Month: March 2007

Hey Joey, Do You Like Movies About Gladiators?

by digby

I’ve been following this story about “300” in the entertainment press with some interest. It has to be the most breathless, overwrought wingnut attempt to find relevance in popular culture yet. Here’s Newsweek:

…the cultural significance and popular appeal of “300” reach beyond the thrill of watching pixilated decapitations. The Persians in “300” are the forces of evil: dark-skinned, depraved and determined to terrorize the West. The noble, light-skinned Spartans possess a fierce love of liberty, not to mention fierce six-pack abs. “Freedom is not free,” says the wife of Spartan King Leonidas. The movie was adapted from a graphic novel by Frank Miller (“Sin City”). Miller’s post-9/11 conservatism (he is reportedly working on a new graphic novel pitting Batman against Al Qaeda, titled “Holy Terror, Batman!”) suffuses his comic-book fantasies. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that “300” resonates for some real warriors. At a theater near Camp Pendleton outside San Diego, cheers erupted at a showing of “300,” the Los Angeles Times reported. The Marines (“The Few, the Proud”) identify with the outnumbered Spartans.

Ok. So the few the proud at Camp Pendleton see themselves in the role of Spartans. Most of them do have fierce six-pack abs, if not necessarily light skin, and it’s common for soldiers to enjoy battle rituals. I’m not surprised by this.

But this is ridiculous:

The analogy between the war on terror and the death struggle of ancient Greece with Persia has not been lost on some high administration officials either, especially Vice President Dick Cheney. (A White House spokesman declined to comment about the film.) In the months after 9/11, a classics scholar named Victor Davis Hanson wrote a series of powerful pieces for the National Review Online, later collected and published as a book, “An Autumn of War.” Moved by Hanson’s evocative essays, Cheney invited Hanson to dine with him and talk about the wars the Greeks waged against the Asian hordes, in defense of justice and reason, two and a half millennia ago.

Everyone thinks of George W. Bush as being something of a child, with a childlike view of the world. But I think Dick Cheney’s a bit of a child too, at least when it comes to war, something which has been well documented if not well reported. He indulged in ridiculous fantasy scenarios in the first Gulf war and was so taken with Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary that he came to believe he was Lincoln and wanted to fire Schwartzkopf for being too McClellanlike.

Keep this guy away from netflix, half baked conservative historians and comic book writers. It’s dangerous.

But, as pathetic as Cheney’s Walter Mitty delusions are, nothing comes close to the wingnut bloggers:

The movie is a cartoon, based very loosely on historical fact. The Persians are depicted as either effeminate or vicious abusers of women, while the Greeks are manly men. The bad guys in “300” also include corrupt Spartan politicians who refuse to send more troops to the battle. Some right-wing bloggers have likened them to liberal Democrats voting against the surge in Iraq.

Here’s a fairly typical post:

The mind set reflected in the reviews of “300” suggest that the reviewers, with their apparent discomfort with the open expression of defiant aggression expressed in the movie, are too sophisticated to partake, even vicariously, in the Spartan heroics. It is unclear whether the pacifist left would ever fight, even to save themselves, let alone to save the civilization that they cannot imagine is under siege. If the sophisticates of Athens had refused to pick up the sword, they would have been dead or enslaved. Our modern day sophisticated Athenians of the MSM who refuse to wield their weapons, their pens and computers, in the service of Western Civilization, have already shown their willingness to live as slaves. After all, what did the Danish cartoon saga tell us except that the members of the elites in Academia, Hollywood, and the MSM are willing to offer up their free speech rights in obeisance to the barbarians at the gates.

“300” resonates because Americans have not yet shown themselves so willing to live as slaves as their “betters” in the effete elites.

Who hasn’t wondered why the “modern day Athenians of the MSM refuse to wield their weapons, their pens and computers, in the service of western Civilization?” Thank God Americans such as this fine blogger are wielding their mighty weapons in public for all the world to see, eh? It’s made all the difference.

The Jawa Report is much more honest and straightforward than most:

I just saw “300”. It is probably the most important movie made since 9-11.

[…]

The propaganda, it is oh-so-beautiful. It rivals anything put out by Republic Pictures or Warner Brother’s animation during WWII. Heroic Americans fight the Hunnish/Asiatic hordes (many seem to forget that it wasn’t until after WWII that our movies redeemed the “Germans” by separating them from the “Nazis”—part of the Cold War propaganda effort).

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and compare this to Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, Part I–that classic piece of Soviet propaganda which artfully legitimized the Stalinistic purges as an effort to consolidate state power in the face of a foreign menace (Ivan as Stalin, the boyars as anti-revolutionary forces, and the Turks as the Germans). And who would argue that Eisenstein’s masterpiece wasn’t needed to help the war effort? Or Bugs Bunny? Or John Wayne?

No, “300” brings us back to the good-old days of propaganda. When propaganda was produced in support of our country. When propaganda was produced to remind us that we are the good guys and that our ideals are better than the ideals of our enemies.

Go see “300”. If you don’t like it you probably hate America. That, or you’re gay.

Right.

It should be said that some rightwing bloggers were not as taken with the film. But their commenters showed them that they were missing the point:

No one ever said that reinstalling the American man’s long-lost testicles was going to be a painless process, but it’s worth it. Best of all it reminds us that we once made of far sterner stuff than we are now and we need to get it back. I’m hoping there are a hundred more movies like “300” over the next couple of years. We need them.

dostrick on March 16, 2007 at 12:51 PM

Bingo.

Haven’t seen it yet (getting my infusion of cinematic testosterone tomorrow), but I’m definitely pumped up and ready for it. I can let the fact that it’s not historically accurate by any means slide since the movie makes no pretenses to the contrary. It pisses off all the right people (liberals, the tyrants in Iran, etc.) while espousing themes such as that there are some things worth fighting for.

‘Bout damn time. I’ll take this over former tough-guy Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima wimpfests any day.

thirteen28 on March 16, 2007 at 1:03 PM

“It’s a manly film, full of heroic poses and speeches…”

Which is why some liberal reviewers hated it, of course. After all, liberalism’s fundamental premise is the sissified surrender of the West, while presided over by girlymen.

So there you have it.

I couldn’t believe it when I heard about this movie because I’ve long joked that “America isn’t Sparta — America is a bunch of fat, spoiled shoppers” which is true. We are not a warrior culture, never have been, and yet we’ve fought and won our share of wars. These guys can go on and on about how it doesn’t matter that the film was historically inaccurate because it was all about teh good vs evil and all, but its inaccuracy is quite relevant. If you want to be a mighty warrior nation, everybody has to move their fat asses off the couch and become — you know — warriors. “Wielding” a keyboard and using words like “girly-men” and Islamofascism” doesn’t count.

This is how it’s done:

The agoge was a rigorous education and training regime undergone by all Spartan citizens (with the exception of future kings.) It involved separation from the family, cultivation of loyalty to one’s group, loving mentorship, military training, hunting, dance and social preparation.

The term agoge literally translates as ‘raising’. Supposedly introduced by the semi-mythical Spartan law-giver Lycurgus but thought to have had its beginnings between the seventh and the sixth centuries BC, it trained boys from the age of seven to eighteen.

The aim of the system was to produce the physically and morally steeled males to serve in the Spartan army, men who would be the “walls of Sparta,” the only city with no defensive walls – they had been taken down at the order of Lycurgus. Discipline was strict and the boys were encouraged to fight amongst themselves in order to determine who was the strongest in the group…

Boys were sent from the family home and from then on lived in groups (agelae, herds) under an older boy leader. They were encouraged to give their loyalty to their communal mess hall rather than their families, even when married they would not eat an evening meal with their wives until at least 25. The boys however were not well fed and it was expected that they would steal their food. If caught stealing however, they would be severely punished (not for stealing, but instead for getting caught). All Spartan males with the exception of the eldest son of each of the Spartan royal households (Agiad and Eurypontid) were required to go through this process (they were permitted not to attend as it was believed they were part god).

Americans wouldn’t last a day in such a regime, and frankly, good for us. There have been others who tried to emulate it and it didn’t work out so well.

These flabby keyboarders are just big babies like their hero Dick Cheney, getting all hot and bothered at the sight of all those rock-hard abs and all that death. If they want a piece of it, there are military recruiters everywhere who would be more than willing to sign them up and send them to the marine version of agoge. It’s called boot camp. Once they get through that and do some time in an actual war zone then maybe they can cheer wildly at “gladiator” movies and talk about manly-men without sounding like a bunch of fools or closet cases.

Or if they have “better things to do” maybe they could just be all they can be. The Spartans would have been pleased.

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Slick Brit

by digby

In the ongoing “Fox is fair and balanced” kabuki show, we often hear that there is a big difference between the pundits, who they admit lean right, and their neutral and unbiased news divison, headed by respected journalist Brit Hume.

From Think Progress, here’s their unbiased Hume this morning:

HUME: And the other thing that needs to be noted here is when she says that she had nothing to do with getting her husband the trip, that flies in the face of the evidence adduced by the Senate Intelligence Committee whose findings were released not on a partisan basis — the bipartisan findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was that she very much did have something to do with it, that she recommended him and that she put it in a memo.

WALLACE: So she was lying under oath?

HUME: I think that there is reason to question her credibility on that point.

Chris Wallace and Hume are considered the “real” journalists as opposed to Hannity and O’Reilly. Yet, just like their wingnut colleagues, they are entirely wrong on the facts — and their agenda is entirely obvious.

Here, for the zillionth time are the facts behind the bogus “bi-partisan” finding in the SSCI report that Wilson sent her husband on that damned trip:

Hume’s false claim originated from a statement attached to the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraq that was released in 2004. In an addendum to that report, Sens. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Christopher Bond (R-MO), and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) wrote definitively, “The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador’s wife, a CIA employee.” The right-wing, including columnist Bob Novak, have taken the statement written by three Republican senators and falsely attributed it as the “unanimous” conclusion of the Senate report. The three conservative senators based their claim on testimony by a CIA employee who appeared before the Senate Intel Committee. Plame revealed on Friday that the CIA employee later apologized to her “with tears in his eyes” because he said “his words had been twisted and distorted” by the senators. And in fact, the unnamed employee drafted a memo, asking that he be re-interviewed by the Senate to correct the record. His attempts to set the record straight were denied.

Considering that Fox is rightly seen as a right leaning propaganda arm of the Republican party, if only because of its pundits’ conservative leanings and Republican advocacy, you’d think that Hume and Wallace would go out of their way to get the facts straight in these partisan battles if they cared even the slightest bit about their credibility.

Not only don’t they bother, they take it to another level and accuse Wilson of lying under oath, based upon slick, misleading GOP talking points: they always say that all the Democrats and Republicans signed the “report” but they always fail to mention that the accusation against Wilson was not part of that report but rather a separate statement. It is that very slickness that gives their game away — they are being much too careful with their words not to know what they are saying.

I am exceedingly tired of rightwingers telling me I can believe them or believe my own eyes. Fox is a Republican propaganda network, pure and simple, and they should be acknowledged and dealt with on that basis. The insistence that they are “fair and balanced” is insulting to the intelligence of every informed viewer in the nation.

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Land of Disenchantment

by poputonian

For those keeping score at home, nine Democrats suddenly voted with Republicans last week to kill the New Mexico impeachment resolution without debate. The very strange maneuverings of the group of turncoat Democrats is outlined in an article by impeachment activist Dave Lindorff. There was, however, another part of the report that also stands out:

Ortiz aide Brown said only two of the nine Democrats voting against the resolution represent majority Republican districts, a situation which might explain their taking a negative position on the resolution. Others of the nine represent fairly conservative Democratic districts, but of course, the Bush presidency is unpopular among Democratic voters of all political stripes, and among independents too.

Brown says that prior to the vote killing the resolution, five of the nine Democratic senators who voted with Republicans had been seen conversing privately, suggesting a coordinated strategy to kill the measure.

Brown says he does not have evidence of any pressure on senate Democrats, but speculation is focused on Gov. Bill Richardson, an announced candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, and on Sen. Jeff Bingaman.

The Democratic National Committee has targeted New Mexico as a key battleground state for 2008, and given the national party leadership’s clear desire to avoid an impeachment battle in the House, it seems increasingly evident from the strange behavior of turncoat senate Democrats in the state, that pressure was brought to prevent the passage of a joint resolution that would have put the issue front and center in the US House of Representatives. This seems particularly likely given the overt pressure that has been brought to bear on state senators in the state of Washington by two members of that state’s congressional delegation. A similar joint resolution is facing a do-or-die vote in the Washington state senate today or tomorrow.

Memo to Bill Richardson: I don’t know whether you did, but if you had a hand in killing the people’s resolution, you can kiss my ass. Turncoat!

Democratic state Senator John Grubesic, a backer of the Ortiz resolution, said after the vote killing the measure, “The action taken by the Senate was not the action taken by a body that protects the freedoms of a sovereign people. The action was a carefully orchestrated option designed to protect an institution and perpetuate the well-oiled workings of government.”

He added, “Our actions today showed where our priorities are, we forgot that the Constitution was not designed to serve government, but to protect the people. There should have been a debate, argument, uproar. Instead, we quietly gutted the sovereign power of the people with polite political procedure. When future generations look back on our time, the shock will not be because of the violent, impolite nature of the fight that preceded the destruction of Constitutional government, but by the meekness with which we watched it die.”

Nail. Coffin. Democracy.
Certainly, there will be politicians who oppose impeachment proceedings at this time. Politicians exist to evaluate constituent information and render judgment according to their own standards and principles. What I can’t understand is how a national politician crosses the line to interfere in state level politics, or in the case of Richardson, exploits his role as Governor to further a self-serving national political strategy. The citizens of Washington State were openly victimized by national pols two weeks ago, and now we get this in New Mexico. It just doesn’t pass the smell test. What is going on?

Saturday Night At The Movies

Motherf#$!@ Snakes on a Motherf#$!@ Isle: St. Pat’s Film Fest

By Dennis Hartley

Since this week’s post happens to fall on everybody’s favorite drinking holiday, I thought I would share some of my recommendations for a green-themed DVD night (this isn’t meant to be a mountaintop pronouncement of “the best”, just some suggestions):

The Crying Game -Neil Jordan’s unique IRA political thriller/trannie love story is still a jaw-dropper; with killer performances from Stephen Rea, Jaye Davidson, Miranda Richardson and this year’s Oscar/Golden Globe winner Forest Whitaker.

The General-Brendan Gleeson explodes onscreen like an Irish Tony Soprano as real-life gangster Martin Cahill. A real sleeper from cult director John Boorman.

The Butcher Boy-Yes, another one from director Neil Jordan, featuring one of the most extraordinary performances I have ever seen by a child actor (midget Brando Eamonn Owens). Alternately heartbreaking and savagely funny-a real gem.

U2 – Rattle and Hum-Artfully produced rock doc from Phil Joanou. They’re a band from Dublin, y’know. P.S.-Fook the Revolution!

Gangs of New York -Chameleon Daniel Day-Lewis has played his share of native Irish characters (“The Boxer ”, “In the Name of the Father”, “My Left Foot ”), but they all pale next to Bill the Butcher. Not Scorcese’s best film, but a Day-Lewis triumph.

State of Grace-Another film from Phil Joanou; a contemporary NYC Irish gangster story with Westies Sean Penn, Gary Oldman and Ed Harris all doing their best to out-DeNiro each other (to label their performances as “intense” would be a gross understatement).

The Quiet Man -Yeah yeah I know “Duh-obvious choice” but hey-that is one kickass donnybrook, and Maureen O’Hara is a babe. This is one of the few John Wayne movies I’ve ever been able to watch more than once (and besides, John Ford’s no slouch, either).

The Secret of Roan Inish-More effortless genre-hopping from John Sayles; an engaging fairy tale, devoid of the usual “magical family film” clichés. And you can’t lose when you match up that gorgeous Irish coastline with god of cinematography Haskell Wexler.

Into the West-Okay, okay, it’s another “magical family film” (so shoot me). Actually much darker in tone than “Secret of Roan Inish”, but just as good. Beautiful humans (Gabriel Byrne, Ellen Barkin) and a magic horse-what more could you ask for?

Denis Leary-OK, enough with all the warm and fuzzy family crap. This DVD compiles Leary’s earlier, funny stuff (before he went all “serious actor” on us). So invite some friends over, raise a glass of green beer and sing along with “I’m An Asshole” at the top of your lungs-c’mon, you know the words!

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She Must Be A Liberty U Grad

by poputonian

Digby suggested earlier that Henry Waxman might hire some prominent bloggers in order to save time and expense on the Plame investigation. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Why bother when Hank could hire one Republican lawyer from Vermont. This amazing lady has already finished researching the entire catalog of Bush non-crimes, and did so in just fifteen hours.

I spent more than 15 hours researching the specific allegations outlined to support the impeachment resolutions in order to determine their accuracy, because I concluded that if Democrats and Progressives are seeking such a profound change without an election, the facts which are the basis for the proposals must be serious and well documented.

The conclusion of my research: Every single one of the “facts” upon which the resolutions are based is false and misleading.

First, the impeachment documents claim that the president or vice president “lied” in six specific instances about the magnitude of the threat from Iraq. Each one of those six claims is false.

Second, the allegations that the president condoned torture are based on the claim in the impeachment documents that the president implemented a policy of extraordinary rendition in which detainees are sent to other countries where, according to the allegations, “they can be tortured.” However, that policy was initiated by the Clinton administration in 1995 and likely known by members of the intelligence committees in Congress for over 10 years — and there is no talk of impeachment of any congressman who knew about the policy. Indeed, the impeachment documents provide only one example of claimed extraordinary rendition by the Bush administration. In that example, Mahar Arar, the alleged victim of torture, himself states that he was sent back to his native Syria on the basis of information given to American authorities by Canadian law enforcement that he had links to Al Qaeda.

A second claim that senior military officials condoned the abuses at Abu Ghraib has no factual support whatsoever. Indeed, the abuses were discovered and prosecuted by the military, and strongly condemned by the president.

The claim that the president engaged in illegal wiretapping in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court’s requirements is unsupported by any factual evidence. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court has never sanctioned the president for any abuse of its rules, and has recently reached an agreement with the president about the president’s wiretapping policies. Moreover, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act law provides for both criminal and civil remedies for illegal wiretapping. There has not been one civil case filed on behalf of any specific victim of alleged illegal wiretapping, and there have been no criminal prosecutions of violations by the Bush administration of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act law.

Thus Vermont Democrats and Progressives are supporting a resolution to overturn a duly elect national government based on allegations that constitute a sham. Vermont Democrats and Progressives have constructed a mythology to support their hatred for their political opponent, President Bush, and are seeking to overturn the will of the electorate based on that mythology. They should all be held to account for this extraordinary assault on our democratic institutions.

I imagine the Plame investigation would only take thirty minutes or so.

Mercenary Blogging

by digby

Ana Marie Cox dredges up that old Kos chestnut about the mercenaries to point out that the families of those men who were ritually killed in Fallujah are suing Blackwater for failing to adequately protect their employees. She retracts her earlier assertion that “liberal bloggers famously derided these contractors as mercenaries who deserved to die” when Attaturk pointed out that it was really Markos alone on that. (She does add “I do suspect that Markos is rarely alone in his opinions on such matters” but whatever.)I can only speak for myself when I say I didn’t ever even call them mercenaries because I doubted they’d fight a war for anyone but the United States or one of its allies.

I have certainly had a lot of misgivings about the outsourcing of the military over the years, however, which I don’t think is quite the same thing. Cox brings up the fact that the families of these men claim they “operate as part of the ‘military force,’ but they don’t have the same level of protection, they don’t have the same level of survivor benefits, and — perhaps most tragically — their families don’t have the right to find out the details of their deaths. And a lot of them have died.” I was unaware of that part of the issue, but it doesn’t surprise me. The whole “contractor” scam is filled with unaccountability from the billions of dollars the companies are paid, to the fact that the contractors don’t necessarily fall under legal jurisdiction of any kind, either military or civilian.

From Tara McElvey’s article in last September’s TAP:

On May 7, 2004, shortly after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Acting Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Brownlee said they would make sure individuals “responsible for the shameful and illegal acts of abuse are held accountable.” Eighty-nine members of the U.S. military have been prosecuted for detainee-related misconduct since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom. And recent reports of rape, murder, and other crimes in Haditha, Mahmudiya, and other Iraqi towns indicate that some soldiers responsible for such acts will be held accountable.

Not so for independent contractors like Nakhla, who has been implicated in charges of rape, torture, and assault during his one-year stint in Iraq. He is one of 25,000 civilian contractors who have worked for the military in Iraq since hostilities began. Currently, more than 15 contractors are under Justice Department investigations. While that number may seem small set against 25,000, many observers say instances of contractor abuse are vastly underreported by victims — and underinvestigated by the military. Only one civilian, David A. Passaro, a CIA contract interrogator, has been indicted — for assault on detainee Abdul Wali, who died in June 2003. Passaro’s trial opened on August 7.

These cases are moving forward at a snail’s pace. That’s partly because it’s not clear which laws can be applied to a nonmilitary person who commits a crime on foreign soil. In legal terms, this means untangling a web of justice that no one — not the administration, military, the public, and certainly not the contractors with powerful government ties — seems intent on untangling. In practical terms, it may mean that American employees, working alongside the U.S. military and on their payroll, committed crimes in Iraq for which they will never be punished.

They estimate that there 100,000 contractors in Iraq today, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are significant numbers more. They don’t operate under the auspices of the military and they answer to their “bosses” not the generals. This is one of the most under-reported and least investigated aspects of the occupation. Despite my undying fealty to Commandante Markos, I’m actually thrilled that the families are getting their day in court. Maybe it will shake some of this loose and we can see exactly what our tax dollars have been paying for — and what they aren’t.

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Marketing Kucinich

by poputonian

You know, when I watched this video of Dennis Kucinich, I felt a bond develop with someone who speaks in direct terms, from the heart, and with proper regulation from the mind. I saw someone Lincolnesque in appearance, slightly disheveled, but articulate and somber. Watch and see if you agree.

Unfortunately, as some commenters noted in the thread to this post, there is a perception ‘out there’ that Kucinich ain’t cool. George Bush is cool. Barack and Hillary, and Bill Richardson are cool. Nancy Pelosi is cool. America only elects cool candidates, or kewl kids, as digby so often describes them.

So, if you’re ‘not cool’, how do you challenge the conventional wisdom?

One way is by linking to the accepted reality, but positioning yourself as different from it, in this case as “Uncool.”

“Strategies in an overcrowded marketplace suggest that to be successful, the “thing” being marketed must be correlated with what the target audience already knows and accepts as “truth.” For example, a popular commercial slogan in the 1980s was “Seven-Up®: The Uncola.” The marketing team, in this case, recognized that the competition cola products were better sellers and therefore perceived as better products. Rather than directly challenging this “accepted reality,” the marketing slogan for Seven-Up® provided an alternative for those who might be ready to try something different, thereby “re-positioning” how people think about the products.” (Ries & Trout, 2001)

Are you ready to try something different, say, something without the political ‘caffeine’? Check out this awesome 30 second retro-spot for the Uncola.
Clean, refreshing, different.
Dennis Kucinich ~ the Uncool candidate ~ Serious about America.

Natural Progression

[link]

Address Change

by digby

I thought this ws a joke when I heard about it, but it isn’t:

Halliburton Co.’s decision to relocate its chief executive and corporate headquarters to Dubai has scratched one of Congress’ most sensitive sore spots — suspicion that U.S. corporations are restructuring their operations to shirk domestic taxes.

Adding to a rush of Democrat calls for hearings, the House is pushing forward a bill whose accompanying report will ask the White House to address no-bid government contracts for contractors who relocate overseas, an apparent reference to plans by the defense contractor and oilfield services company.

But despite the mini-maelstrom created by its Sunday announcement, Halliburton’s is unlikely to see its tax bill shrink by much, say tax experts.

Unlike the well-publicized cases of Stanley Works, Halliburton says it has no plans to change its Delaware-incorporated company to an overseas tax jurisdiction.

Only the address on Halliburton Chairman and Chief Executive Dave Lesar’s business cards will switch, from Houston to Dubai.

Ok then. No big deal, right?

U.S. companies do not have to pay domestic income taxes on earnings of a foreign subsidiary until they decide to bring the money back into this country, a process known as repatriation. Dubai has no corporate income tax, a big advantage compared with the 35% corporations pay on earnings at home.

And U.S. companies typically do not pay U.S. payroll taxes on their overseas workers.

Overseas “workers” like their CEO who has a business card that now says Dubai.

C’mon.

Keep Off The Hippies

by digby

Ron Brownstein and Matt Cooper were on Hardball today (a refreshingly excellent show when it’s hosted by David Gregory instead of you-know-who) discussing the Plame hearing. Brownstein is a good reporter who usually gets it right, but today he betrayed a little bit of that beltway reflexive dismissiveness of anything “the left” finds important. He said that Waxman needed to pick his battles better because playing to the liberal blogosphere with hearings like this will create the same problems for Democrats that Republicans found themselves in when they went after Clinton. Setting aside the fact that the Republicans’ “problems” resulted in them holding all three branches of government for six years, this sounds to me like one of those tired GOP talking points that reporters love to parrot because it distances them from the hippies.

It’s especially ironic since we’ve just seen the mainstream press sporting dripping oozing egg yolk all over their faces over the US Attorney scandal, which they also dismissed as a figment of hippy conspiracy mongerer’s imaginations. This knee jerk loathing of the left tends to lead them astray and they should check themselves before they do it.

Matt Cooper and David Gregory ably argued that the Democrats can hardly be called overly zealous since this is only the second hearing the congress ever held on the issue and Cooper pointed out that this is hardly a settled issue what with the possible pardon and all. Furthermore, the underlying “crime” that Waxman is getting at isn’t the covert agent act which the lying Gorgon Toensing insists on arguing every five minutes. The crime was lying and misleading the United States of America into war, something that the congress damned well should be investigating. Valerie Plame’s outing is a window into that crime and the Democrats are wise to explore her story to show just how far the administration was willing to go to cover their tracks. What a prosecutor cannot do — prosecute a political crime — the congress surely can.

There is a huge need for the Democrats to develop the record on this administration’s many crimes. It’s important for our future and it’s important for history. What they have done should never, ever be repeated. You had the highest reaches of the white house casually revealing what was clearly “need to know” classified information (which they had no “need to know” in the first place) to reporters, for purely political purposes. The same people who did this later turned around and said that reporters for the Washington Post and NY Times should be investigated by the Justice Department for revealing classified information that was not released purely to punish a political enemy, but rather in true whistleblower fashion, to tell the nation what its government was illegally doing.

We now know that in the case of the NSA spying stories, the Attorney General personally intervened to stop an internal investigation of the program when it came too close to him, but allowed those who were investigating that alleged treason of the NY Times to carry on.

This is all part of a very large mosaic of government secrecy, political backstabbing and abuse of power. Those of us who were screaming about this until we are hoarse were dismissed out of hand when we argued that no administration should be allowed to seize such unchecked power and the assumption among the establishment was that it was just more of our “unhinged” hysteria.

It wasn’t. This stuff happened and it’s likely only the tip of the iceberg. If the press can get past their loathing of the dirty hippies for five minutes they will see that not only have we been right, we have been flogging some amazingly good stories for the past six years that had they bothered to report them would have been journalistic coups. We really aren’t that nuts — and the Bush administration really is that bad.

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