Month: November 2008

Smash And Grab Job

by dday

You can’t teach an old dog ethical tricks. The Republican ethos in the Age of Bush has been to use government as a vehicle for profit-taking, and that continues:

The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration’s request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.

But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion […]

“Did the Treasury Department have the authority to do this? I think almost every tax expert would agree that the answer is no,” said George K. Yin, the former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan congressional authority on taxes. “They basically repealed a 22-year-old law that Congress passed as a backdoor way of providing aid to banks.”

The story of the obscure provision underscores what critics in Congress, academia and the legal profession warn are the dangers of the broad authority being exercised by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. in addressing the financial crisis. Lawmakers are now looking at whether the new notice was introduced to benefit specific banks, as well as whether it inappropriately accelerated bank takeovers.

This is a long and well-reported story by Amit Paley, which is really the only thing that can kill this provision. I think the White House was banking on nobody finding out; the implementation appears illegal, and lots of tax lawyers don’t even know Section 382 exists. The simple way of explaining it is a giant tax shelter for banks – they could conceivably set up a dummy company with manufactured debt, buy the company, and write off the debt to avoid corporate taxes. It’s been a conservative white whale for years, and so they tried to kill it by writ in the hope that everyone was distracted. The problem, however, is that closing the loophole would decelerate bank mergers and cause more failures, which is probably necessary but nobody was to pull the trigger and get stuck with the blame:

Lawmakers are considering legislation to undo the change. According to tax attorneys, no one would have legal standing to file a lawsuit challenging the Treasury notice, so only Congress or Treasury could reverse it. Such action could undo the notice going forward or make it clear that it was never legal, a move that experts say would be unlikely.

But several aides said they were still torn between their belief that the change is illegal and fear of further destabilizing the economy.

“None of us wants to be blamed for ruining these mergers and creating a new Great Depression,” one said.

Some legal experts said these under-the-radar objections mirror the objections to the congressional resolution authorizing the war in Iraq.

“It’s just like after September 11. Back then no one wanted to be seen as not patriotic, and now no one wants to be seen as not doing all they can to save the financial system,” said Lee A. Sheppard, a tax attorney who is a contributing editor at the trade publication Tax Analysts. “We’re left now with congressional Democrats that have spines like overcooked spaghetti. So who is going to stop the Treasury secretary from doing whatever he wants?”

Yes, this is exactly the problem. Conservatives overreach and create giant giveaways under the cover of a crisis, and then dare anyone to reverse them, lest the crisis be blamed on them. Naomi Klein wrote a whole book about it. It’s what makes these reversals so politically treacherous. You can’t pull the rug from AIG because they’re too big to fail. You can’t find out who the Fed is lending to because the system will collapse. And under this cover, the shouts of “you’re not being economically patriotic,” the profit-taking grows.

Which is why the initial language from the Obama transition team about reversing decisions by executive order was so heartening, just to get back to what we were discussing yesterday. Obama is the only one with the political capital to make these moves – Congress doesn’t have it. And throughout the campaign, while Obama tied McCain to George Bush’s failed policies he didn’t go all the way into delineating what they were. As Thomas Powers said, “The change Obama seeks remains oddly bloodless, as if the mess were a found object, not something that someone had done.”

Now, that change has a face. They are being pretty clear that what is reversible will be reversed, and quickly. The Bush legacy project over the next couple months is to embed their radical theories of government deep inside the institutional structure, to set landmines and keep the cash flowing to corporate entities. Obama is signaling that he’s willing to fight that. And that is a very welcome development. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t pitfalls, or that conservative media types won’t roil at the horrible partisanship Obama is engendering by going after these abuses. It means that such concerns may not drive decisions anymore.

Which does make our job on the outside more important. I attended a lot of get-togethers with people who worked on the Obama campaign here in California over the weekend, and the question from all of them was “What do we do now?” Not in the post-Kerry sense of “Oh crap, what the fuck are we going to do?” but “How can we get the best from our government in the next four years?” These people are bright, they’re trained and they’re progressive. And most of all, they’re engaged. They are the secret weapon of the progressive movement, and they need to be channeled to fight the entrenched interests that are going to try and influence Obama’s early-term agenda.

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Real Change

by digby

Spencer Ackerman writes about his creepy experience on a tour of Guantanamo a couple of years ago and happily announces this:

Less than a week after his election, and more than two months before he takes office, Barack Obama is signaling that this monstrosity is coming to an end. This, I submit — to my uncle and anyone else — is change you can believe in. The AP, via Time:

President-elect Obama’s advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.

It takes guts to leak their plans to do this right out of the gate since I’m pretty sure the right is going to have a monumental hissy fit over it and it could color his relationship with the military and the CIA. And a “controversial new system of justice” sets off a lot of alarms among us civil liberties slags as well. If we get up in arms, we all know it would mean that Obama is being “dragged to the left” by his dirty hippie base. (I hope it turns out to be something that we can all live with.) But bringing the prisoners to the US and giving them a “fair trial” is an opportunity for the wingnuts to try to stage a “gays in the military” style distraction if it’s not handled carefully. With the endless gasbag bloviating about Clinton’s allegedly monumental leftwingnuttiness in 1992 I expect they are very well aware of this.

(I would hope they poll on how many people know that he campaigned promising to close it before they do anything. If public perception is malleable, they may need to do some work on it ahead of time or the right will have the upper hand. I suspect that most people didn’t realize that both he and McCain said they’d close it and are susceptible to manipulation. Best to get ahead of the curve before the noise machine kicks into high gear.)

How the military and the CIA respond is a different problem. They tend to test new Democratic presidents, particularly those without military experience, so it’s possible that this will result in a lot of leaks and backstabbing. Hopefully, they’ll wait and use something else since Gitmo is such a festering sore on our national reputation that even they will see the usefulness of such a move. There will be plenty of opportunities for them to flex their muscles and try to show the new pres who’s boss.

Guantanamo is a terrible, terrible legal, moral and practical mess. I don’t envy anyone trying to deal with it. After all, after kidnapping, torturing and imprisoning these people for years, even those who were innocent are likely to be radical and probably somewhat dangerous at this point. I know I would be under those circumstances. I don’t know that real justice is even possible.

They’ve got one of the finest legal minds in the world working on it, Lawrence Tribe, so I’m hopeful he and his team will come up with something transparent, just and fair. But it’s not going to be easy to thread the public relations, national security or human rights needles on this without getting stuck. It will be a real test of the new administration’s political acumen. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they can get it done right. This is hugely important.`

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Change

by digby

Podesta also said Obama is working to build a diverse Cabinet. That includes reaching out to Republicans and independents — part of the broad coalition that supported Obama during the race against Republican John McCain. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been mentioned as a possible holdover.

“He’s not even a Republican,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said. “Why wouldn’t we want to keep him? He’s never been a registered Republican.”

Yeah, neither has Joe Lieberman.

It was only two years ago that he was confirmed on the assumption, I thought, that he would only be a caretaker until these jackasses were out of office. Anybody was better than Rumsfeld.

Remember this?

The 63-year-old Gates has long faced accusations of collaborating with Islamic extremists in Iran, arming Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq, and politicizing U.S. intelligence to conform with the desires of policymakers – three key areas that relate to his future job.

Gates skated past some of these controversies during his 1991 confirmation hearings to be CIA director – and the current Bush administration is seeking to slip Gates through the congressional approval process again, this time by pressing for a quick confirmation by the end of the year, before the new Democratic-controlled Senate is seated.

If Bush’s timetable is met, there will be no time for a serious investigation into Gates’s past.

Fifteen years ago, Gates got a similar pass when leading Democrats agreed to put “bipartisanship” ahead of careful oversight when Gates was nominated for the CIA job by President George H.W. Bush.

In 1991, despite doubts about Gates’s honesty over Iran-Contra and other scandals, the career intelligence officer brushed aside accusations that he played secret roles in arming both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. Since then, however, documents have surfaced that raise new questions about Gates’s sweeping denials. Read on…

Seriously. There’s nobody out there who hasn’t been a lying Reagan Bush whore who is competent to run the defense department?

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Empathy

by digby

Just in case anyone does believe that the Republicans are a chastened lot who have learned their lesson and will behave in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation going forward, here’s a shocking newsflash from Howie Klein:

Steve Benen at the Washington Weekly keeps a careful eye on Federalist Society extremists and he noted today that Jon Kyl, the Senate minority whip under Mitch McConnell, is already ignoring President-elect Obama’s plea for going beyond narrow partisanship to solve the country’s problems together. Kyl, one of the most mean-spirited ideological and vicious gut fighters in Congress, is already threatening to obstruct Obama’s campaign promise to move the Supreme Court back towards the political mainstream and away from the far right extremism Kyl and the Federalist Society revel in. Hissing menacingly about a filibuster, Kyl promised to derail Supreme Court nominees like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer and derided Obama’s judicial philosophy:

“He believes in justices that have empathy,” said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.

Think about that. The second highest ranking Republican in the Senate, just a few days after the election, is already talking about blocking Supreme Court nominations that haven’t been named, in response to Supreme Court vacancies that don’t exist.

I’d add, by the way, that Kyl was one of the conservative Republicans who, in 2005, supported the “nuclear option,” which would have declared that filibustering a judicial nominee was against congressional rules. That, of course, was when Bush nominees were in jeopardy.

Ah. Take a big old whiff of that bipartisan spirit.

Howie adds:

On related note, this is why it is so important to support the recount for Al Franken, an honest count for the Alaska Senate seat and the run-off election for Jim Martin in Georgia. Good outcomes would make Kyl’s hysterical, reactionary threats irrelevant. The American people have spoken and they have made it clear that they want Republicans to work with Obama on his agenda. They didn’t vote for Obama to appease the ideologues of the far right and they didn’t vote to have the ideologues on the far right obstruct Obama. Kyl isn’t up to re-election until 2012– when Obama runs for his second term– but before then every member of the House has to face the voters again, as do vulnerable obstructionist senators like Richard Burr (R-NC), David Vitter (R-LA), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Kit Bond (R-MO), Mel Martinez (R-FL), and George Voinovich (R-OH).

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Trapping The Apostle

by digby

I like dday’s optimism below, but if you want to see what the village elders are saying about all this “change”, this morning’s Fareed Zakaria show on CNN will give you a clue.

Zakaria hosted a panel of historians and establishment icons, Walter Isaacson, Jon Meachum, Robert Caro and Joseph Ellis, to talk about what it all means. They were, across the board, giddy with excitement about Obama. They believe he is a nearly magical, transformative figure.

Any president is lucky to have such enthusiastic support of opinion makers and learned men of letters — it makes his job easier. The question is whether the transformation they want is the same transformation as the people wanted — or Obama promised.

Zakaria’s first question was this:

Q: What do you think Obama needs to do make a mark in foreign policy?

Isaacson: I do think it would be great to rise above partisanship and have a non-partisan foreign policy. We all agree on the basic goals.

We do? I think we just went through a presidential campaign in which the Republican candidate said that we should stay in Iraq, be more confrontational with Russia and bomb,bomb,bomb Iran at the least provocation. He endorsed the Bush Doctrine. There is no foreign policy consensus. Sure the basic goals are for everything to “be ok” but I don’t think that gets us very far. There is no reason to believe that Republicans are on board with Obama’s proposed foreign policy. In fact, at the end of the election, half the voters still thought that the crazed coot McCain would be better on terrorism. Don’t think the GOP didn’t notice that.

Isaacson continued:

If you look back at what Truman did, he was faced with a great global struggle and he brought in people without regard to party.

Zakaria: the Marshall plan was run by a Republican!

Here’s the problem. After World War Two, Truman wasn’t faced with a Republican party that had illegally invaded Czechoslovakia. The Republicans had been isolationists and basic pains in the ass, but America wasn’t perceived by the rest of the world after WWII as being an immoral and incoherent superpower at their hands. If Obama wants to make the world think that nothing has changed, a bipartisan foreign policy is just the ticket.

Turning to domestic policy, Zacariah asked Jon Meechum if this is like 1932:

Meechum: Well, it’s a crisis of confidence. I think it’s like 1932 and 1980 in terms of coming in when confidence in ourselves at home and in our capacity to project power around the world is in great jeopardy. And I think like Reagan, Obama has a very great opportunity here because of his character and his personality to keep the faithful happy but be able to forgive him his compromises because he’s inevitably going to have to do it.

And there’s a good bit of conventional wisdom at the moment that says, “well, if the millenium doesn’t dawn by Christmas, the left is going to walk out and the netroots are going to explode.” I think this is a new Teflon president, that there is such firm belief in the apostle. A Democratic senator during the Jackson administration said that the thing that struck him about American politics was that followers tended to believe more in the apostle than in the creed. And if the apostle was strong then they would go with him.

And it sounds like a cult of personality, but Obama has barely set a foot wrong as a tactical matter and I think the character of his detachment and capacity to analyze is something that is exactly right for the moment.

Aside from that last part, which is incoherent gibberish (it sure sounds like a cult of personality he’s describing — and none of it has to do with detachment and analysis) I think this is really a trap for Obama. They are imbuing him with magical powers to keep everyone happy and when he is unable to do it, it will be because he’s weak (if the left exerts its muscle) or a failure at fulfilling his mandate (if the right declares that Obama is being too partisan for them to work with.)

This is why this bipartisan fetish is so dangerous. It sets up an expectation among the villagers that actual politics can be like a DC cocktail party (or the CNN green room) where everyone has a spirited conversation and then pat each other on the backs agreeing that only reason these things are so contentious is because the silly people out in the country just don’t understand how things really work.

When real politics are unavoidable — power plays, backstabbing and sausage making — they get the vapors about the ugliness of it all. After all, it makes the personal interactions of wealthy people quite unpleasant and who wants that?

Zakaria then asked:

Bob, Lyndon Johnson had a big Democratic majority in the Senate and the House — people are saying it looks good, but they’re gonna squabble and it’s going to drag him to the left. What does history tell us?

Caro (who actually spoke like a historian instead of Cokie Roberts throughout this discussion) reasonably pointed out that a president needs to have “two hands” — the outstretched hand of the great speechmaker, like John F. Kennedy, but that you also have to have the fist of a Lyndon Johnson who can control the congress. He pointed out that sometimes the larger majority is unwieldy and expectations are high, so it actually can make it harder for a president. He failed miserably in his duty to pound home the notion that the only problem with the congress is that Obama might be “dragged” to the left. (I doubt he’ll be invited back.)

Joseph Ellis quickly stepped into the breach and soothingly explained that Obama was not going to be a big bad lefty like Roosevelt, Johnson or Clinton:

I think everything we know about him suggests he’s not going to go to the left. He’s going to go to the center, perhaps the center-left and put together a coalition and a cabinet and reach across the aisle. And that’s not compatible with the behavior we’ve discussed earlier with regard to Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt.[Those partisan bastards!] I think to bring it even closer, that Clinton made a mistake in going too far to the left in the year or two of his administration.

I’m virtually certain when Obama was made head of the Harvard Law Review all the blacks thought he was going to appoint them. He only appointed one! (Big smile.)

Isaacson added this:

If you look at the really big issues that you’ve got to tackle, the four or five big ones, you’ve got to deal with terrorism, with the financial crisis, with health care, climate change and K-12 education in this country — you’re better off doing it as a coalition reaching out to the other side because that’s how transforming policies can be made.

Isn’t it pretty to think so? I’m so sorry to intrude on the kumbaaya fantasy where the right graciously accepts Obama’s hand in friendship and they all skip off into never-never land together, but the fact is that these changes are more often made by using political power to either win with a partisan mandate or force the other side to capitulate. These people think it’s all about “reaching out” and telling your own constituents to take a hike when it’s much more about skillfully using the bully pulpit and institutional leverage. (I guess they really think it’s possible to solve huge intractable ideological, tribal differences by putting people in a room together and saying “stop the bullshit” — or maybe in Obama’s case, “I hear you.” )

I would remind everyone that a (still popular with the GOP base) Republican president tried to pass a bipartisan compromise bill on immigration last year. It had many things in it that the “left” did not like. But they bit their tongues and went along. Who didn’t go along? That’s right, it was the far right that tanked their own president’s bill and they did it with a grassroots campaign that scared the hell out of their political leadership. And they’ll do it again.

Here’s what the leader of that grassroots thinks about all this transpartisanship:

RUSH: Would you define for me a “moderate conservative.”

CALLER: A moderate conservative has gotta be someone that is a fiscal conservative first and foremost. Second, a moderate conservative is one that sides with the left on other issues, whether it’s gun control or abortion rights or whatever.

RUSH: He’s not a conservative if he sides with the left. See, conservatism is what it is. It doesn’t need to be moderated. It doesn’t need to be redefined. It doesn’t need to be upgraded. It’s based on personal liberty: individual freedom, a small state that functions for the express purpose of defending and protecting the population…

“The Republican Party, we gotta be a big tent,” and that’s code words for, “We gotta have some pro-choicers in our party to get rid of the influence of these hayseed hicks in the South who are pro-life.” Well, they have gone, and I, for one, say, “Damn well good riddance!”

Now I don’t know how powerful Rush is going to be. Perhaps his day is done. But he believes that it was McCain’s “maverickness” that lost the election. And let’s just say that what he represents — Republican conservatism — has been far more active and destructive to bipartisanship, comity and compromise than anything the left has done since about 1972. And yet, he’s nowhere in this conversation about Obama’s governance challenges.

Considering that the Republican party really has been purged of moderates now, I’d say that the GOP is going to be the much bigger roadblock to compromise than the left. They’re more radical than ever. The Republican party is now led by Rush Limbaugh. There’s nobody else. And when Obama reaches out his hand to Rush Limbaugh he’s going to get it whacked off with a chainsaw, at which point, these villagers (who haven’t even considered this political problem) are going to blame Obama for being unable to govern in a bipartisan fashion.

All over television this morning the gasbags seemed convinced that Obama had been elected to stop the left from ruining the country. And when it turns out to actually be his supposedly cooperative new partners in governance — the right — that stands in his way, they will blame him for being too far left. It’s a trap.

What these people really want is a wizard who can solve all problems without a fight, a leader who gives them tingles down their legs and an historic figure who makes them feel really, really good about themselves for being the agents of America’s transformation from country to Nirvana. It’s not the left who sees him as an apostle. It’s the Village.

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The First 75 Days Before The First 100 Days

by dday

Obama’s transition team is trying to manage expectations on what they will be able to attack immediately upon being sworn in. Rahm Emanuel makes it sound like the first order of business will be to un-veto the vetoes:

Asked what Barack Obama was elected to do, and what legislation he’s likely to find on his Oval Office desk soonest, Mr. Emanuel didn’t hesitate. “Bucket one would have children’s health care, Schip,” he said. “It has bipartisan agreement in the House and Senate. It’s something President-elect Obama expects to see. Second would be [ending current restrictions on federally funded] stem-cell research. And third would be an economic recovery package focused on the two principles of job creation and tax relief for middle-class families.”

SCHIP and stem cell research are leftover legislative priorities, and they won’t cause much of a stir, but I wouldn’t say they are anything Obama campaigned on. But it’s good to rack up a couple quick victories. I imagine the Congress could pass those by January 20 and Obama could sign them January 21. Obviously the stimulus package was a major element of the campaign, so that will come next.

As for the inevitable center-left/center-right question, this isn’t a horrible way of putting it:

So I asked Mr. Emanuel if the election of an unabashed liberal like Mr. Obama has made the New Democrat strategy obsolete. Perhaps what we witnessed on Tuesday means that liberalism is ascendant and the U.S. is no longer a center-right nation. “I think the country is incredibly pragmatic,” he responded. “Pragmatic and progressive. But you still have to mix and match different approaches to reach your objectives. You have to be flexible.”

He said the similarities between Barack Obama and the last Democratic president matter more than the differences. “Both Barack and Bill Clinton have an incredible connection to the public,” he said. “Both ran on a message of hope. Both ran against failed policies that let the country down prior to them being elected. I don’t think the country is yearning for an ideological answer. If anything it’s the opposite. They want real solutions to real problems. And if we do an ideological test, we will fail. Our challenge is to work to solve the actual problems that the country is facing, not work to satisfy any constituency or ideological wing of the party.”

I know a lot of people want to hear “progressive mandate” in there, but there is some work to be done with the public in proving that what is pragmatic is progressive, so I’m actually fairly OK with it. It’s pretty close to the Wellstonian “politics is about improving people’s lives.”

If progressives want a dog whistle, here it is:

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.

“The kind of regulations they are looking at” are those imposed by Bush for “overtly political” reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration’s Office of Management and Budget. The list of executive orders targeted by Obama’s team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush’s appointees rush to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy.

One of these is the “global gag rule.”

The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he rescinded the Reagan-era regulation, known as the Mexico City policy, but Bush reimposed it.

“We have been communicating with his transition staff” almost daily, Richards said. “We expect to see a real change.”

And another would allow California to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration’s decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. “Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer,” Obama said in January.

California had sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon within eight years. Seventeen other states had promised to adopt California’s rules, representing in total 45 percent of the nation’s automobile market. Environmentalists cheered the California initiative because it would stoke innovation that would potentially benefit the entire country.

In a separate AP article, John Podesta basically confirms this imminent use of executive orders, in particular stopping the Bureau of Land Management from opening 360,000 of public land near Arches National Park in Utah for oil and gas drilling. Podesta noted, “They want to have oil and gas drilling in some of the most sensitive, fragile lands in Utah … I think that’s a mistake.”

Well, it’s hard not to smile at all of this. I believe the applicable term is “the adults are back in charge.”

I understand that the new Administration is debating whether or not to go big and take on a variety of issues right away, but the above would reflect a pretty good deal of positive change. It’s not enough, of course, and we’re going to have to be there on the left flank pushing the Administration to keep moving forward and ignore the neo-Hooverists and the guardians of the status quo.

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Putrid

by digby

Jonathan Schwarz stares in slack jawed horror at Michael Kinsley:

What’s so shocking about Kinsley is that he’s not an inherently stupid man. Yet he consistently writes things so bizarrely obtuse it’s like he’d just had an anvil dropped on his head. It really goes to show the complete intellectual self-castration required to run in his levels of US society. Here’s one of his greatest hits from the past, written in 1996 just after a Valujet flight had crashed in Florida:

[T]here is no reason every airline should meet the same level of safety. In fact, it makes perfect sense for discount airlines to be less safe than traditional full-price carriers. This is no excuse for negligence and rule-breaking. But if the rules don’t recognize that some people, quite rationally, will wish to buy less safety for less money, they are doing the flying public a disservice.

Right. And the 110 people who died on that flight got the information on which to “quite rationally” base their decision…how, exactly? Via the popular Valujet slogan, “We cut back on inspections—and pass the savings along to you!”? But that may have been surpassed by Kinsley’s column yesterday in defense of Larry Summers:

Opponents of Lawrence Summers for a second turn as Treasury secretary have, of course, brought up his 1991 memo as chief economist of the World Bank, in which he wrote that poor countries need more pollution, not less. The memo was obviously meant to stimulate thinking and not to be implemented as policy. But it also was undeniably correct. Summers’s main point was that life and health are worth less in poor countries than in rich ones…Of course this shouldn’t be true, but it undeniably is true, and rejecting the idea of poor countries earning a little cash by “buying” pollution from rich ones will do nothing to make it less true… Every economic transaction has two sides. When you deny a rich country the opportunity to unload some toxic waste on a poor one, you are also denying that poor country the opportunity to get paid for taking the toxic waste. And by forbidding this deal, you are putting off the day when the poor country will no longer need to make deals like this. In his notorious memo, Summers was doing his job and doing it well: thinking outside the box about how to help the poor countries that are supposed to be the World Bank’s constituency.

Jonathan goes on to point out the unpleasant truth about such allegedly “out of the box” thinking — that the people who reap the “benefit” of such things usually don’t have to live in the putrid, polluted hellhole that’s created by our toxic waste.

Ugh. This kind of thinking is so repugnantly abstract that it makes me sick. And Kinsley is considered by the liberal villagers to be one of the good guys.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Goddamn right it’s a beautiful day (uh-huh)

By Dennis Hartley

“OK then, class-Is Africa a continent or a country?”

So what is “happiness”, anyway? (If you say “…a warm gun” I swear I will punch you right in the head). According to Roget’s Thesaurus, it can be defined as a state of:

beatitude, blessedness, bliss, cheer, cheerfulness, cheeriness, content, contentment, delectation, delight, delirium, ecstasy, elation, enchantment, enjoyment, euphoria, exhilaration, exuberance, felicity, gaiety, geniality, gladness, glee, good cheer, good humor, good spirits, hilarity, hopefulness, joviality, joy, jubilation, laughter, lightheartedness, merriment, mirth, optimism, paradise, peace of mind, playfulness, pleasure, prosperity, rejoicing, sanctity, seventh heaven, vivacity or well-being.

The lead character in Happy Go Lucky, British director Mike Leigh’s new film, appears to exist in a perpetual state of all of the above (and a large orange soda). Her name is Poppy, and her improbably infectious giddiness is brought to life with amazing verisimilitude by Sally Hawkins, who can count this reviewer amongst her newest fans.

The appropriately named Poppy is a single and carefree 30 year old primary school teacher. She breezes around London on her bicycle, exuding “young, colorful and kooky” like Lynn Redgrave in Georgy Girl. She is nothing, if not perky. Some might say she is insufferably perky, but all she really wants is for everybody else to be happy, too. Her best friend and flatmate, Zoe (Alexis Zegerman) “gets” her, as do her young students, who naturally gravitate to her own childlike delight in all things shiny and fun. No one can harsh her mellow, not even that gloomiest of all Gusses, The Sullen Book Store Clerk (I don’t know how it is in your neck of the woods, but we’ve got a lot of them here in Seattle. Some day, I will learn why they frown so when my purchase does not meet their highly developed sense of literary aesthetic, and upon that glorious day, perhaps I will finally learn how to snatch the pebble from their pale, vegan hands…but I digress).

Now, before you think this is heading in the direction of a whimsical fable, a la Amelie, you have to remember, this is a Mike Leigh film, and he doesn’t really do “whimsical” (with the possible exception of his atypical 1999 backstage musical about Gilbert & Sullivan, Topsy-Turvy). Through a string of consistently thoughtful, astutely directed and beautifully acted ensemble pieces about contemporary British life (High Hopes, Life Is Sweet, Career Girls and his two genuine masterpieces, Naked and Secrets and Lies) Leigh has proven himself to be a fearless storyteller when it comes to plumbing the well of real, raw human emotion. He is the heir apparent of sorts to the aesthetic of the British “kitchen sink” dramas of the early to mid 1960s (Look Back in Anger, Billy Liar, Saturday Night And Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner).

This “Leigh-ness” comes into play with the introduction of a character that will test the limits of Poppy’s sunny optimism and faith in humanity. His name is Scott (Eddie Marsan, in a brilliant, intense performance) and he is Poppy’s private driving instructor. Scott has a lot of “issues”, manifesting in some decidedly anti-social behaviors that suggest a dark and troubled soul. Undaunted and determined to uncover the “good man” lurking somewhere beneath Scott’s veneer, Poppy continues her lessons, long beyond the point where most cognizant people would have decided that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to get into a small vehicle with such a dangerously unhinged individual (one red flag would be: A racist driving instructor with chronic road rage? That can’t be right.)

But this is where we learn something essential about Poppy. Her desire to assure the happiness of others isn’t borne from a clueless, self-centered “girls just wanna have fun” naiveté, but rather from a genuine sense of Mother Theresa-like selflessness and compassion for others. This attribute is conveyed in two protracted and extraordinarily acted scenes, one involving Poppy’s late night encounter in a dark alley with a mentally ill homeless man, and the other involves her reaching out to one of her troubled students.

When all is said and done, I venture to say that Leigh is actually making a somewhat revolutionary political statement for this cynical, post-ironic age of rampant smugness and self-absorption; suggesting that Poppy’s brand of bubbly, unflagging enthusiasm for wishing nothing but happiness unto others defines not just the root of true compassion, but could be the antidote to societal ills like xenophobia, child abuse and homelessness.

Then again, maybe I’m just dreaming. Like that Martin Luther King guy.

Part Deux

R.I.P. Michael Crichton

By Dennis Hartley

I’m sure that you’ve heard the news by now about Michael Crichton’s untimely passing earlier this week. A true renaissance man, the prolific, Harvard-educated MD turned science fiction author/screenwriter/director/producer nearly singlehandedly invented the modern “techno-thriller” genre. He was the master of the science-gone-amuck/chaos theory narrative, a theme that informed his best books and screenplays. Crichton’s novels have become synonymous with edge of your seat thrills and nail-biting suspense, tempered with fascinatingly detailed and (mostly) plausible science. He was also the creator of ER , one of the most successful ongoing medical drama series on television. He leaves behind an impressive film legacy as well; for what it’s worth, here’s my Top 5:

Westworld-This 1973 cult favorite marked Crichton’s first foray into film directing, and admittedly things feel a bit clunky in that department at times. But the film has two very strong suits in its favor: Crichton’s taut, sharply written screenplay and Yul Brenner’s memorable performance as a psychotic android gunslinger (the original Terminator!). James Brolin and Richard Benjamin also have an appealing on-screen chemistry, which livens things up (although Benjamin is an odd choice as an action hero). The “amusement park attractions killing the tourists” concept was an obvious warm up for Jurassic Park. Brenner reprised his role in the dicey 1976 sequel, Futureworld (watch at your own risk).

Jurassic Park-Is this movie really 15 years old? Crichton adapted the screenplay from his own original novel (with assistance from David Koepp). Years of re-watching on the home screen may have diminished the pure visceral thrill of drinking in the sheer cinematic artistry of several key scenes (that unforgettable T. Rex attack in the driving rainstorm, for starters) but this film undeniably remains a truly groundbreaking affair; thanks to the impressive pool of talent involved. My favorite line: “Must go faster.” Director Spielberg, Crichton and Koepp reunited for the sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park; while the special effects were impressive, it was a relatively tepid rehash.

The Andromeda Strain-What’s the scariest monster of them all? It’s the one you cannot see. I’ve always considered this 1971 Robert Wise film to be the most faithful Crichton book-to-screen adaptation. A team of scientists race the clock to save the world from a deadly virus from outer space that reproduces itself at an alarming speed. With its atmosphere of claustrophobic urgency (all the scientists are ostensibly trapped in a sealed underground laboratory until they can find a way to destroy the microbial “intruder”) it could be seen as a precursor to Alien . It’s a nail-biter from start to finish. Nelson Gidding adapted the script from Crichton’s novel. The 2008 TV movie version was a real snoozer.

The Terminal Man-Paging Dr. Jekyll! This is the real sleeper in the Crichton film catalog, IMHO. George Segal is excellent in the lead as a gifted computer scientist who has developed a neurological disorder which triggers murderously psychotic blackout episodes. He becomes the guinea pig for an experimental cure that requires a microchip to be planted in his brain to circumvent the attacks. Although it’s ostensibly “sci-fi”, this 1974 effort shares some interesting characteristics with the post-Watergate paranoid political thrillers that all seemed to propagate around that same time (especially The Parallax View, which also broached the subject of mind control). Director Mike Hodges (who helmed the original version of Get Carter) adapted his screenplay from Crichton’s novel. Unfortunately, the film remains obscure because it has yet to be released on DVD.

Twister -I admit, I went into the theater with low expectations, but this 1996 popcorn adventure about storm chasers tearing through Tornado Alley turned out to be quite the guilty pleasure. Crichton co-scripted with Anne-Marie Martin. The film doesn’t have any threatening reptiles or rogue androids, and the science isn’t as complex as the typical Crichton story, but some of his signature themes are there (the violent unpredictability of a tornado-there’s your “chaos theory” at work!). Also, note that the protagonists (Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt) have the same dynamic as Sam Neill and Laura Dern’s scientist couple in Jurassic Park. Action director Jan de Bont (Speed , Lara Croft – Tomb Raider) isn’t a very deep filmmaker, but he certainly knows how give you a cinematic thrill ride.

Also worth a peek: The 13th Warrior, Sphere, Disclosure, Rising Sun, Looker, Coma

Goin’ Rogue

by digby

Matthews: Is there going to be some bloodletting? Some knifework done on Joe Lieberman? I have to tell you, I think there’s judgment to be done here and I think it’s hard to say where you cross the line. If you’re going to be a member of a political party, it’s one thing to disagree on a couple of big issues, Middle East policy that’s one thing. But when you campaign every day with the other party, when you stand with the other guy when he calls your guy a socialist and trashes the nominee every day, does that mean the divorce should be finalized?

Roger Simon of Politico: No. It might be right from a political point of view. From Harry Reid’s point of view, if you don’t have party discipline why have a party structure at all. But I don’t think this is the first message that the new president wants to send, that you have to be a hardline Democrat or you’re out.

Joe Lieberman can be arrogant. He can be self-righteous. ..

Matthews: I think he’s likable, but he’s campaigning with the other side…

Simon: He says, “I am what you’re supposed to be. Someone who puts principle ahead of party. When I disagree with the Democrats I go with the Republicans.”

Matthews: Well, why have a convention system, why have primaries It’s a free for all. If you can pick any candidate, why have a selection process?

Michelle Bernard: Well, a lot of people would ask that very question, like Ralph Nader. He doesn’t like political parties.

The bottom line is that we’re in this era now where the American public wants something different. People want a change. People want transpartisan politics. There is an argument to be had that Joe Lieberman put country first in standing by his beliefs. And he’s voted with the Democrats more than some Democrats have.

Matthews: You guys depress me. Why have uniforms if the game doesn’t matter?

Simon: Well look, there are some Democrats who still blame him for 2000 for letting the military votes be counted…

Matthews: … will the [Democrats] have the stuff to tell Joe Lieberman, “you’re no longer chairman of Homeland Security? You have a lesser, a smaller something or maybe more petty? You’re not getting the big jobs anymore”

Simon: You know, Barack Obama could be really smart and give Joe Lieberman a job in the administration. Like Homeland Security, like some … national security job. It would get him out of the senate

Bernard: I was thinking the same thing …

Matthews: nowhere on god’s earth are they going to reward a guy with a major job…

Simon: They pick up the seat in Connecticut, with a Democrat. You know we do have elections in this Country….

Matthews: Ok. I’m losing this argument so I may change the topic…

(laughter)

Matthews: Let’s talk about Rahm Emmanuel. I know you’re going to disagree with me. I think it’s a smart pick.

Bernard: I think it’s a smart pick. I know a lot of people on the right are going absolutely berserk over this. But he is effective. Senator Obama is going to need protection from the far left wing of the Democratic party right after he’s elected.

Matthews: And he’s gonna help?

Bernard: Rahm Emmanuel is gonna run defense for him — or offense, I should say — for him.

Now, it’s true that Obama ran as a “transpartisan” whatever that is, but it does not require him to reward Joe Fucking Lieberman with a national security job when he stood by smiling while the other side basically called Obama a traitor and a terrorist. If you want to send a message I suppose that might work — if the message is that you are a total wimp.

This whole discussion is ridiculous. Joe Lieberman was repudiated by Democrats in his state, he campaigned for the Republican candidate for president. In what sense is this guy a Democrat? And, why oh why, would you put him in a position to further do the Republicans’ dirty work for them.

Here’s some more excellent insight from the man who dreams that Obama is the reincarnation of Nelson Rockefeller:

JIM LEHRER: What about the selection of Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff? Do you have a view of that?
DAVID BROOKS: I think it’s a good selection. It’s a controversial selection, because many people see him as a very partisan figure and a tough partisan figure, and he has been. He has elected a lot of Democrats.I think on balance it’s a very good selection. And I say that, A, he has been partisan, but in that he’s shown a great grasp of reality. The members of the House who he recruited to run, especially in southern and swing districts, are conservatives. And he understands where the country is.JIM LEHRER: Blue Dog Democrats?DAVID BROOKS: Yes, and they’re sometimes quite conservative. I got the impression sometimes every Iraq vet with a pro-life belief got a letter from Rahm saying, “Why don’t you run for Congress as a Democrat?” Because he wanted those kind of people. And that’s a sense of broadening the party.The second thing I would say about Rahm is that he is a — I think, a very moderate Democrat in his policy beliefs. He wrote a book called “The Plan” with a fellow named Bruce Reed, another moderate Democrat. And it’s a sort of…JIM LEHRER: Worked in the Clinton White House.DAVID BROOKS: And he was also active in the Democratic Leadership Council and — it is a Democratic plan, but it’s not flaming liberal plan.

Well, that’s certainly reassuring.
Now, I don’t think there’s anyone in the country who doesn’t know what Republicans stand for, do you? They have been spouting and spewing for decades now about their core belief in “family values, national security and low taxes.” There is absolutely no confusion about who they are and what they care about. So what can be the meaning of this:

O’BRIEN: On Election Day, we all saw the long lines at polling places and heard the stories of people who were waiting hours and hours to vote. It seemed like it would be an election for the record books.

Our senior political analyst, Bill Schneider, is here with a reality check.

Well, was it? Was it a record turnout, Bill?

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, of Democrats, yes. Of all voters, not so much.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER (voice-over): We expected to see high voter turnout in this election.

B. OBAMA: It may be raining. The lines may be long. We’re going to have record turnout.

SCHNEIDER: Was there? Just over 208 million Americans were eligible to vote this year. Edison Media Research estimates that a total of just over 130 million actually voted. That’s over 62 percent, two points higher than four years ago — 2008 continues a steady trend of higher voter turnout since 1996, but it’s not exactly a quantum leap.

According to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, a downturn in the number and percentage of Republican voters going to the polls seemed to be the primary explanation for the lower-than- predicted turnout. The long lines at the polls were mostly populated by Democrats.

Democrats went from 37 percent of voters in 2004 to 40 percent this year. Independents also went up. Republicans declined from 37 to 32. … The story of this election was not so much a huge surge of new voters, as it was a huge surge of Democratic enthusiasm and Republican defeatism.

Perhaps it was all those Republicans endorsing Obama that made the voters believe that Democrats were the conservative party? If this is a conservative country, then that’s the only thing I can think of to explain that.

Update: *sigh*

Interviewed on Fox News yesterday, Bayh said he disagreed with stripping Lieberman of his chair. “No, I don’t think there should be retribution,” he said. “I think reconciliation is in order, not revenge or retribution.” Bayh suggested that Lieberman apologize and “let bygones be bygones”:

BAYH: And I think if Joe came before the caucus and said look, if I said some things that came as offensive, I’m sorry, but they were, you know heartfelt in my support of John McCain. I think we had to just let bygones be bygones. We’re going to need him on healthcare and energy independence and education and a whole lot of other things.

Bayh said Lieberman may have “perhaps crossed the line” in questioning Obama’s patriotism. But he maintained, “I think everybody understands that supporting your friend [McCain] is perfectly legitimate” and that “we should have a spirit of forgiveness with regard to Joe Lieberman and reconcile and move forward.” Presented with some of Lieberman’s more notorious comments, Bayh countered, saying Lieberman “votes with the majority of Democrats, a vast majority of the time.”

*Deep sigh*

U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd said Friday that President-elect Obama would not want one of his party’s first major post-election issues to be a messy fight over Joseph Lieberman’s status as a Democrat.

Lieberman’s political future is uncertain because some Democrats want to punish him for supporting Republican John McCain in the race against Obama. But Lieberman and Obama have been Democratic colleagues in the U.S. Senate for four years, Dodd noted, and Obama generally resists confrontations if a compromise can be reached.

“What does Barack Obama want?” Dodd rhetorically asked reporters Friday in Hartford. “He’s talked about reconciliation, healing, bringing people together. I don’t think he’d necessarily want to spend the first month of this president-elect period, this transition period, talking about a Senate seat, particularly if someone is willing to come forward and is willing to be a member of your family in the caucus in that sense.”

Right. Because Joe has such a history of being a loyal family member. In your darkest hour you can always count on him. Oh wait.

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Losers

by digby

I’ve been getting a lot of this sort of thing in my email lately. The neanderthals are restless:

Like most liberal morons you hide under a cloak. Very reminiscent of the Klan. It’s quite clear that your greatest desire is to become a man. Although I’m quite sure you’ve become quite proficient at chomping. Here’s a kind warning. A great churning has begun. Molton lava is slowly, slowly working it’s way to the surface. Since you have no God, I’m afraid you must “abandon all hope”. Nothing can stop what will occur and the only ones to blame are those of your ilk. May God have mercy on your miserable soul.

Boo!

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