Question
by digby
Is it really necessary for the press to keep saying over and over how shocking it is that Joe Biden was able to keep the news to himself for two days? What is he, ten? I
I realize the man is loquacious, but I don’t know that he’s prone to spilling secrets. If he is, then maybe Obama should rethink this. And Delaware should rethink having him as a US senator. If it’s not true, then maybe the press could keep their snide, snotty little eye-rolling to themselves.
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Guest List
by digby
I’m traveling today and I think dday is too. We’ll both be posting next week, bringing all of our bloggy impressions of the big party, as wireless access and hangovers permit. However, the world will keep turning and I thought you would probably appreciate having something to read about besides my Colbert stalking, so I’ve enlisted Dover Bitch and Batoccio of Vagabond Scholar to fill in during the convention. I’m sure you’ll enjoy their blogging stylings.
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Saturday Night At The Movies
Like one of his earlier, funnier films
By Dennis Hartley
Ay, Mama.
Dare I say it? Woody Allen’s new film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is his wisest, sexiest and most engaging romantic comedy in, um, years. Okay…truth? To rate it on a sliding scale: as far as his own particular brand of genial bedroom farces go, it may not be in quite the same league as, let’s say, Hannah and Her Sisters , but it handily blows the boudoir doors off of A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
The Barcelona-bound Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are two young Americans who have decided to take a summer breather in the form of a Mediterranean getaway. Vicky, engaged to be married in the fall, is enjoying her last holiday as a single woman, and is looking forward to indulging her scholarly interest in Catalan architecture (she has a Gaudi fixation). Cristina is taking a mental health break after self-producing and starring in a short film (which “she hates”) about the Meaning of Love. The women are warm friends, but polar opposites in the personality department. Vicky is practical, analytical and guarded; a no-nonsense, borderline control freak. Cristina is adventurous and free-spirited, but suffers a bevy of neuroses and insecurities. In their own symbiotic manner, Vicky and Cristina are really two sides of the same coin.
Enter seasoned coin-flipper Javier Bardem, who drops the cattle prod and picks up an artist’s brush for a return to his main forte-portraying a smoldering heartbreaker with the soul of a poet. In this outing, Bardem is Juan Antonio, a lusty Spanish painter who espies the two women in a Barcelona restaurant one sultry evening. Eschewing the usual small talk, he strolls up to their table and announces his sincere wish that the two of them come away with him in his private plane for a romantic weekend on a Spanish isle. The incredulous Vicky bristles at the presumptuous come-on; Cristina shrugs off her friend’s warnings and votes for calling Juan Antonio on his bluff. What the hell, they’re on vacation-why not venture a little spontaneity (besides, it’s Javier Bardem, fer chrissake). Against her better judgment, Vicky reluctantly acquiesces to her friend, and off they go.
What ensues that weekend (don’t worry, mum’s the word) ultimately changes the lives of all three; not to mention any previous notions they may have had about los misterios del amor. Things really get interesting when Juan Antonio’s tempestuous ex-wife (Penelope Cruz) enters the mix (again, I can’t really elaborate-I don’t want to spoil your fun!).
Allen’s playful screenplay deftly addresses the age old question: Are human beings really monogamous by nature? Is it realistic (or even fair) to expect one Significant Other to nurture and fulfill all of our physical and intellectual needs? And what’s wrong with occasionally breaking the mold of what constitutes a “relationship” amongst consenting adults? Jesus Christ lizards, I’m sounding like Dr. Phil here…but you get the gist.
To be sure, this is a perennially popular theme in film; Francois Truffaut’s Jules et Jim 
After three films in a row, I have now grumpily accepted Scarlett Johansson as Allen’s latest muse (we all know how he gets obsessed with his leading ladies). Is it just me, or does she always have the dazed look of someone who has just been shaken awake from a nap? Don’t get me wrong, the camera really loves her (her translucent beauty is a DP’s dream) but I find her husky monotone a bit stultifying at times. Perhaps her “method” is too subtle for me? Or am I just pining too much for the halcyon days of Diane Keaton?
Rebecca Hall (a Brit, actually) is a wonderful seriocomic actress, and is someone to keep an eye out for. She’s like a less twitchy Parker Posey. I think Cruz should get an Oscar nod for her work here (she’s that good). The Bardem and Cruz reunion is pure gold (this is their first onscreen pairing since Jamon Jamon 
I think Woody is back. And he’s made something that (sadly) is a bit of an anomaly itself at the multiplex these days: A hot date movie for grown-ups. So call the sitter, already!
Lust in the Mediterranean: L’Auberge Espagnole
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Not That It Matters
by digby
The news media has been so riveted on the tiresome non-story of the vice presidential pick that this piece of interesting news passed with little comment. Dan Froomkin unpacks it deftly:
In agreeing to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraqi cities by June, and from the rest of the country by 2011, President Bush has apparently consented to precisely the kind of timetable that, when Democrats called for one, he dismissed as “setting a date for failure.” Bush can call it an “aspirational goal” until he turns blue, but a timetable is exactly what it is, thank you very much.
Bush has repeatedly warned that politics and public opinion should have no role in the decision about when to leave Iraq, but apparently he just meant American politics and public opinion. A clear majority of Americans has favored a withdrawal timetable for several years now, putting anti-war Democrats in control of Congress in 2006.
Bush ignored them. But in the end, he bowed to the will of the Iraqis’ elected representatives. After five and a half years of occupation, it was their turn to put a gun to Bush’s head: The timetable was the price they demanded for agreeing to let American troops remain in the country beyond the expiration of a United Nations mandate in December.
Bush’s acquiescence pulls the rug out from under Republican presidential candidate John McCain, whose position on Iraq was largely identical to Bush’s — pre-backflip. In some ways, the new timetable is even shorter than the one proposed by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
So how is this not exactly what Bush had previously decried as an invitation to disaster?
I don’t know. This could be an extremely important political moment but I can’t see how it’s going to play. Will it be that the Republicans have finally acquiesced to reality and are accepting the terms that Obama has been pushing for some time, as Froomkin suggests? Or will it suggest that the brilliant military leader John McCain was right about the surge which led to our glorious victory?
The coverage has been so muddled that I can’t tell yet what the political take-away will be for this. Maybe nothing at all. One thing’s for sure: it’s a testimony to their puerile obsession with shiny objects that the TV gasbags spent an entire two days bloviating about something quite dull that was going to be announced shortly and didn’t pay any attention at all to something important that already had been.
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Biden
by digby
One final word on Biden Day. When Al Gore named Lieberman in the summer of 2000, I hung my head for a good long while and nearly cried. It was a sign of total capitulation to the right wing’s attacks of the previous eight years. That choice of VP was a low point.
Biden doesn’t make me feel that way. He’s a Washington insider, with all that that implies, but at least he hasn’t spent his career making the social conservatives’ case for them. He is undisciplined and unpredictable — but I have to tell you, I think the Obama campaign could use a little bit of that at this point. They are control freaks and I don’t think it’s such a bad thing for them to have a little bit of a loose cannon in their midst. Maybe it will shake things up. It’s a good sign that they picked someone who wasn’t completely “safe.”
They could have done a lot worse — and if Biden can speak the language of the working class Dems (even if his record speaks to the typical beltway fealty to big business) then he is an asset.
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Visual Conventions
by digby
Here’s an interesting little piece on the producer of the Democratic convention. He sounds like he knows what he’s doing. But I have to say that I completely disagree with this:
At heart, a political convention is “a big corporate meeting,” he said, which his company also routinely produces.
I don’t think that’s true. At heart it’s a TV advertisement, which seems to me to be a completely different thing.
He’s just the technical producer, so he’s not responsible for the content of the convention, but the selling of the party and candidate need to be seamless with the production. I’m not trying to criticize in advance. It sounds like they are doing some exciting technological things that will make for a very impressive TV visual and I have an open mind. I hope it looks incredible.
Speaking of pictures, Michael Shaw and his crew of photo journalists from BagNewsNotes will be doing their thing at the convention, analyzing the story the visuals are telling. Keep your eyes on this. The story the TV gasbags tell will very likely be completely irrelevant.
Clarification: When I say the story the gasbags tell will be irrelevant, I meant to say irrelevant to what the pictures are telling people. Their stories will be very relevant to those who hear them. Unfortunately.
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Leader Of The Pack
by digby
It looks like Ron Fournier earned his conservative merit badge on this one. The whole CNN crew is parroting his line about the Biden choice being a sign of weakness.
Eric Boehlert masterfully exposed Fournier’s right wing hackishness a while back, so there’s no need to reprise the story here. He’s very, very good at amplifying the nasty little story lines the Republicans want to put in the mouths of the mewling kewl kidz. He’s going to be a big problem.
And speaking of Boehlert, I’m happy to report that he and his colleague at Media Matters, Jamison Foser, have started a blog called County Fair. I’ve long felt that we needed more of Boehlert and Foser than once a week and now we have it.
(You guys realize that you are now officially dirty hippies, don’t you? Welcome to our world.)
Update: The Politico takes note of the liberal blogosphere’s annoyance at Fournier.
I, for one, am equally annoyed at the rest of the frat pack for running with it.
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Working Class Hero?
by digby
I can’t help but recall an email I received a few years about Joe Biden. I had written some rude remark about him — he’s long been one of those blogospheric punch lines for his blowhard ways — and the reader took issue with me, explaining that he was a constituent who didn’t know Biden personally but had heard him speak many times and seen him at political gatherings. He said that Biden’s most outstanding quality when you saw him in action was that he had the common touch — a regular working class type who really understood how to talk to average folks.
I didn’t see it myself. Observing him over the years in press conferences and as the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee had given me the impression of a typical blowhard senator so I was a little surprised by it. But the comment stuck with me because it seemed so incongruous — yet when I looked at his record and his personal story it seemed it could be true. I hope it is. It could be helpful in this campaign.
The wingnuts aren’t taking any chances. I’m watching Fox obsess on the huge size and scope of Biden’s house and his “compound” even though Biden happens to be one of the least wealthy members of the Senate. Because they are making such a fetish about it this morning,(admittedly at least partly out of reflexive junior high bitchiness after the McCain houses gaffe)it’s clear they are working overtime to make Biden into an “elitist.” Cavuto has already brought up arugula, Obama working out (“he’s so thin”)his 4 million dollar take last year and Biden’s “estate” that’s “so big, many huge SUVs don’t even fill up the driveway.” They are on a tear.
As I have said many times, conservatives simply don’t recognize the concept of hypocrisy. It’s the old “I know you are but what am I” theory of politics. And it can be quite effective if they are allowed to get away with it. If they have their way, McCain will soon be a poor, retired war hero with a little cabin in the desert and Biden and Obama will be Big City Fancy Men, livin’ large.
Update: And yes, the bankruptcy bill was an abomination. A lot of working class people probably wish their hero would have laid out on that one…
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Kewl Kidz
by dday
Setting aside the merits of Joe Biden for a second (short take: he fits the traditional attack-dog model of a Vice President to a T), late last night as the news nets were announcing the pick David Shuster said something like “Barack Obama has now betrayed his supporters by not giving them the first opportunity to hear his choice…”
Simply an amazing statement on a variety of levels. Actually, who betrayed the public is you, the media, again, because you just couldn’t stand not being insiders for ten minutes and waiting out the pick and maybe using those resources of staking out potential candidates’ homes and working the phones on, I don’t know, illegal wars and torture. The press only breaks out their investigative skills every four years so they can scoop their competition by 20 seconds. Would it have killed them to embargo the story and let the campaign play it out the way they wanted? Would it have mattered to anyone?
This secret was so tantalizing to them, making it necessary to marshal the full resources of the American media, while eight years of secret government and secret law received no such attention. The discovery of the pick was an end in itself, justifying their clubby, insider self-images as the coolest kids in the room. And then, after they’ve undermined the rollout, they blame the candidate.
It’s going to get lost because it happened so late at night, but it was a shining example of how the media works.
UPDATE: Also, Ron Fournier has to go. The “straight reporter” who actively sought a job in the McCain press operation is commenting on the Presidential race? I think The John McCain Show figured Fournier would be more valuable on the outside.
UPDATE II: From Digby
Waiting For …Whatever
by digby
So the gasbags are all convinced it’s Biden. Who gives a damn at this point? If it isn’t Jesus Christ or Elvis, it’s going to be a letdown.
Anyway, if it is Biden, here’s the opening salvo from the GOP:
GOP Eyes Obama-Biden Split on War Funding
ABC News’ Teddy Davis, Arnab Datta, and Rigel Anderson Report: The GOP is planning to step up its attacks on Barack Obama’s war funding record if the presumptive Democratic nominee taps Joe Biden to be his running mate.
“Our argument will be that the Biden pick only underscores how inexperienced Barack Obama knows he is,” a Republican official told ABC News, previewing the GOP’s possible line of attack. “Obama’s vote against funding our troops was an example of inexperience and poor judgment. The fact that his more experienced running mate made the right call highlights Obama’s mistake.”
“Whereas to date that vote hasn’t gotten a lot of attention,” the Republican official added, “now it will.”
Obama national security spokesperson Wendy Morigi declined to comment when contacted by ABC News, saying, “We’re not commenting on any aspect of any potential V.P.”
Biden, who serves as chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, is not the only vice presidential prospect who was at odds with Obama on the May 24, 2007 war funding vote.
Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., for example, also broke with Obama by voting to fund the U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Biden, however, is seen by Republicans as offering more ammunition on the war funding issue.
That’s because Biden, as a former White House hopeful and staple on the Sunday morning talk shows, has been more pointed than any other Democrat in contrasting his views on war funding votes with those of Obama.
“I am not going to fail to protect these kids as long as we have a single, solitary troop in Iraq,” said Biden during a Sept. 9, 2007 appearance on “Meet the Press.”
“This isn’t cutting off the war,” he added. “This is cutting off support that will save the lives of thousands of American troops.”
Yeah, I remember that. Good times.
Update: OMG! CNN just broke in with a “breaking news” story!
… They have just been told that the campaign won’t send their text message until Saturday morning.
Will anyone be able to sleep tonight?
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