although in a very condensed time period, the actors and the characters are presented with very difficult choices -- choices about whether to take drastic and even violent action against a threat, and weighing that against the consequence of not taking the action and the destruction that might otherwise ensue.

In simple terms, whether it's the president in the show or Jack Bauer or the other characters, they're always trying to make the best choice with a series of bad options, where there is no clear magic bullet to solve the problem, and you have to weigh the costs and benefits of a series of unpalatable alternatives. And I think people are attracted to that because, frankly, it reflects real life. That is what we do every day. That is what we do in the government, that's what we do in private life when we evaluate risks. We recognize that there isn't necessarily a magic bullet that's going to solve the problem easily and without a cost, and that sometimes acting on very imperfect information and running the risk of making a serious mistake, we still have to make a decision because not to make a decision is the worst of all outcomes.

And so I think when people watch the show, it provokes a lot of thinking about what would you do if you were faced with this set of unpalatable alternatives, and what do you do when you make a choice and it turns out to be a mistake because there was something you didn't know. I think that, the lesson there, I think is an important one we need to take to heart. It's very easy in hindsight to go back after a decision and inspect it and examine why the decision should have been taken in the other direction. But when you are in the middle of the event, as the characters in "24" are, with very imperfect information and with very little time to make a decision, and with the consequences very high on a wrong decision, you have to be willing to make a decision recognizing that there is a risk of mistake.

Here's Rush at the same seminar:

RUSH: I asked Mary Matalin, by the way, on this trip to Afghanistan, we were watching this, and I asked her -- she worked for Vice President Cheney at the time -- I said, "Do we have anything like this?"

SURNOW: (Laughter.)

RUSH: She said, "Not that I know of." What about the possibility of government officials -- back to the scholars -- government officials watching this program (we know they do) can they get ideas, creative ideas on dealing with these problems from this show, or are they strictly fans, do you think?

[...]

Speaking just as an American citizen, you mentioned the operation in Canada. This is why the show has an impact on people. We have a political party trying to shut down the program that enabled that operation in Canada to be a success. It's being called "domestic spying," when it's not. These guys put the same kind of conflict in the program. Jack Bauer, who never fails, always is the target of the government, somebody, being put in jail. It's amazing how close it is.

Rush was actually asking the right question. I laughed at him at the time,thinking he was an embarrassing torture fanboy. But it turns out that the military really was getting ideas from the show:

According to British lawyer and writer Philippe Sands, Jack Bauer—played by Kiefer Sutherland—was an inspiration at early "brainstorming meetings" of military officials at Guantanamo in September of 2002. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate general who gave legal approval to 18 controversial new interrogation techniques including water-boarding, sexual humiliation, and terrorizing prisoners with dogs, told Sands that Bauer "gave people lots of ideas."

This probably worries me as much as anything I've heard about the antics of the Bush administration. These people are so fundamentally unserious that they found inspiration in a television show when the stakes were about as high as they could possibly be. It's horrifying to think these powerful people were this daft. But they were.

And that's the problem with using Horowitz's silly lists as well. It was so fundamentally unserious that it's scary. And it makes it pretty clear that we were either very, very lucky or that Al Qaeda was a spent force after 9/11. American security during those days was a clown show.

Update: Emptywheel has more

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digby 3/13/2010 10:30:00 AM |

 
Nothing To See Here

by digby

Petraeus Makes Trip to New Hampshire
Expect the 2012 buzz to get louder: Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command and earlier the top U.S. general in Iraq, will visit Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire later this month, the St. Anselm Crier reports.

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digby 3/13/2010 08:30:00 AM |

Friday, March 12, 2010

 
Rebels With A Cause

by digby

Do you know these two women? You should. They are two pro-choice women challenging Bart Stupak and Joe Pitts, of the notorious Stupak-Pitts Amendment-- Connie Saltonstall and Lois Herr.

You can contribute to Saltonstall and Herr online. Somebody needed to stand up and they did. If you've got a couple of bucks to spare, I'm sure they would be grateful. I'm certainly grateful to them for doing it.


Update: I think one of the problems with Stupak may just be that he's an utter moron on top of being a liar. Not a good combination.


Update II: Here's more idiocy:

Stupak notes that his negotiations with House Democratic leaders in recent days have been revealing. “I really believe that the Democratic leadership is simply unwilling to change its stance,” he says. “Their position says that women, especially those without means available, should have their abortions covered.” The arguments they have made to him in recent deliberations, he adds, “are a pretty sad commentary on the state of the Democratic party.”

What are Democratic leaders saying? “If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak says. “Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America? If money is the issue — come on, we can find room in the budget. This is life we’re talking about.”

This is bullshit we're talking about.

The sad commentary is that this person is either too stupid to understand the two amendment or is just blatantly lying in everyone's faces.

The good news is that he acknowledges that the rest of his phony pro-life gang is wavering and may vote for the bill which doesn't guarantee anything but it's at least a little hopeful.

He's also worried about the future of pro-life Democrats. I would be too if I were him. If they are actually so confused that they think a bill which restricts access to abortions for 15 million or so women adds up to more abortions then they have much bigger problems. Cognitive problems.

On the other hand, if they plan to dishonestly and opportunistically leverage their little gang to further restrict a woman's right to choose, they may not find themselves quite as successful as they have been in the past. This gambit on Stupak and Nelson revealed them to be anything but principled players acting out of religions conviction.


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digby 3/12/2010 06:00:00 PM |

 
Failing From the Top Down

by digby


I will delve into this more over the week-end, but on the face of it, this looks like a bombshell that will hopefully change the slow motion train wreck that is Financial system reform:

The bankruptcy examiner’s report filed by Anton R. Valukas on the 2008 demise of Lehman Brothers discusses some accounting gimmicks that are eerily reminiscent of how Enron tried to prop up its balance sheet back in 2001 before it collapsed. Both companies appear to have played right along the edge of properly accounting for transactions designed to make them appear much stronger than they turned out to be, becoming steadily more aggressive as they teetered on the brink of ruin.

The examiner’s report discusses potential claims that the bankruptcy trustee can bring against Lehman’s former officers and outside advisers and does not mention potential government law enforcement action. Reading his report, however, gives strong indications that at a minimum the Securities and Exchange Commission is likely to pursue civil charges for securities fraud, and that criminal charges are certainly possible against Lehman’s former top executives.

Wow.

It's felicitous that Chris Hayes wrote this insightful essay just as this news came out:

In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it's General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both. And at the root of these failures are the people who run these institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order. In exchange for their power, status and remuneration, they are supposed to make sure everything operates smoothly. But after a cascade of scandals and catastrophes, that implicit social contract lies in ruins, replaced by mass skepticism, contempt and disillusionment...

For more than 35 years, Gallup has polled Americans about levels of trust in their institutions — Congress, banks, Big Business, public schools, etc. In 2008 nearly every single institution was at an all-time low. Banks were trusted by just 32% of the populace, down from more than 50% in 2004. Newspapers were down to 24%, from slightly below 40% at the start of the decade. And Congress was the least trusted institution of all, with only 12% of Americans expressing confidence in it. The mistrust of élites extends to élites themselves. Every year, public-relations guru Richard Edelman conducts a "trust barometer" across 22 countries, in which he surveys only highly educated, high-earning, media-attentive people. In the U.S., these people show extremely low levels of trust in government and business alike. Particularly distrusted are the superman CEOs of yore. "Chief-executive trust has just been mired in the mid- to low 20s," says Edelman. "It started off with Enron and culminates in Citi."

Now Lehman. The failure of elites continues apace.

Read the whole thing, it's actually got a hopeful ending.

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digby 3/12/2010 05:00:00 PM |

 
No Convenient Season

by digby

As I contemplate the various conversations I've been having with people of good will on the subject of "absolutism" and "litmus tests" especially as it pertains to the ongoing unanswered assaults a woman's right to choose, I keep thinking about Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail, particularly this passage:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

This issue is a matter of fundamental human rights. To see it used as a bargaining chip, something to be tossed into the pile along with earmarks and kickbacks is very disheartening. And yet pro-choice advocates grit their teeth and behave as good soldiers, this time allowing access to their constitutional right to abortion to be restricted yet again so that health care reform could succeed. And the goalposts have moved once more.

And once again we are told that it is a bad idea to be "too strident" and that we need to have a "big tent" and seek "common ground," advice which has resulted over the course of 30 years in one party becoming totally anti-choice and another that is creeping ever more boldly toward accommodation to the same people. We are always told that we need to "wait for a more convenient season" to fight for our rights.

I understood what Dr King was saying when I first read that amazing document. I hoped everyone did. But when it comes to civil rights I have learned that every battle begins anew and each new generation must learn for themselves that no one should ever tell someone else that they must wait for their freedom --- or force them to relinquish it by the death of a thousand cuts, each time for what is called a greater good. And if we complain we are patronizingly lectured in the ways of the world and patted on the head for being Big Girls and putting others before our petty concerns. This phenomenon has led me to King's great insight: shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Human rights are not "issues" to be finessed in order to procure votes. They are principles which form the very basis of our values and worldview and they must be defended. Yet Americans have sold out their most cherished ideals of equality and liberty throughout its history. And it's always, always been shameful, every single time.


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digby 3/12/2010 03:30:00 PM |

 
Triumph Of The Conservative Will

by tristero

The intent is two-fold:

1. To render a public school education all but worthless by teaching blatant lies and distortions, thereby advancing the long-desired rightwing meme is, in fact, worthless and should be eliminated.

2. As long as there must be a public education system, indoctrinate children to in the lie that rightwing/christianist authoritorianism is a core American value and not, in fact, the very antithesis of the Americanism the Founders intended.

Textbook procurement protocols must be changed to eliminate the influence of these ignorant, malicious lunatics from the national discourse. Otherwise, we deserve everything that's coming to us.

tristero 3/12/2010 02:00:00 PM |

 
It Matters

by digby

Eric Alterman and Danny Goldberg have news for you:

Did you know that when the White House and members of the media mention "code words like 'diversity' and 'equality'" what they are really proposing is "communist revolution?"

Did you know that Osama bin Laden's remarks about global warming are almost identical to "those of the average, run-of-the-mill leftist, like Obama or Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi or the entire Democrat Party?" Or that the "global warming scam" is "an effort by the left to destroy capitalist economies?"

Here's one I'll bet you didn't know: President Barack Obama was "advised by [the] Ft. Hood Shooter."

If you didn't know the "facts" above, it means you probably haven't been spending your time listening to talk radio hosts such as Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Neil Boortz, and G. Gordon Liddy. It's hard work listening to these shows, but progressives should be paying attention to the impact they're having: 48 million people get their news from these guys, according to the Pew Project For Excellence In Journalism, and the numbers of radio stations that carry at least some talk shows grew to 2,056 from 1,370 the year before, according to Inside Radio magazine.

That's more than twice the collective audience for the three TV network evening news shows combined, more than five times the audience of the three network Sunday news shows, nearly seven times the combined audience for cable news shows, nearly 10 times the audience for NPR's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered," and 16 times the audience for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Read on ...

I was at an event last night with veteran broadcaster Joan Hamburg and she talked about this as well. Some of her stories were enough to chill your blood.

There is a huge audience for this crap and they are engaged, active and freaked out. And their toxic ideas seep out even beyond their numbers in large and small ways, infecting the entire body politic.

I recently watched Hotel Rwanda again. And I got the uneasiest feeling.


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digby 3/12/2010 12:30:00 PM |

 
Radical Freak

by digby







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digby 3/12/2010 10:30:00 AM |

 
Ramming And Scoring

by digby


Walter Shapiro at Politics Daily makes an interesting observation about Obama and Bush and it pertains to something that's driving me nuts in the current health care debate: this sanctimonious lecturing by Republicans about how the Democrats are illegitimately "ramming health care reform down the people's throats." Like Shapiro, whenever I hear the Republicans lugubriously wax on about the president and the Democrats acting against the will of the people, I can't help but think back to the early days of the Bush administration when the man who had been installed by a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court was rolling over the 50-50 Senate as if he'd won a landside.

Shapiro writes:

In short, Republicans like Graham are insisting that the majority-elected Obama must temper his ambitions because of fluctuating and ambiguous polls about health care. So what if Obama's approval rating has never fallen below 47 percent in the daily Gallup tracking polls. Contrast this with Bush in 2001, who took office with only 51 percent of the American people in a CBS poll believing that he was elected legitimately. But because Bush was (wait for it) a "conviction politician," he was entitled to pursue his expansive and expensive (in budget terms) agenda starting with massive tax cuts. As Rove writes with almost an audible sneer in his words that the Democrats "were surprised that he didn't come to them on bended knee."

He makes the case that if such a thing exists, Obama is a "conviction politician" as well for pursuing HCR, although I'm not sure that phrase accurately applies to either of these politicians. I don't know exactly what makes either one tick, but convictions don't jump to mind as the likeliest motivations.

But the contrast between how the Repubicans portrayed their right --- no, duty --- to enact Bush's agenda regardless of a mandate or public opinion and their endless allusions to a weeping America forced to submit to a tyrannical Democratic majority (intent upon giving them access to health insurance) is stark. And it's the kind of hypocrisy that's making the country stupid.

...South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham begged the Democrats, "Please don't do this...I'll work with you to find a smaller bill that the American people feel more comfortable about. Let's do a field goal on health care. Let's [don't] score a touchdown by ramming it down somebody's throat."

Keep in mind that this is not only someone who fully supported President Bush after a dubious election result all the way to the point where he was 28% in the polls, but he was also one of the House managers who impeached a popular president in 1998 despite the fact that the country had just repudiated their jihad at the polls. What can you say to this level of intellectual dishonesty?




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digby 3/12/2010 09:00:00 AM |

 
QOTD

by digby

I'm intrigued by Glenn Beck's new book, "Protocols of the Elders of Progressivism"
Jonathan Schwartz, tinyrevolution

digby 3/12/2010 08:00:00 AM |

Thursday, March 11, 2010

 
By Any Other Name

by digby

Do you know who the enemy is?

Wake up, America, there's a new, dangerous threat on the horizon: progressives. You may have heard about them if you've been paying attention to the right sources. They come from the 1920s, they're basically socialists -- or maybe fascists -- and they're here to steal your country.

A generation after Ronald Reagan and his allies turned "liberal" into an epithet, conservatives are going after the term many Democrats adopted in its place. Glenn Beck and his paranoid Fox News Channel ranting is just at the forefront of what appears to be a movement to demonize the word "progressive," in hopes of scaring voters away from the left. "Progressivism is the cancer in America, and it is eating our Constitution," Beck told thousands of adoring fans at the conservative CPAC conference last month. "And it was designed to eat the Constitution. To 'progress' past the Constitution." The National Review ran a whole special issue on progressives in December; staff writer Jonah Goldberg even published a book on the subject, "Liberal Fascism," two years ago. The latest ad for Liz Cheney's new group, Keep America Safe, prominently features Attorney General Eric Holder declaring that progressives are about to run the nation -- before seguing, sharply, into asking whether Holder's pals share the values of al-Qaida.

Of course, "progressive" also happens to be the way nearly every Democratic lawmaker, activist and politician describes him- or herself these days

This is why I never stopped calling myself a liberal. There's just no use in running away from labels because the right has demonized them. It's not about the label, it's about you. And you can't run away from yourself.

I think it's probably a good idea if people just stop looking at the solution to conservative attacks as a "branding" problem.


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digby 3/11/2010 05:30:00 PM |

 
"That's Life. It'll Stop Bleeding"

by digby

Allison Kilkenny has written an interesting piece on "Normalizing the police state" in which she notes something that I hadn't put together before: the treatment of children as suspects:

The officers are accused of detaining, searching, handcuffing, and arresting students for silly things like drawing on desks, or handling — not using, but handling — cell phones in school.

In one case, a safety officer kicked in the door of a stall in the boys’ bathroom, wounding a student’s head. The officer’s response to questioning about the matter was: “That’s life. It will stop bleeding.”

Another student, this time a 5-year-old, was shipped off to a hospital psychiatric ward for throwing a tantrum.

These absurd reactions to normal childhood behavior is all part of “Zero Tolerance.” Six-year-old Zachary Christie faced disciplinary action after bringing a Cub Scout utensil that can serve as a knife, fork, and spoon to school. Apparently, the state of Delaware is terrified of children shanking each other, and after all, it’s the era of Zero Tolerance.

Treating children as suspects is the new normal in American culture. There is something innately wrong with children. If they’re too chatty, they need to be medicated. If they’re too angry, they need to be suppressed by a “peace officer.” They are not to be trusted, and must be monitored at all times.

A school in Pennsylvania is accused of covertly activating webcams in school-issued laptops to spy on students. The accusations have generated a lot of outrage, but this is the logical conclusion of the country’s general movement toward a police state. If the NSA can wiretap citizens’ phones, the FBI can infiltrate protest groups, and the police can generally dominate and suppress any kind of protest, why shouldn’t schools be able to monitor student activity?

She goes on to note at some length the acceptance of tasering and the other forms of control technology as due punishment for exercising ones first amendment rights and writes:

Here we have the completion of the perfect police state. Citizens are monitored from cradle to grave. Any signs of anger or rebellion are swiftly squelched with medication or “peace officers.” The schools step in when the state cannot act to monitor and regulate every movement of students’ lives under the banner of “Zero Tolerance.”

When the medicated and monitored children grow into dysfunctional adults, some of who eventually realize their shitty circumstances (complete with shitty healthcare, outsourced jobs, limited resources, poisoned environment, enormous wealth disparity, etc.) and they think about rebelling, they are immediately lassoed with an anchor of bureaucracy. Should you want to protest, please fill out form AYT0754 five months prior to said protest, and pay this fee, and remain in this pen, and please don’t make too much noise…

This sort of thing doesn't have to happen overnight with a burning of the Reichstag. I think it's just as likely to happen so slowly that over time it just seems .... normal.


The whole article is worth reading.


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digby 3/11/2010 04:00:00 PM |

 
Little Hoovers

by digby


Paul Krugman wonders why David Broder doesn't understand why "cutbacks at the state and local level would tend to undermine fiscal stimulus at the federal level," or even acknowledge that such a belief exists.

I would guess that he's been listening to Pete Peterson's lieutenant, David Walker, who let loose with this in his interview with Terry Gross:

WALKER: ... I think it's understandable to be able to provide some additional unemployment benefits, given the fact that unemployment is so high right now.

I think it's also potentially acceptable to be able to take some additional steps to try to get unemployment down through timely, targeted and temporary infrastructure projects that actually will help grow the economy and improve our environmental and other situations and through targeted tax incentives that will encourage small business and other employers in the private sector to be able to hire people.

Those are the kinds of things that might be meritorious, but just spending without targeting or spending to try to be able to prop up unsustainable situations, such as the current problems with the states, doesn't make sense.

GROSS: What are you referring to when you say spending on the current problems with the states?

Mr. WALKER: The states have their own fiscal problems, and they're going to need to restructure what they do and how they do business, and in many cases the states have also grown larger in government employment levels than they should be, and they've also made promises with regard to their pension and health care programs that are much more lucrative than people get in the private sector, and taxpayers are not going to stand for higher and higher taxes to be able to pay for benefit programs that are much better than the average American gets.

Little Hoovers want to shock the states so they can break the state level public sector programs once and for all. At the very least, all those useless bureaucratic parasites living off the taxpayers need to be brought down to the level of the rest of the proles. Saving their jobs and the services they provide is counter-productive to the goals of the revolution.

And anyway, as any financially comfortable villager will tell you --- suffering and sacrifice are good for the little people. It incentivizes them to work harder and expect less. They're happier that way.


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digby 3/11/2010 02:30:00 PM |

 
Transferring The Paranoia

by digby

Does it ever strike you that this raging wingnut paranoia about Obama's allegedly radical agenda is just an extension of their raging paranoia about the terrorists? The whole thing just seems like one long primal scream to me.

What do you do with people who have so worked themselves up into a frenzy that they believe something as ludicrous as this:

In a March 9, post titled, "Obama's war on fishing?!?!?!" Michelle Malkin posted the ESPN column's claim that "[t]he Obama administration will accept no more public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters." Malkin added, "Longtime readers know I love to fish and have been at war with the anti-fishing nuts at PETA for years."

This is a woman who wrote book about liberals called "Unhinged" and she seems to believe that the Obama administration is secretly working as an agent of Code Pink and PETA. The Obama administration. At this point, they are so off the cliff that calling him a socialist is beginning to seem restrained. I'm expecting them to claim he's literally Satan by the next election.

It's too disorienting and weird to try to address rationally. The only thing I can do is shake my head and keep my fingers crossed that these people don't ever get their fingers on the button.
digby 3/11/2010 01:00:00 PM |

 
On The Spirit Of Partisanship

by digby


A friend reminded me yesterday of this post I wrote some years back and when I went back and looked at it I realized that it's even more relevant now that the Democrats are in power than when they weren't:

Tooth And Nail, Might And Main

As we think about the relentlessness of the Republican machine and its propensity for playing hardball, it pays sometimes to remember that their ruthless tactics are actually a matter of temperament rather than ideology. Conservatives have always been this way. The problem today is that they are operating with a radical agenda, an incompetent president and a country with much too much power to be allowed to run wild with either.

This interesting post from Steamboats Are Ruining Everything takes us back to 1820 and reminds us that brutish conservatives are nothing new:

William Hazlitt explained the nature of it in his 1820 essay, "On the Spirit of Partisanship."

Conservatives and liberals play the game of politics differently, Hazlitt wrote, because they have different motivations. Liberals are motivated by principles and tend to believe that personal honor can be spared in political combat. They may, in fact, become vain about their highmindedness. Hazlitt condemns the mildness as a mistake, both in moral reasoning and in political strategy. "They betray the cause by not defending it as it is attacked, tooth and nail, might and main, without exception and without remorse."

The conservatives, on the other hand, start with a personal interest in the conflict. Not wishing to lose their hold on power, they are fiercer. "We"---i.e., the liberals, or the "popular cause," in Hazlitt's terminology---"stand in awe of their threats, because in the absence of passion we are tender of our persons.

They beat us in courage and in intellect, because we have nothing but the common good to sharpen our faculties or goad our will; they have no less an alternative in view than to be uncontrolled masters of mankind or to be hurled from high---

"To grinning scorn a sacrifice,
And endless infamy!"

They do not celebrate the triumphs of their enemies as their own: it is with them a more feeling disputation. They never give an inch of ground that they can keep; they keep all that they can get; they make no concessions that can redound to their own discredit; they assume all that makes for them; if they pause it is to gain time; if they offer terms it is to break them: they keep no faith with enemies: if you relax in your exertions, they persevere the more: if you make new efforts, they redouble theirs. While they give no quarter, you stand upon mere ceremony. While they are cutting your throat, or putting the gag in your mouth, you talk of nothing but liberality, freedom of inquiry, and douce humanité. Their object is to destroy you, your object is to spare them---to treat them according to your own fancied dignity. They have sense and spirit enough to take all advantages that will further their cause: you have pedantry and pusillanimity enough to undertake the defence of yours, in order to defeat it. It is the difference between the efficient and the inefficient; and this again resolves itself into the difference between a speculative proposition and a practical interest.

It is not fair play, and Hazlitt thinks that liberals who decline to fight fire with fire are fools. "It might as well be said that a man has a right to knock me on the head on the highway, and that I am only to use mildness and persuasion in return, as best suited to the justice of my cause; as that I am not to retaliate and make reprisal on the common enemies of mankind in their own style and mode of execution."

Hazlitt was right. And never more than today when the stakes are so high.

As I said, we have been fighting this beast forever. Conservatives are just more inclined to fight and more serious about winning. But I have seen the Republican agenda change from conservative to radical in the last 30 years and their candidates from steady, stolid leaders to firebrands and incompetents. America is the most powerful nation on earth. If the modern GOP boasted prudent, tested leadership and a simple desire to avoid radical change, I would still oppose them but I would not be worried. But, these people want to wildly experiment on a global scale and their track record of the last three years is devastating. History proves that bad things do sometimes happen. Being barely left standing to say "I told you so" will be no compensation.

They've gotten even crazier. Being "right" is not going to help us.

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digby 3/11/2010 11:30:00 AM |

 
Dead On Arrival

by digby

Ezra found an interesting nugget in the rahm profile in the NY Times magazine which he calls "the day bipartisanship died."

At an August meeting in the Oval Office with the six leading Senate negotiators, three from each party, Grassley asked Obama if he would say publicly that he would be willing to sign a bill without a public option, according to Grassley aides. Obama demurred, knowing that would trigger a revolt among House Democrats. For his part, the president later told his own staff that he asked Grassley if he would support the health care plan if the president agreed to what the senator was asking for. As Obama later recalled the encounter, Grassley replied, “Probably not.” (Grassley aides dispute that Obama asked that question and they told me the senator said only that it would not be a bipartisan bill unless it had 70 or 80 votes.) Much later, both camps would cite this conversation as a turning point at which it became clear that there would be no significant bipartisan accord.

I actually think the day bipartisanship died was the day Barack Obama won the election. But it was certainly mouldering in the grave by the time Grassley was saying this at town hall meetings:

There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life," Grassley said. "And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. You shouldn't have counseling at the end of life. You ought to have counseling 20 years before you're going to die. You ought to plan these things out. And I don't have any problem with things like living wills. But they ought to be done within the family. We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma."

The article Ezra cites mentions that Pelosi and other House Democrats were telling the President to give up on the Republicans long before they did. I think most people who've been following politics closely for the past few years would have said the same thing. This was always going to be the Republicans' reaction. They don't do bipartisan unless it's their initiative.


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digby 3/11/2010 10:00:00 AM |

 
Declare Victory And Go home

by digby


Grayson on Afghanistan:




Lst year only 32 house members voted against the war supplemental request. Yesterday, 60 voted to end the war by year's end. Baby steps.

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digby 3/11/2010 09:00:00 AM |

 
Predictable As The Sun Coming Up

by digby


No surprise here:

All 41 Republican Senators vowed in a letter today to do everything in their power to kill Democrats’ health care legislation and vote en bloc against procedural motions Democrats want to use to fix the health reform bill passed Christmas Eve by the Senate.

This would include a scenario where the Republican Senators oppose language championed by anti-abortion rights Democrats in the House and side instead with abortion rights defenders.

The House moderates want to ban any federal money from going to insurance companies that offer elective abortions. The Senate-passed health reform bill would create pools of segregated funds with only private money going to cover abortions.

“So you’d be voting with Barbara Boxer on an abortion measure?” a reporter asked Sen. Tom Coburn, the OB-GYN and Oklahoma Republican who vehemently opposes abortion rights, at a press conference this afternoon. Boxer, a California Democrat, is a vehement supporter of abortion rights.

“Yes I would. I certainly would,” Coburn said, clarifying that he would oppose a procedural motion in the Senate to allow the stricter ban on federal funding for abortion from being added to the Senate health reform bill.

So what happens now? I'm assuming that they will use the "point of order" option that the Catholic Bishops are pushing and then the entire Democratic establishment will expend a great deal of pressure on pro-choice Democrats to vote for Stupak. If they can get the women to slit their own throats it would be especially delicious.

I keep hearing that the Republicans will pay a price for not voting for the amendment (or allowing it to proceed.) But that totally misapprehends how the right wing thinks. They don't care if their representatives vote hypocritically, especially the social conservatives who care far more about defeating the godless liberals on health care than they do about the Stupak amendment. There will be no price. They will be cheered.


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digby 3/11/2010 08:00:00 AM |