Month: November 2007

Saturday Night At The Movies

And you will know them by the trail of dead

By Dennis Hartley

The bodies pile up faster than you can say “Blood Simple” in Joel and Ethan Coen’s new neo-noir, “No Country For Old Men”, a true return to classic form and one of the most confidently assured pieces of pure filmmaking that I have seen in quite some time.

The Coen’s screenplay (adapted quite faithfully from the Cormac McCarthy novel) is rich in characterization and thankfully devoid of the self-consciously “quirky” tics that have left some of their efforts from the past several years teetering on the verge of self-parody.

The story is set circa 1980, amongst the sagebrush and desert heat of the Tex-Mex border, where the deer and the antelope play. One day, a pickup-drivin’ good ol’ boy named Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is out shootin’ at some food (the playful antelope) when he suddenly encounters a fleeing, grievously wounded pit bull. The trail of blood leads him to discover the grisly aftermath of a major shootout. The one lone survivor is too dehydrated to talk, but a pickup truck loaded with heroin and a satchel stuffed with 2 million in cash speak volumes about what went down. Llewelyn skedaddles back to the trailer to tell sweet young wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) to pack a bag and start thinking about early retirement.

“Someone” is always going to miss 2 million dollars, naturally, and the antelope hunter quickly becomes the hunted. Enter one of the most unique movie heavies in recent memory-Anton Chigurh (a supremely focused Javier Bardem) who has been hired to track down the money, with extreme prejudice. Chigurh is a textbook sociopath (he literally slaughters people like cattle, with a pneumatic prod); but he does appear to live by a code (of sorts). It’s not unlike the same kind of twisted code that drives Lee Van Cleef’s heartless “Angel Eyes” character in “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” to see his contracts through to the end, regardless of any “collateral damage” that may ensue.

In fact, the Coens do seem to be channeling Sergio Leone all throughout “No Country For Old Men”. If Chigurh is the “bad” (the “Angel Eyes” of the story) and Llewelyn is the “ugly” (like “Tuco”, he’s a smarter-than-he-looks oaf who has a native talent for crafty opportunism) then Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is the “good”, and the conscience of the story (he’s the only player in the chase who doesn’t have a self-serving agenda and shows genuine compassion toward the suffering of others). He’s an old-school, Gary Cooper-ish “lawman” who (you guessed it) comes from a long line of “lawmen”. Jones has become the “go to” actor for principled characters with a “lived in” look, and, true to form, the sheriff’s face is a craggy, world-weary roadmap of someone who has reluctantly borne witness to every inhumanity man is capable of, and is counting down the days to his looming retirement (‘cos it’s becoming no country for old men…)

Complicating the chase even more is the addition of one of Chigurh’s professional rivals, Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson, in a nicely droll performance) an ex-green beret who has also been hired to chase down the loot (by a competing employer).

The actors are uniformly excellent. Bardem’s portrayal of Chigurh is very understated, but still quite menacing, made all the more uber-creepy by his benign Peter Tork haircut. His character is a man of few words; in the few scenes where he does “engage” conversation, it is with the detached, feigned interest of a clinical psychiatrist who is watching the clock and wishing the session would end so he could get to the golf course.

The always dependable Tommy Lee Jones is solid throughout, and gets to deadpan some of the choicest lines in the script. Josh Brolin excels in his role here, and is fast becoming one of my favorite rising young character actors (I thought his relatively small supporting role in “American Gangster” was a real standout as well).

With all of its tailor-made twists and turns, this type of tale is a slam-dunk for the Coens, and they gleefully take the ball and run with it. Everything about the film is pitch-perfect — the script, the casting, the editing, you name it. The cinematography is expertly handled as per usual by Roger Deakins, who has been the brothers’ DP of choice since “Barton Fink”. While there are a few signature Coen camera shots (the “front bumper cam” eating up the asphalt, the obsession with characters whizzing past “now entering…”/”now leaving…” highway signs), they are used judiciously and serve the narrative well. As per usual, it’s the masterful implementation of little details (the use of ambient sound, subtle POV perspectives and an uncanny ability to milk suspense from focusing on the most mundane objects) that make this very much a “Coen brothers film”.

Heartland noir: Fargo , The Man Who Wasn’t There, Prime Cut, Lone Star, Border Incident, Touch of Evil , U Turn, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), The Hot Spot, Red Rock West, After Dark, My Sweet, Wild At Heart, Kill Me Again, High Sierra, North By Northwest,Promised Land, Badlands, Bonnie and Clyde, Thieves Like Us, They Live by Night, Detour, Charley Varrick, The Night of the Hunter, In Cold Blood,Boys Don’t Cry, At Close Range.

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More Warrantless Searches

by digby

Republicans really, really hate the fourth amendment. It seems to come up in every controversy these days:

GREENPORT, N.Y.

…As the details of the Sept. 27 raid spread through this village, where about 17 percent of residents are Hispanic, some citizens began to protest the very premise of the operation — and the participation of local officers.

David Nyce, Greenport’s mayor, said, “The whole gang issue is something to keep the white majority scared about the Latino population, and to come in and bust as many people as they want.”

“I spoke to the police chief,” he added, “and I said, ‘This is going to set you back a lot.’ ”

Elsewhere in Suffolk County, many welcomed the sweep. The Suffolk County police, who patrol towns in the western part of the county, had only praise for the operation.

But the county executive and the county police commissioner in neighboring Nassau County disagreed. They noted that the vast majority of those arrested in their county were not gang associates, and that residents and police alike had been endangered by what they called the agents’ “cowboy mentality,” including armed raids on the wrong homes.

Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement dismiss such criticism. They say that the operation was properly conducted and methodically planned, based on intelligence provided by the local police departments themselves. “Collateral arrests” of illegal immigrants who are not gang suspects are always appropriate to the agency’s mission, they said.

“We’re not here stomping all over anybody’s rights,” said Peter J. Smith, the special agent in charge of the Long Island operation, which led to the roundup of 186 men. “We’ve got immigration powers.”

One of the things that clearly unsettled residents of Greenport was that the immigrants were arrested in their homes, without warrants, an immigration enforcement tactic that has been used more and more since 2005.

By law, immigration agents without judicial warrants may enter homes only with the consent of the residents. They may not use racial or ethnic profiling to single people out. But they have broad authority to detain anyone they encounter if they have grounds for suspicion that the person is not in the country legally. The legality of recent home raids has been challenged in federal court in New York and elsewhere.

Case law on the constitutional limits of immigration powers in home raids is still unsettled, said Prof. Daniel Kanstroom, a legal historian of deportation at Boston College. For decades, such raids were rare, in part because the idea of home as an inviolable space has been enshrined by the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure, which applies to all people in the United States.

“We are now in the midst of a major resurgence” in home raids, Professor Kanstroom said

This was a raid to catch alleged gang members, but instead caught long term residents with no criminal history whatsoever. Look for more of this as the immigration debate ramps up. And keep your fingers crossed that the INS doesn’t accidentally decide that illegal immigrants are living in your house because they don’t need no stinking warrants.

On a slightly different tack, here’s a good post by Meta Watershed on the great questions of immigration. I particularly like this bit of myth busting:

The Center for American Progress last June published a report on the Five Key Myths About Immigrants which have been given far too much play over recent years.

The 5 myths are as follows:

1. The US public health insurance programs are over burdened with documented and undocumented immigrants.
2. Immigrants consume large quantities of health care resources.
3. Immigrants come to the US to gain access to health care services.
4. Restricting immigrants access to the health care system will not affect American citizens.
5. Undocumented immigrants are free riders in the American health care system.

Some of the debunking offered by CAP:

“In Texas, for example, nearly seven percent of the state’s population was comprised of undocumented immigrants in 2005. The state’s health care costs for undocumented immigrants that same year were a mere $58 million. Yet state revenues collected from undocumented immigrants exceeded what the state spent on social services provided to these immigrants such as health care and education by $424.7 million.

“Immigrant contributions to social services are similar across the country. The National Research Council concluded that immigrants will pay on average $80,000 per capita more in taxes than they will use in government services over their lifetimes.

“Additionally, in March 2005, more than seven million undocumented immigrants were in the workforce yet received few public services for their labor and tax contributions. The Social Security Administration, for example, reaps an enormous benefit from the taxes paid by undocumented immigrants. It estimates that workers without valid social security numbers contribute $7 billion in Social Security tax revenues and roughly $1.5 billion in Medicare taxes annually, yet elderly immigrants rarely qualify for Medicare or long-term care services provided through Medicaid.

“In 2001, the Social Security Administration concluded that undocumented immigrants “account for a major portion of the billions of dollars paid into social security that don’t match SSA records,” which payees, many of whom are undocumented immigrants, can never draw upon. As of July 2003, these payments totaled $421 billion.”

Interesting, no? It makes you see why certain Republicans have decided that the failure of their Hispanic outreach might have a silver lining. Any chance to make the government less solvent is always welcome.

H/T to Jesse at Group News Blog

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Slow Cooking

by digby

This doesn’t sound good:

The slowing economy is giving restaurants heartburn, with experts calling this the worst period for eateries in years.That’s because consumers are having their pockets picked by high energy prices, declining home values, tightening credit from the sub-prime real estate bust and the falling value of the dollar, which makes imported goods more expensive.

“It’s a perfect storm, with the industry being bit by several negatives at the same time. And we don’t think gas prices are at the top of that list. Mortgage payments for people with adjustable rates are already higher. Couple that with higher interest rates for people who are maxed out on their credit cards and you have an immediate squeeze on income on a monthly basis,” said Ron Paul, president of Chicago-based Technomic Inc., a food industry consulting firm.

Examples abound.

P.F. Chang’s China Bistro Inc. recently reported a nearly 20% decline in third-quarter profit from a year earlier. Panera Bread cafes predicted that fourth-quarter earnings were unlikely to surpass those of 2006. Brinker International Inc., owner of Chili’s Grill & Bar and other chains, reported a 21% drop in fiscal first-quarter profit.

IHOP fell short of Wall Street expectations last month when it reported an $11.6-million third-quarter loss, contrasted with an $11.3-million profit a year earlier. Its conference call with analysts and investors included repeated references to the “difficult economic climate” faced by the restaurant industry.

Sales at eating and drinking establishments grew 5.6% during the first 10 months of the year, the Commerce Department said, the slowest pace since 2002.

“We are all facing the same pressures,” IHOP Chief Executive Julia Stewart said in an interview. “There are things you can’t necessarily control: the rising cost of gas, commodities, concerns about the war, concerns about layoffs. What usually winds up happening is that people look more selectively at their trips out of the house, and we are fighting for the same dollar.”

National restaurant chains aren’t the only ones feeling the pinch. Some smaller, local chains complain that business is even slower than it was in 2001, when the 9/11 terrorist attacks brought dining out to a crawl for about two months.

“We are doing about 30% less business than we ordinarily do. Since June, it has really fallen off,” said Fernando Lopez, owner of Guelaguetza, a chain of four Oaxacan-style Mexican restaurants in the Los Angeles area that thrive on a strong following of customers from as far away as San Francisco and Las Vegas. On a recent afternoon, Lopez looked over too many empty tables at his 300-seat restaurant on Olympic Boulevard.

[…]

Higher-end restaurants remain relatively unaffected by the more difficult economic climate, experts said. As Randall Hiatt, a Costa Mesa restaurant consultant, put it: “The cream of the $5-million homeowners whose homes are now worth $4 million — they really aren’t feeling this pinch.”

I stopped eating in restaurants very often years ago because I like to cook. But I know that most people eat out far more often then they eat at home. I wonder if the rest of you are cutting back on restaurants or downsizing to fast food as the article suggests? That seems to me to be a little canary in the coal mine. When people feel the pinch that’s one of the first things they feel they can easily cut down on.

Or maybe everyone’s just decided to eat healthier or are inspired by Top Chef and deciding to become gourmet cooks, I don’t know. Still, it’s seems like a curious factoid worth keeping in the back of our minds as we watch this economy looking ever more dicey.

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Great News For Republicans

by digby

Gosh, it seems like only yesterday that the Democrats put down the Republicans hard on this issue, taking it off the menu for the foreseeable future with the “there is no crisis campaign.” It’s back in full effect.

Social Security to Become Key Issue

Three years after the collapse of President Bush’s plan for private Social Security accounts, Republican presidential contenders are eager to try again. Not so the Democrats, who gravitate toward increasing payroll taxes on upper-income earners to fix the program’s finances.

[…]

For now, the most favored suggestion, creation of a bipartisan commission, seems to hold different meanings for different candidates.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, said earlier this fall he favors creation of a commission like the one that hatched a financial fix for the system nearly a quarter century ago. Yet, maneuvering for the support of the conservative Club for Growth, he also said, “I would rule out a tax increase,” thus rejecting a key element of the 1983 compromise signed by then-President Reagan.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois are among the Democrats who favor a bipartisan commission. At the same time, they evidently seek to preserve their own maneuvering room.

“I’d take everything off the table until we move toward fiscal responsibility and before we have a bipartisan process,” Clinton said in one recent debate, drawing criticism from fellow Democrats who accused her of ducking the issue.

“Everything should be on the table,” Obama said over the summer. Now, in a shift in emphasis that has drawn notice by his rivals, he says, “We don’t need to cut benefits or raise the retirement age,” a position that flatly rules out neither approach.

Actually the article is wrong in one important respect. It says the Democrats are not eager to get into the issue. That’s not true. They were the ones who brought it up and now the Republicans have eagerly jumped on the bandwagon.(Running on social security at this juncture would be equivalent to the Republicans running on health care reform after they defeated the Clinton plan in 1994 — only they aren’t that stupid.) I assume this is an attempt to shore up the elderly vote in Iowa and New Hampshire, but the ramifications of that short term strategy are quite severe.

After their ignominious recent defeat on this issue, even if they are unable to move to privatization, the Republicans are thrilled that the Democrats have inexplicably given them opportunity to demagogue it again so soon. It gives them the opening to argue down the road that the country can’t afford to reform the health care system — which really is in crisis, especially Medicare, which can’t be solved by any other means. I’m not sure I understand why trolling for the senior vote couldn’t have been done using that important issue, which has the virtue of being real.

The outlines of the presidential race are starting to come into focus. It appears it’s going to be about the war on terrorism, immigration and whether or not we should raise taxes to fix the non-existent social security “crisis.” It’s certainly possible to argue those issues on progressive terms. But they aren’t exactly congenial turf, are they?

It’s probably a good idea that the Democratic candidates and congressional leadership are ceding their ground on the agenda this early, though. It will be so much less painful to watch them once again choose to compete hard with the Republicans for the corporate money and right wing racist votes. If there’s one thing we know from the last two decades, it’s that those are the only votes truly worth having.

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Probable Violations

by digby

I really need to get out more. I hadn’t even heard of this lurid “Perugia” murder tale until a couple of days ago, which I guess has been blasting all over the tabloids here and in Europe for weeks. I’m a little bit surprised the cable news networks haven’t been all over it seeing as it features an American college student in Italy who, along with a couple of accomplices, allegedly raped and killed her British roommate when she refused to go along with a night of “extreme sex.” It seems tailor made for the holidays.

Anyway, I don’t bring it up because I want to spread the word about this horrific crime, but because of an element in the investigation that suddenly has some resonance with our current predicament here in America with respect to the lawless US government deciding that the fourth amendment is no longer operative.

It appears that the female suspect in this crime fingered a north African bartender as one of the accomplices. (From what I gather, there was also some security video evidence to support the fact that a black man was present.) The Italian police arrested the fellow, who did know the suspect and the victim, on the basis of this suspect’s word (who has told several radically different accounts of what happened that night) and the fact they had information from the cell phone company that he was “in the area” that night — which brings me to my long laborious point.

The cops have now released the guy because the real suspect turned up in Germany where he is being held for extradition. It makes you wonder about the usefulness of this cell phone tracking evidence.

And even if it is useful, you would certainly think that at least in America, that the police would have to have probable cause to get a warrant. Apparently not:

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

[…]

In many cases, orders are being issued for cell-tower site data, which are less precise than the data derived from E911 signals. While the E911 technology could possibly tell officers what building a suspect was in, cell-tower site data give an area that could range from about three to 300 square miles.

Since 2005, federal magistrate judges in at least 17 cases have denied federal requests for the less-precise cellphone tracking data absent a demonstration of probable cause that a crime is being committed. Some went out of their way to issue published opinions in these otherwise sealed cases.

“Permitting surreptitious conversion of a cellphone into a tracking device without probable cause raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns especially when the phone is in a house or other place where privacy is reasonably expected,” said Judge Stephen William Smith of the Southern District of Texas, whose 2005 opinion on the matter was among the first published.

But judges in a majority of districts have ruled otherwise on this issue, Boyd said. Shortly after Smith issued his decision, a magistrate judge in the same district approved a federal request for cell-tower data without requiring probable cause. And in December 2005, Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein of the Southern District of New York, approving a request for cell-site data, wrote that because the government did not install the “tracking device” and the user chose to carry the phone and permit transmission of its information to a carrier, no warrant was needed.

These judges are issuing orders based on the lower standard, requiring a showing of “specific and articulable facts” showing reasonable grounds to believe the data will be “relevant and material” to a criminal investigation.

Boyd said the government believes this standard is sufficient for cell-site data. “This type of location information, which even in the best case only narrows a suspect’s location to an area of several city blocks, is routinely generated, used and retained by wireless carriers in the normal course of business,” he said.

This entire area of the law is getting very scary. I don’t know about you, but when I got my cell phone I didn’t know that I was giving the government blanket permission to track my every move without probable cause, did you?

And this particular type of “evidence” isn’t even particularly reliable, as evidenced by the awful tale of that fellow in Italy who was fingered for a crime he didn’t commit. (If the real suspect hadn’t turned up this man would not have been released — in Italy, they can hold people for up to a year without charging them.)

I don’t doubt that this tracking can be useful in tracking someone on the run, but judges or magistrates have an obligation to honor the fourth amendment and make the police show probable cause before issuing a warrant. I can’t imagine why they think otherwise. Just because you buy a cell phone doesn’t mean that you’ve signed away your constitutional rights. The case of Mr Lumumba shows exactly why those rights are necessary.

Update: Marcy Wheeler has more. Seems this is part of the new right wing “there is no such thing as privacy” philosophy.

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Compassion For Those Most Deserving

by digby

Via Atrios and Calculated Risk

“The two groups of homeowners hit the hardest now are investors and those who overextended themselves,” said Jay Butler, director of realty studies at Arizona State University’s Morrison School. “That’s why more people in higher-end neighborhoods are struggling now.”

Also, there are more loan programs to help lower-income homeowners, while fewer lenders are eager to make loans above $417,000. Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are restricted to mainly [sic] investing in loans below $417,000.

“Often, people with lower incomes are better prepared to survive tough times and look for help,” Butler said.

“People with higher incomes and bigger homes have a harder time telling neighbors and co-workers they can’t afford their mortgage anymore.”

I think it’s time to man the barricades, don’t you? It’s just not right. Low income buyers have all kinds of avenues to help them out when they are kicked out their houses and become homeless. (Why I just saw a story about movie stars serving up delicious looking turkey for Thanksgiving at the mission and everyone looked so happy and content…) But pity the poor highly educated affluent speculators who have to admit they made a bad bet.

This must be what they mean when they say that income inequality is a problem.

On the other hand, there is something else important to mention in this story, as Calculated Risk points out:

Let us … ask ourselves what constitutes the “upper and middle classes.” If they “moved up beyond their means,” then . . . their means are what, exactly? If 100% or near 100% financing is required to keep these neighborhoods stable (loans over $400,000 for houses in the $400,000-$450,000 price range), then in what sense are they neighborhoods of the “upper and middle classes”? Does our current definition of “middle class” (not to mention “upper class”) include having insufficient cash assets to make even a token down payment on a home? Things seem to have changed since I did Econ 101.

That’s the real conundrum of “the ownership society” isn’t it? Shop til you drop, live like there’s no tomorrow, run as much debt as humanly possible or the terrorists will win. And if you want to buy a house, which everyone knows you must, the only way you can do it is by committing yourself to usury in the hope that what goes up can never ever come down. If the laws of physics don’t turn out to have been repealed after all, well then, you’re just out of luck. It turns out you never owned a damn thing anyway.

It works out badly for everyone but the super rich who wrote the rules, just as it’s intended to.

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Ask The Question

by digby

The LA Times reports:

Antiabortion activists in several states are promoting constitutional amendments that would define life as beginning at conception, which could effectively outlaw all abortions and some birth control methods.

The campaigns to grant “personhood” to fertilized eggs, giving them the same legal protections as human beings, come as the nation in January marks the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. During those three decades, abortion foes have succeeded in imposing a variety of restrictions, such as waiting periods and parental notification for minors. But there are still about 1.3 million abortions a year in the U.S.

Some activists say they are fed up with incremental steps — and are not interested in waiting years, or possibly decades, for a more conservative court to revisit Roe. Instead, they are out to change the legal status of embryos in hopes of forcing the Supreme Court to ban abortion.

“The concept that we’re going to elect judges who will change everything has failed,” said Brian Rohrbough, a former president of Colorado Right to Life. “The logical thing is to start with personhood. . . . It’s the only legitimate tactic that does not involve a compromise.”

This is quite interesting. They say it does not involve a compromise, except, of course, it involves the biggest compromise of all.

Check out this exchange between Chris Matthews and David O’Steen of the National Right To Life Committee, who claims to be supporting Thompson for the exact reason stated above — that he supports state by state forced pregnancy laws, by legally defining blastocysts as humans and granting them full legal rights. But see what happens when Matthews asks him the obvious question:

MATTHEWS: I have always wondered something about the pro-life movement. If—if you believe that killing—well, killing a fetus or killing an unborn child is—is murder, why don‘t you bring murder charge or seek a murder penalty against a woman who has an abortion? Why do you let her off, if you really believe it‘s murder?

O‘STEEN: We have never sought criminal penalties against a woman.

MATTHEWS: Why not?

O‘STEEN: There haven‘t been criminal penalties against a woman.

MATTHEWS: Well, why not?

O‘STEEN: Well, you don‘t know the circumstances and how she‘s been forced into this. And that‘s…

MATTHEWS: Forced into it?

(CROSSTALK)

O‘STEEN: … to be effective.

We‘re out—we‘re not out—we‘re out to try to protect unborn children.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: See, this is where the hypocrisy comes in, sir. If it‘s wrong to have an abortion, why don‘t you criminalize it?

(CROSSTALK)

O‘STEEN: I don‘t think that‘s the way you‘re going to protect unborn children.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: But, if you say it‘s murder, why don‘t you act on that?

O‘STEEN: I think civil—I think civil penalties, aiming at the doctors, taking away their financial incentives. We‘re after what works to protect unborn children. And that‘s the goal.

MATTHEWS: But the problem with all the states‘ rights is, you just go to the next state. And, if you outlaw it in America, you just go to Canada or Mexico or Dominican Republic.

Unless you penalize the person who has an abortion, I don‘t see how you actually stop somebody from having one.

O‘STEEN: Well, I—I‘m not—we have never sought criminal penalties against a woman.

I think it‘s much—far more effective to take away the financial incentive of the abortion doctors that are doing this for profit and for money. And we are—and our goal, remember, is to protect unborn children and to do what will work.

And it is a fact we have a federal system of government, yes.

MATTHEWS: Right.

O‘STEEN: Yes, we‘re going to work for laws in all of the states. And we will overturn Roe v. Wade. And Fred Thompson would help do that.

MATTHEWS: Do you believe that abortion is murder?

O‘STEEN: I believe it‘s the killing of a human being. Murder is a technical term. And right now, unfortunately, it‘s legal. But it‘s the killing of a human being.

MATTHEWS: But you do believe it‘s murder?

O‘STEEN: I believe it‘s the killing of a human being, that‘s the term.

MATTHEWS: It just seems like you make a basic political judgment that would blame the doctor, when, in fact, these doctors don‘t go door to door offering people abortion services. The person who wants the abortion goes to a doctor and has the procedure done by the doctor. Yet you put the onus on the doctor. It just seems to be the strangest way to enforce a law.

O‘STEEN: Remember, that‘s where the financial incentive is, and the physician knows what they‘re doing. How many women have been told this is a blob of tissue? This isn‘t really a human life? How are they pressured by men that want to escape their responsibilities, perhaps? What about a young girl that‘s been impregnated by a male, where it‘s a case of statutory rape?

But the abortion doctor knows exactly what they‘re doing. They‘re taking a human life. And you will see Roe v. Wade reversed and you‘ll see respect for human life restored. And Fred Thompson will help do that.

These people are trying to imply that they believe women are too stupid to know what they are doing when they choose to have an abortion. But whenever this question is asked, their stuttering, non-responsive answers show that they know this is a ridiculous position — or if they don’t, they know that millions of women will be deeply offended and righteously angry at such a claim, even many of those who might otherwise be inclined to support some of their agenda. But, if they admit that women do have responsibility for perpetrating what they believe is the “killing of a human being,” then legally they have to call her a murderer. These forced pregnancy advocates just can’t seem to reconcile themselves to that (or know they are going to lose badly if they try it.)

So, they are stuck stammering and obfuscating, trying desperately to avoid the glaring and obvious, whenever it’s asked. That man on Hardball wasn’t some misguided man on the street who’s never thought this through. He’s the head of “National Right To Life.” If he doesn’t have a good answer then there isn’t one.

I have written about this particular fallacy a lot, including one post featuring this video of a “pro-life” protest where the question was asked and the protesters said they’d “never even thought about it.” I wrote:

I think we need to have this discussion. Let’s debate it out in the open and “air both sides” because from where I sit it’s the “pro-lifers” who haven’t thought this thing through. Nobody says they can’t agitate against abortion and stand out there with their sickening pictures and try to dissuade women from doing it. I will defend their right to argue against abortion forever. But when they use the law to enforce their moral worldview they need to recognize that they can’t have it both ways.

If fetuses are human and have the same rights as the women in whom they live, then a woman who has an abortion must logically be subject to the full force of the law. It would be a premeditated act of murder no different than if she hired a hit man to kill her five year old. The law will eventually be able to make no logical distinction.

Is everybody ready for that?

Unfortunately, I now think it’s fairly probable that the far right judiciary that’s been appointed over the past couple of decades will have little trouble believing wingnut junk science and deciding that women actually are too addled to know what they are doing when they have an abortion, if these laws make it on to the books. (And then use those precedents to declare that women have no agency in other realms as well.)

According to the article, analysts believe it’s unlikely that these initiatives will succeed, at least at first. But it sounds so simple that I can see people voting for it without giving it much thought. And that’s because nobody ever asks that question that Matthews asked. Once you see these people sputter, you immediately see how hollow their arguments really are.

Update: Bob Fertik emailed with the following:

Along these lines, Tim Russert’s questioning of Jim DeMint before the 04
election is a classic in evasion. Unlike O’Steen, DeMint wouldn’t even commit to prosecuting the doctor.

Of course there was a time when doctors were prosecuted, and i know one of
them. Those too young to remember that era should watch Dorothy Fadiman’s When Abortion Was Illegal

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No Purchase Necessary

by digby

I know that the holy ritual of the maxed out credit card is very important in the Church of the Divine Shopping Mall, but this “Black Friday” holiday requires us heretics to sit down and do nothing — my favorite kind of activism.

The day after Thanksgiving traditionally is the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States, but British designer Jonathan Barnbrook believes we should think twice about all that conspicuous consumption. We asked him to create a graphic Op-Ed in support of the annual informal protest known as Buy Nothing Day.

Click here (pdf)

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A Cool Head

by digby

I realized a few years ago that I was getting old when I noticed that November 22nd wasn’t a big deal anymore. Through most of my life, the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death was a major story and one of the things everybody knew was “where they were when they heard Kennedy was shot.”

I was in elementary school, and was informed by my teacher, who was crying inconsolably when she told us. My right wing Dad was uncharacteristically subdued (for a day or so, anyway) and we got our first TV in order to see the funeral.

For people of my age, Kennedy was a martyred hero, and as I grew up it was conventional wisdom that his death was the catalyst that unleashed the violence and social unrest of the 1960s. (It was much more complicated than that, of course.) But it was the first of a series of assassinations, which, it’s hard to believe now, seemed normal to me. When I was kid, political leaders got shot … all the time. (And not by hippies, I might add.)

Kennedy’s legacy has been revised more often in the fewest years than probably any president in history. Looking back, he falls short in many more ways than we all believed when I was young. He was a cold warrior to the bone and his actions sometimes failed to match his rhetoric. He was in office in very trying times with a very thin mandate.

But after the past few years of crazed chickenhawk neocons lifting his rhetoric of freedom and democracy to promote unprovoked wars of aggression, I came to especially appreciate his cool reaction to his biggest challenge — the Cuban missile crisis. Imagine if Bush had been in office when that happened. Well, we don’t have to, really. We know what they did after 9/11 and it certainly wasn’t this:

To help him decide what to do about the Cuban situation, and how much risk to run of a nuclear exchange, Kennedy assembled a small group that came to be called the Executive Committee of the National Security Council – or ExComm for short. Early in his presidency, Kennedy had had to make a decision about a CIA plan to land Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs, in Cuba, with the hope that these exiles would overthrow Cuba’s Communist government, headed by Fidel Castro. Kennedy had asked for advice about this from only a handful of people – those he knew he was officially obliged to consult. The operation proved to be a fiasco, and afterwards Kennedy had resolved in future to consult more widely.

Included in the ExComm were the regular participants in National Security Council meetings, plus Kennedy’s brother, the attorney general Robert Kennedy, and the President’s chief speechwriter, the White House counsel Theodore Sorensen. Both of these men could help Kennedy to think about the domestic political aspects of the crisis. The President also invited several other key advisors to join the group: C Douglas Dillon, who had held high posts under Eisenhower and who gave Kennedy a link to the Republican leadership; Dean Acheson and Robert Lovett, who had served under President Harry Truman and could help Kennedy see the current crisis in longer historical perspective; and a former ambassador to the Soviet Union, Llewellyn (Tommy) Thompson, probably the person in the President’s circle who was best acquainted with Khrushchev.

[…]

In the first day’s debates, everyone favoured bombing Cuba. The only differences concerned the scale of attack. Kennedy, Bundy, and some others spoke of a ‘surgical strike’ solely against the missile sites. ‘It corresponds to “the punishment fits the crime” in political terms’, said Bundy. Others joined the chiefs of staff in insisting that an attack should also take out air defence sites and bombers, so as to limit losses of US aircraft and prevent an immediate air reprisal against US bases in Florida. By the third day, 18 October, another option had come to the fore. The under secretary of state, George Ball, had commented that a US surprise attack on Cuba would be ‘… like Pearl Harbor. It’s the kind of conduct that one might expect of the Soviet Union. It is not conduct that one expects of the United States.’ Robert Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk concurred, Rusk observing that the decision-makers could carry ‘the mark of Cain’ on their brows for the rest of their lives. To meet this concern and to obtain time for gaining support from other nations, there developed the idea of the President’s publicly announcing the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba, ordering a blockade to prevent the introduction of further missiles, and demanding that the Soviets withdraw the missiles already there. (Both for legal reasons and for resonance with Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘Quarantine Address’ of 1937, the term ‘quarantine’ was substituted for ‘blockade’.) To those of Kennedy’s advisers who still favoured quick use of military force (the ‘hawks’ in later classification), this quarantine constituted an ultimatum. If Khrushchev did not capitulate within a day or two, a US air attack on Cuba would follow, followed before long by an invasion. For those in the ExComm who would later be classed as ‘doves,’ the quarantine bought time for possibly developing some diplomatic solution.[…]

On 26-27 October, the crisis came to a head. Khrushchev cabled Kennedy that he was prepared to remove missiles from Cuba in return for a US promise not to invade Cuba – a promise that had already been given more than once. But, just as Kennedy and his ExComm began to discuss a response, Khrushchev broadcast from Moscow a second message saying the missiles would be removed if, in addition, the United States withdrew nuclear missiles and other ‘offensive means’ from Turkey. The second Khrushchev message provoked furious debate. With Ball in the lead, Kennedy’s advisers said almost unanimously that Khrushchev’s new condition was unacceptable. America’s NATO allies would think the United States was sacrificing their security for the sake of its own. Kennedy alone seemed unconvinced. When Ball said, ‘If we talked to the Turks… this would be an extremely unsettling business’, Kennedy replied with asperity, ‘Well, this is unsettling now, George, because … most people would regard this as not an unreasonable proposal … I think you’re going to have it very difficult to explain why we are going to take hostile military action in Cuba … when he’s saying, “If you’ll get yours out of Turkey, we’ll get ours out of Cuba.”‘. ‘What Kennedy wanted was to mollify Khrushchev without seeming to make a concession, and above all to avoid any prolonged negotiations.’ In the end, Kennedy found a way to finesse the situation. He sent Robert Kennedy to see the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, to tell him that the missiles in Turkey were obsolete, and that the US planned to pull them out within about six months. All this was true. He said further, however, that, if the Soviet Union used this knowledge to claim that the US had struck the deal proposed in Khrushchev’s radio message, Kennedy would deny the claim and would not remove the missiles from Turkey. What Kennedy wanted was to mollify Khrushchev without seeming to make a concession, and above all to avoid any prolonged negotiations. He had to insist that Soviet missiles come out of Cuba unconditionally, or he would compromise the display of firmness that he judged necessary to protect against a Berlin crisis. In fact, the exchange between Robert Kennedy and Dobrynin had no effect. Khrushchev had already decided to retreat to a simple request for a no invasion pledge. And the crisis ended on that basis. US reconnaissance aircraft kept watch while the Soviets dismantled their missiles and loaded the parts on ships for return to the Soviet Union.

This threat was far, far greater than the threat of Islamic terrorism where their weapon of mass destruction were hijacked airliners and box cutters. We were *this close* to nuclear war. The president himself was in charge and intelligent enough to seek advice from a range of people and analyze the situation with a clear dispassionate eye in the middle of a crisis. As that excerpt from the BBC shows, the initial reaction was to bomb first and ask questions later. It’s probably human. But leaders of a great country, with massive military power, have an obligation to look beyond their understandable human reaction. Kennedy, cold warrior though he was, had a nimble, creative and serious mind and he was able to see beyond the emotional response to the bigger picture.

This stuff matters. It matters a great deal. In fact, as we look to choose our next president we may want to inform ourselves as to whether the candidates have those Kennedyesque qualities at least with the same degree of interest we take in whether they wear earth tones or cackle when they laugh.

Bonus Kennedy factoid for Democrats to ponder:

JFK’S PLANS TO WITHDRAW

By James K. Galbraith In response to The Adventures of Arthur (November 8, 2007) To the Editors: In his review of Arthur Schlesinger’s Journals, 1952–2000 [NYR, November 8], Joseph Lelyveld writes that while “Kennedy had now and then spoken in private about withdrawing [from Vietnam] after the 1964 election; when he died it was a faint hope, not yet a plan.” This is incorrect.

[…]

For Mr. Lelyveld to state that there was no plan, but only a “faint hope” of withdrawal, is clearly at odds with the plain wording of the source documents. There was a plan to withdraw US forces from Vietnam, beginning with the first thousand by December 1963, and almost all of the rest by the end of 1965. Moreover, President Kennedy had approved that plan. It was the actual policy of the United States on the day Kennedy died.

“You Gotta Ask Me Nicely”

by digby

When a man questions why a policeman has pulled him over and refuses to sign the ticket, the policeman electrocutes him to make him comply:

The video shows the Utah Highway Patrolman pull over Jared Massey and his pregnant wife who also had their baby with them in the car and ask for Mr Massey’s license.

Mr Massey tells the officer he does not understand why he has been stopped or what he is being charged with, at which point the officer orders Massey to get out of the car. The officer then puts down his clipboard and immediately takes out his Taser and points it at Mr Massey without any provocation whatsoever, yelling “Turn around and put your hands behind your back” as Massey attempts to point out the speed limit sign and engage the officer in conversation.

A shocked Massey asks “what the hell is wrong with you?” and backs away, turning around as the officer had demanded, at which point the officer unleashes 50,000 volts from the Taser into Massey’s body, sending him screaming to the ground instantly and causing his wife to jump out of the car and yell hysterically for help.

Lying face down on the ground a shell shocked, Mr Massey says “officer I don’t know what you are doing, I don’t know why you are doing what you are doing” to which the officer replies “I am placing you under arrest because you did not obey my instruction.”

Mr Massey then once again asks the officer several times why he was stopped and what he is being charged with. He then asks for his rights to be read and points out that the officer cannot arrest him without doing this. Instead of reading Massey his rights the officer then addresses another patrolman who arrives on the scene sardonically commenting “Ohhh he took a ride with the Taser” to which the other officer answers “painful isn’t it”.

The icing on the cake comes at the end of the video when the officer LIES to his own colleague about the encounter, clearly stating that he verbally warned Massey he was going to tase him, as is the law, when there was no warning whatsoever.

Mr Massey is planning to file a lawsuit against the Utah Highway Patrol. He says he was already slowing down as he approached the 40 mile per hour sign in the construction zone outside of vernal. All charges except for the speeding ticket have been dropped.

This amazing video reveals how eroded civil and constitutional rights have now become. The officer had no legal right to make Massey sign any document he did not understand.

Police in the country are now allowed to torture speeders by the side of the highway in order to get them to comply. The only difference between this officer slugging the speeder in the stomach and putting 50,0000 volts of electricity in him is that the latter doesn’t leave any marks. The intent, the pain and the goose-stepping authoritarian message are exactly the same.

Word to the wise. Do not ever question the police, no matter whether they are violating your rights, ignoring the constitution or breaking the law. It is perfectly legal for them to torture you on the spot if you do.

I’m feeling so free I can hardly breathe.

Update: many emails on this one.

First, I’m advised, correctly, that “electrocute” means death by electricity. So electrocute is an improper way to describe this incident. (Not this one, however.)

Also, former police officer writes in with this:

I forced myself to watch that clip, and as a retired peace officer, =my opinion is both the trooper and motorist were at fault.

The motorist was obligated to follow instructions, and appeared to be leaving, “resisting arrest. But the trooper’s use of escalated force demonstrated a sad lack of training.

I’ve had similar incidents in my career where the subject refused to cooperate and turned to leave before we were done. In each case, I explained quickly and briefly the options and consequences of their leaving without completing the detention – warrant for arrest, incarceration, huge fines, etc. At worst, I’d have to have a warrant issued for them to be stopped farther down the road, including escalation of force. But in no case was I warranted to use deadly force in preventing them from leaving.

In my opinion, law enforcement has been issued tazers and told by the tazer companies and department leaders they aren’t “deadly force”, and now their use has become a replacement for good police training.

I think we’ll see tazers eventually taken out of general use, but I doubt we’ll ever see wide-spread adequate police training.

Carol

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