Month: February 2009

Loss Of Control

by digby

The Village elder of elders weighs in:

The Votes Obama Truly Needs

Nothing was more central to his victory last fall than his claim that he could break the partisan gridlock in Washington. He wants to be like Ronald Reagan, steering his first economic measures through a Democratic House in 1981, not Bill Clinton, passing his first budget in 1993 without a single Republican vote. The first way leads to long-term success; the second foretells the early loss of control. This vote will set a pattern for Obama, one way or the other. He needs a bipartisan majority because, tough as this issue is, harder ones await when he turns to energy, health care and entitlement reform.

Do you notice the common denominator is here? In all three cases Broder references, Reagan, Clinton and now Obama, there is a Democratic majority. In 1980, the Democrats worked in good faith with a Republican president to pass a bill. In 1993, (most of) the Democrats worked in good faith with a Democratic president. In 2008, the Democrats are working in good faith with a Democratic president, just as they worked with George H.W. Bush and his son both in the majority and the minority.
The only time there is any cooperation from Republicans, on the other hand, is when there is a Republican president. They have a formula. They refuse to cooperate with any Democratic president on legislation that is supported by a majority of Democrats. And then they claim that the Democrats aren’t being bipartisan.Meanwhile, the Republicans who actually have to deal with this crisis beyond stepping over homeless people on the way to the airports, are far less willing to play games:

Most Republican governors have broken with their GOP colleagues in Congress and are pushing for passage of President Barack Obama’s economic aid plan that would send billions to states for education, public works and health care.Their state treasuries drained by the financial crisis, governors would welcome the money from Capitol Hill, where GOP lawmakers are more skeptical of Obama’s spending priorities…Gov. Charlie Crist worked the phones last week with members of his state’s congressional delegation, including House Republicans. Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, the Republican vice chairman of the National Governors Association, planned to be in Washington on Monday to urge the Senate to approve the plan.”As the executive of a state experiencing budget challenges, Gov. Douglas has a different perspective on the situation than congressional Republicans,” said Douglas’ deputy chief of staff, Dennise Casey.

Yes. They are feeling the effects of this recession and desperately need the federal government to step in with money, stat. Here’s the latest from my state:

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette on Thursday rejected the Service Employees International Union’s claim that it’s illegal for California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to force state employees take two days off each month without pay, reports The Los Angeles Times. So starting next week, on the first and third Fridays of each month, 238,000 state employees will be furloughed. Marlette, however, called the governor’s order “reasonable and necessary under the circumstances,” adding, “This state is in a huge mess . . . the scope of which is unprecedented.” IT Business Edge’s Ann All recently wrote Are Furloughs, Pay Cuts the New Layoffs? as organizations struggle to cut costs. California’s furloughs, expected to last through mid-2010, are expected to save the state about $1.3 billion.

I don’t even want to tell you what’s happening with medicaid, hospitals, unemployment etc.The article does say that there are a few Republican governors like Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Bobby Jindahl of Louisiana and Haley Barbour of Mississippi who have said they weren’t sure they could take the money because it goes against their principles. I applaud them for that and on behalf of California, will take their share. After all, we have been paying far more and getting less in federal dollars for decades compared to those three states, so it’s only fair.
From what the congressional Republicans were saying on the gasbag shows this morning, they have been sent out with talking points that say that whatever is done must be a “shovel ready project” or a tax cut. Helping the states deliver necessary services and keeping the money flowing doesn’t seem to be on their agenda. Indeed, I heard more than one complaining about the amount being spent on extended unemployment because that isn’t “stimulus” either. (Apparently, the only money that spends is money that one gets from a tax cut. It has magical properties.)

The Republicans should, by rights, feel tremendous pressure to sign on to the popular president’s bill. They should be cowed by the fact that they just got their asses handed to them in the election and are barely even hanging on to their power to filibuster. A normal American, who believes in democracy, would believe that they should probably adapt themselves at least somewhat to the will of the people, which the elections since 2006 has clearly been a repudiation conservative governance. But they don’t really believe in democracy.They see politics purely as a power game in which their only job is to leverage whatever power they have to attain their partisan goals. Obama can try to unilaterally declare bipartisanship to be inoperative but it won’t work if the other side doesn’t sign on.

I suspect that the administration thought that because we are in a major crisis the conservatives would deal with them as the Democrats dealt with Bush after 9/11 in passing the Patriot Act. But that’s naive. The past thirty years have shown that good times and bad are always seen as opportunities for the Republicans to leverage partisan power. That’s how they roll. (Democrats just roll over.)

There is a problem with partisanship in Washington. But as Greenwald so deftly demonstrated in this post, it’s a Republican problem. Democrats have, over the years, been nearly supine in their willingness to accomodate Republicans. And that including now, when the administration is working overtime to ensure that the bill is as Republican as possible despite the fact that they have the votes to pass it without their help.

I don’t happen to think that partisanship is bad. (This fascinating piece by Henry Farrell partially explains why.) But I do think that it only works if both sides agree that it’s a fight. If one side believes that things must be done by consensus and the other sides believe in dominance, it’s a problem. You have two sides playing by completely different rules.

I have written a lot in the past about how Republicans are able to advance their agenda even in the minority. They are really good at it. This post at DKos, illustrates their current tactic very succinctly:

They are essentially weakening the bill as much as possible, making it less likely to work. Then they’ll bail at the last second, in case it does fail, so they can point their fingers and assign all of the blame to Democrats.

Chuck Shumer said today that some Republicans would have to cross over and vote for the bill because it’s going to pass anyway. That’s how Democrats think. They are afraid that something will be successful and don’t want to be punished for failing to support it. (Call that Gulf War syndrome.) Republicans, on the other hand, believe that they will not benefit from success but neither will they be held liable for failure. (They don’t have to face Republicans, after all.) They are far more worried about being punished by their base for failing to advance the goals of the Republican Party. This is particularly true now that they are basically a rump regional party with very few members from swing districts and states.

I think the Obama team is smart enough to know that the village media are idiots. At least I hope they do. But they have not yet figured out how to manage them. Maybe a few more cocktails with David Broder and Cokie Roberts and few less with Charles Krauthamer and Bill Kristol would be in order if they want to influence elite opinion. They need to stop trying to influence the conservative operatives and try to get to the the elders, who validate the conservative line and call it “the center.” They’re the ones who have a problem understanding what the word bipartisanship really means. The Republicans get it — and they reject it.

Or Obama could just forget the village and go to the people, something he may have to do frequently if he wants to save the country. He’s certainly not going to get any help from the Republicans. In their cramped view of politics, saving the country is contrary to their interests.

Update: Via Crooks and Liars, Go Barney!

DEMINT: But this is the largest spending bill in history, and we’re trying to call it a stimulus when it’s just doing the things that…

FRANK: Well, let me tell you what I think is the largest…

DEMINT: … you wanted to do anyway.

FRANK: The largest spending bill in history is going to turn out to be the war in Iraq. And one of the things, if we’re going to talk about spending, I don’t — I have a problem when we leave out that extraordinarily expensive, damaging war in Iraq, which has caused much more harm than good, in my judgment.

And I don’t understand why, from some of my conservative friends, building a road, building a school, helping somebody get health care, that’s — that’s wasteful spending, but that war in Iraq, which is going to cost us over $1 trillion before we’re through — yes, I wish we hadn’t have done that. We’d have been in a lot better shape fiscally.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That is a whole another show, so I’m going to…

(CROSSTALK)

FRANK: That’s the problem. The problem is that we look at spending and say, “Oh, don’t spend on highways. Don’t spend on health care. But let’s build Cold War weapons to defeat the Soviet Union when we don’t need them. Let’s have hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars going to the military without a check.” Unless everything’s on the table, then you’re going to have a disproportionate hit in some places.

Go over and watch the whole clip. It’s a beaut.

I honestly don’t know why this argument is off limits. I would imagine that it makes total sense to the vast majority of Americans.

More from Barney at MYDD

Update II: Dean Baker dispatches the latest fantasy by Amity Schlaes, the Laurie Myelroi of the economic set. All I can say is, thank God the democrats won the election or this person would likely be advising McCain. Puts things in perspective …

Update III: Here’s a simple common sense article by Jane Bryant Quinn on why the Revocery Plan will work.

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Outsourcing The Problem

by digby

Well, that was easy:

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool

The role of the CIA’s controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.

By Greg Miller

February 1, 2009

Reporting from Washington — The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as “an illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the United States is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.

“Obviously you need to preserve some tools — you still have to go after the bad guys,” said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. “The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”

Well now we know why Obama used the same odd rhetoric as the Bush administration did: “The United States does not torture.” he just left off the rest of the sentence — “we contract it out to people who really know how to take the gloves off.”

So, it would appear that the whole argument is kabuki. The CIA, I’m sure, is happy to “supervise” such things rather than have to get their own hands dirty. Their little hissy fit over Panetta and the rest may even have been a ruse to give the new administration cover to keep (perhaps expand?) the rendition program. That is, after all, a fine bipartisan program first approved during the Clinton years.

So, it would appear that we will not see the end of torture under this administration after all. And I’m also sure that news of renditions and orders from the White House will leak in great detail in order to damage Obama’s moral authority (even more than this news already does.) But the quivering villagers are undoubtedly relieved that the new president understands the value of torture. They can rest well tonight, unafraid that the terrorists are coming to kill them personally in their beds. Depends sales will take a big hit.

Just as a reminder, here’s Jane Mayer’s seminal article in the New Yorker called “Outsourcing Torture.” Here’s an excerpt:

Arar, a thirty-four-year-old graduate of McGill University whose family emigrated to Canada when he was a teen-ager, was arrested on September 26, 2002, at John F. Kennedy Airport. He was changing planes; he had been on vacation with his family in Tunisia, and was returning to Canada. Arar was detained because his name had been placed on the United States Watch List of terrorist suspects. He was held for the next thirteen days, as American officials questioned him about possible links to another suspected terrorist. Arar said that he barely knew the suspect, although he had worked with the man’s brother. Arar, who was not formally charged, was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet. The plane flew to Washington, continued to Portland, Maine, stopped in Rome, Italy, then landed in Amman, Jordan.

During the flight, Arar said, he heard the pilots and crew identify themselves in radio communications as members of “the Special Removal Unit.” The Americans, he learned, planned to take him next to Syria. Having been told by his parents about the barbaric practices of the police in Syria, Arar begged crew members not to send him there, arguing that he would surely be tortured. His captors did not respond to his request; instead, they invited him to watch a spy thriller that was aired on board.

Ten hours after landing in Jordan, Arar said, he was driven to Syria, where interrogators, after a day of threats, “just began beating on me.” They whipped his hands repeatedly with two-inch-thick electrical cables, and kept him in a windowless underground cell that he likened to a grave. “Not even animals could withstand it,” he said. Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say. “You just give up,” he said. “You become like an animal.”

A year later, in October, 2003, Arar was released without charges, after the Canadian government took up his cause. Imad Moustapha, the Syrian Ambassador in Washington, announced that his country had found no links between Arar and terrorism. Arar, it turned out, had been sent to Syria on orders from the U.S. government, under a secretive program known as “extraordinary rendition.” This program had been devised as a means of extraditing terrorism suspects from one foreign state to another for interrogation and prosecution. Critics contend that the unstated purpose of such renditions is to subject the suspects to aggressive methods of persuasion that are illegal in America—including torture.

Changing this was the change I voted for. If nothing else, it was this.

Update: Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings says that the article is mistaken and that the orders Obama signed actually prohibit rendition under existing law and speculates that this is more nonsense from the intelligence community (which would certainly be in keeping with their behavior since Obama was elected. ) I certainly hope that correct. Perhaps someone will ask the administration about it directly to clear it up once andfor all.

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Blogging The Origin

by tristero

I’m in Oswego, NY for rehearsals leading up to the premiere of my new evening-long piece, The Origin which will take place on February 6 and 7 at 7:30 PM at Waterman Theatre, Tyler Hall on the SUNY Oswego campus. I’ll be blogging about the experience all week and try to post some pictures and audio files (oddly, the last time I tried, it was all but impossible to post audio files to Blogger, so I may have to post links). If you’re in the area, please come and say hello! I’ll be there for both performances and there should be Q&A’s after each.

Since rehearsals begin in less than two hours and I have much to do before then, I”ll make this post short and leave you with a link to an NPR interview with Keith Thompson about the young Charles Darwin. It’s quite good, but in an inexcusable nod to religious correctness, Leann Hanson says:

Today, scientists continue to uncover the mechanisms of [Darwin’s] insight and theologians continue to question it.

The implied parallelism is sheer nonsense. True, scientists do continue to uncover the mechanisms of evolution, informed and influenced by Darwin’s theory of natural selection. However, only some theologians continue to question it and most of those are from extreme right American evangelical churches or radical islamists. The rest of the worldwide theological community, Christian and otherwise, has either little to say about Darwin’s theories – they’re not relevant to their beliefs – or sees no conflict whatsoever between their religion and science. To frame it the way Hanson does is to manufacture a worldwide controversy that doesn’t exist as well as elevate the status of a small, well-financed group of rightwing operatives to that of spokesmen for Christianity. Hopefully, somewhere in the series that NPR is planning this month they will deal with the social issues swirling around the teaching of evolution in this country in a responsible fashion.

Villagers Let Their Freak Flag Fly

by dday

This is a reversal:

President Barack Obama, who pledged during his campaign to shift U.S. troops and resources from Iraq to Afghanistan, has done little since taking office to suggest he will significantly widen the grinding war against a resurgent Taliban.

On the contrary, Obama appears likely to streamline the U.S. focus with an eye to the worsening economy and the cautionary example of the Iraq war that sapped political support for President George W. Bush.

“There’s not simply a military solution to that problem,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said last week, adding that Obama believes “that only through long-term and sustainable development can we ever hope to turn around what’s going on there.”

Less than two weeks into the new administration, Obama has not said much in public about what his top military adviser says is the largest challenge facing the armed forces. The president did say Afghanistan and Pakistan are the central front in the struggle against terrorism, a clue to the likely shift toward a targeted counterterrorism strategy.

After Obama’s first visit to the Pentagon as president, a senior defense official said the commander in chief surveyed top uniformed officers about the strain of fighting two wars and warned that the economic crisis will limit U.S. responses. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because Obama’s meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff was private.

I think the reporter is playing mind-reader a little bit. What’s happening right now is a strategy review. Wisely, President Obama is actually looking at the situation and taking input from everyone, even detractors. Publicly, those who will be closest to making the decision are offering a very balanced view, full of warnings and caveats. Bob Gates’ Senate testimony this week was quite honest.

Gates, a cautious advocate of bolstering U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that he worries that “Afghans [will] come to see us as the problem, not the solution, and then we are lost.” He warned that increased levels of U.S. troop deaths in 2009 were “likely.”

In December, Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, stated that he needs an increase of nearly 30,000 troops “for the next few years” — in other words, a sustained troop increase, not a brief surge in U.S. forces as occurred in Iraq in 2007. In the last few days Obama administration officials have begun telling reporters off the record not to presume that the president has made a decision on the size or duration of any prospective troop increase.

Gates said Tuesday that he backs McKiernan’s request — but signaled that the troop spigot would not remain open. “I would be very skeptical about additional force levels beyond what Gen. McKiernan asked for,” Gates told the Senate panel. A former senior CIA official during the Russian invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Gates recalled that “the Soviets couldn’t win that war with 120,000 troops and a ruthless approach” to Afghan civilians, since they adopted “the wrong strategy.” […] “Above all,” he said, “there must be an Afghan face on this war.” More important to Gates than increasing U.S. troop levels, he said, was increasing the numbers of Afghan security forces, and he said the government of Hamid Karzai supports a U.S.-backed effort to increase the Afghan National Army to 130,000 troops from its current 80,000, though he said he was unsure “even that number will be large enough.” At several points in the hearing, Gates worried that the U.S. was losing support from the Afghan people, saying that the U.S. has “lost the strategic communications war” to the Afghan insurgency about U.S.-caused civilian casualties. Proposing a policy of “first apologiz[ing]” when U.S. troops kill civilians in error, Gates said, “We have to get the balance right with the Afghan people or we will lose this war.”

Gates was adamant that there’s no military solution in Afghanistan, and that the goals should be minimal, narrowed to denying Al Qaeda a safe haven. “If we set as the goal [creating] a Central Asian Valhalla, we will lose,” he said. Similarly, this week Adm. Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said to the Washington Post “I don’t have enough troops in the United States military to make the difference that needs to be made” in Afghanistan.

Some of this may come from the large protests against the President’s first forward action in the region, an airstrike in the Waziristan area that killed civilians. This may have shown that aerial strikes will only inflame the population and possibly turn Pakistan toward religious parties. While the theory behind additional troops is that less airstrikes would be necessary, it would increase the foreign occupier footprint at a time when the population is less supportive of them. The fact that NATO help appears unlikely is being factored into their thinking as well, as is the relative weakness and corruption of the Karzai government. While top officials press Karzai for more, there is a lot of thought to throwing Karzai over, or at least not offering him any support, in the next Presidential election, which has now been postponed until August due to the rising violence. So it looks like no big decisions have been made.

Throughout this there have been great, strident voices contextualizing the situation in Afghanistan and warning against a deeper commitment. Barnett Rubin, Juan Cole, Steve Clemons and Scott Ritter are just a few. What’s been notable in the past couple days is, while the Administration undergoes this strategy review, the chattering class is going nuts. Newsweek decided that eleven days and a noncommital stance was enough to call this “Obama’s Vietnam,” as if he ordered the invasion in 2001 and neglected the war for seven years. They’ve somehow justified this by distancing from dirty hippies who analogize every war to Vietnam, and then… analogizing the war to Vietnam:

“Vietnam analogies can be tiresome,” they write. “To critics, especially those on the left, all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential “quagmires.” But sometimes clichés come true, and, especially lately, it seems that the war in Afghanistan is shaping up in all-too-familiar ways.”

And you should have seen Bob Woodward on ABC this morning, yipping away with “What is the strategy?” and “Why aren’t we leaving yet,” sounding like a latter-day Country Joe McDonald. And there have been other big-picture pieces in the print media.

I agree that troops shouldn’t be committed in the absence of goals or strategy, and it’s good that the establishment is starting to question the slow roll in Afghanistan. Forgive me, however, for questioning their motives. Although Obama is engaging in a deliberative process, it is characterized as a rush to war. They are making up for their own past while they analogize to the distant past. Obama stumbling into his own Vietnam “fits” for them. It’s the perfect narrative and they’re going to sell it.

I think it’s very unsettling. The public is very split on Afghanistan and could be persuaded on either side. While I’m personally against escalation, I’m willing to deal with the outcomes of my decision. I don’t think the Village is. They’re interested in putting their imprint on the story no matter what happens. So if Afghanistan falls into chaos with an escalation, then Obama is stuck in a quagmire. If it falls into chaos without an escalation, then Obama make a strategic mistake and the blood is on his hands. Even if it succeeds, the voices will be raised about when we can leave. And throughout it all, there will be talk about how the commitment overseas will constrain Obama at home and ruin all of his plans to restore and transform the economy. They are not arguing in good faith, and while I’m glad to have a real public debate about Afghanistan, I think it’s worth thinking about why the Village has put on their tie-dye and gone wild in the streets.

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Tortured Comedy

by digby

Our political elites are just wonderful people. They fight over what to do about the little people by day and get together at off-the-record black tie dinners at night and joke about torture.

At last night’s black-tie dinner at Washington’s Alfalfa Club, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) couldn’t resist cracking a joke about torture. Politico’s Mike Allen reports:

More from Senator Lieberman: ‘We had hoped Vice President Cheney would be here tonight. I hope it’s not his back injury that’s keeping him away. Apparently, he hurt it moving some things out of his office. Personally, I had no idea that waterboards were so heavy.

Last year, Lieberman, who has voted against banning waterboarding, “reluctantly acknowledged” that he doesn’t believe that waterboarding is torture. “It is not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological,” he said.

This is the man who went to the Senate floor and gave a long sermon about how the president’s sexual indiscretion was destroying the moral fabric of the country.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Dust Bowl XLIII

By Dennis Hartley

I’ve sure been hearing the “D” word an awful lot lately. They say that in times of severe economic downturn, people crave pure escapism at the movies. I say, screw that. I wanna revel in economic downturn, ‘cos there’s something else “they” say as well: Misery loves company. So, with that in mind, and in the spirit of a little cinematic aversion therapy, here’s my Top 10 Great Depression Movies. Study them well, because there’s yet one more thing that “they say”: Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.

Berlin Alexanderplatz– When you think of the Great Depression in terms of film and literature, it tends to vibe America-centric in the mind’s eye. In reality, the economic downturn between the great wars was a global phenomenon (not unlike our current situation); things were literally “tough all over”. You could say that Germany had a jumpstart on the depression (economically speaking, everything below the waist was kaput by the mid 1920s). In October of 1929 (interesting historical timing), Alfred Doblin’s epic novel Berlin Alexanderplatz: The Story Of Franz Biberkopf was published, then adapted into a film in 1931 directed by Phil Jutzi. It wasn’t until nearly 50 years later that the ultimate film version would appear as Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 15 hour opus. It’s nearly impossible to encapsulate this spiritually exhausting viewing experience in just a few lines; I’ll just say that it is (by turns) the most outrageous, shocking, transcendent, boring, awe-inspiring, maddening and soul-scorching film I’ve ever hated myself for loving so much.

Bonnie and Clyde– The gangster movie meets the art film in this 1967 groundbreaker from director Arthur Penn. There is much more to this influential masterpiece than just the oft-mentioned operatic crescendo of violent death in the closing frames; particularly of note was the ingenious way that its attractive antiheroes were posited to directly appeal to the rebellious counterculture zeitgeist of the time, even though the film was ostensibly a “nostalgia piece”. Our better instincts may tell us that the real Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were nowhere near as charismatic (or physically beautiful) as Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, but we don’t really care, do we? (Is it getting warm in here? Woof!)

Bound for Glory-There’s only one man to whom Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen must bow before-and that’s Woody Guthrie. You can almost taste the dust in director Hal Ashby’s leisurely, episodic 1976 biopic about the life of America’s premier protest songwriter/social activist. David Carradine gives one of his finest performances, and does a very credible job with his own singing and playing. Haskell Wexler’s outstanding cinematography earned him a well-deserved Oscar. The film may feel a bit overlong and slow in spots if you aren’t particularly fascinated by Guthrie’s story; but I think it is just as much about the Depression itself, and perhaps more than any other film on my list, it succeeds as a “total immersion” by transporting the viewer back to the era.

The Grapes of Wrath– I’m stymied for any hitherto unspoken superlatives to ladle onto John Ford’s masterful film or John Steinbeck’s classic source novel, so I won’t pretend to have any. Suffice it to say, this probably comes closest to nabbing the title as THE quintessential film about the heartbreak and struggle of America’s “salt of the earth” during the Great Depression. Perhaps we can take (real or imagined) comfort in the possibility that no matter how bad things get over the next few months (years?), Henry Fonda’s unforgettable embodiment of Tom Joad will “be there…all around, in the dark.”

Inserts– This 1976 sleeper from director John Byrum has been dismissed as pretentious dreck by some; it remains a cult item for others. If I told you that Richard Dreyfuss, Veronica Cartwright, Bob Hoskins and Jessica Harper once all co-starred in an “X” rated film, would you believe me? Dreyfuss plays a has-been Hollywood directing prodigy known as “Wonder Boy”, whose career has peaked early; he now lives in his bathrobe, drinking heavily and casting junkies and wannabe-starlets in pornos that he shoots in his crumbling mansion. Bob Hoskins is memorable as the sleazy “producer”, who is also looking for investors for his scheme-an idea to open a chain of hamburger joints (his nickname is “Big Mac”). The story takes place in 30s Hollywood, and as a wallow in the squalid side of show biz, it would make a great double bill with The Day of the Locust.

King of the Hill– Steven Soderbergh’s exquisitely photographed film (somewhat reminiscent of Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon) is a bittersweet rendering of A.E. Hotchner’s Depression-era tale about young Aaron (Jesse Bradford) who lives with his parents and kid brother in a decrepit hotel. After his sickly mother (Lisa Eichhorn) is sent away for convalescence, his kid brother is packed off to stay with relatives, and his father (Jeroen Krabbe) hits the road as a travelling salesman, leaving Aaron to fend for himself. The Grand Hotel-style framing device (offering glimpses of the mini-dramas unfolding in each room, here suffused through a child’s innocent perceptions) gives you an effective microcosm of the day-to-day struggles of those who live through such times. The film is full of wonderful little moments of keen insight into the human condition. The great ensemble includes Karen Allen, Adrian Brody, Elizabeth McGovern and Spaulding Gray.

Pennies from Heaven (Original BBC version)-I’ve always preferred the original 1978 British television version of this production to the Americanized theatrical version that was released several years afterwards. Written by Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective), it is rife with the usual Potter obsessions: sexual frustration, marital infidelity, religious guilt, shattered dreams and quiet desperation…broken up by the occasional, completely incongruous song and dance number (I really would not want to be in his head, ever). Bob Hoskins is outstanding as a married traveling sheet music salesman in Depression-era England whose life takes some, erm, interesting Potter-esque turns once he becomes smitten by a young rural schoolteacher (Cheryl Campbell) who lives with her widowed father and two extremely creepy brothers. Probably best described as a film noir musical?

Sullivan’s Travels-A unique and amazingly deft mash-up of romantic screwball comedy, Hollywood satire, road movie and hard-hitting social drama that probably would not have worked so beautifully had not the great Preston Sturges been at the helm. Joel McCrea is pitch-perfect as a director of goofy populist comedies who yearns to make a “meaningful” film. Racked with guilt about the comfortable bubble that his Hollywood success has afforded him and determined to learn firsthand how the other half lives, he decides to hit the road with no money in his pocket and “embed” himself as a railroad tramp (much to the chagrin of his handlers). He is joined along the way by an aspiring actress (Veronica Lake, in one of her best comic performances). His voluntary crash-course in “social realism” turns into much more than he had originally bargained for. Lake and McCrea have wonderful chemistry. Years later, the Coen Brothers smugly co-opted the title of the fictional “film within the film” here: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – “Yowsa, yowsa, yowsa!” This richly decadent allegory about the human condition has to be one of the grimmest and most cynical films ever made. Director Sydney Pollack assembled a crack ensemble for this depiction of a Depression-era dance marathon from Hell: Jane Fonda, Gig Young (who snagged a Best Supporting Actor Oscar), Susannah York, Bruce Dern and Red Buttons are all outstanding; Pollack even coaxed the wooden Michael Sarrazin (the Hayden Christensen of his day) into showing some real emotion. Adapted from Horace McCoy’s novel.

Thieves Like Us-This loose remake of Nicholas Ray’s 1949 film noir classic They Live By Night is the late Robert Altman’s most underrated film, IMHO. It is often compared to Bonnie and Clyde, but stylistically speaking, the two films could not be farther apart. Altman’s tale of bank-robbing lovers on the lam (Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall) is far less flashy and stylized, but ultimately more affecting thanks to a consistently naturalistic, elegiac tone throughout. Carradine and Duvall really breathe life into their doomed couple; every moment of intimacy between them (not just sexual) feels warm, touching, and genuine-which gives the film some real heart. Altman adapted the screenplay (with co-writers Joan Tewkesbury and Calder Willingham) from the same source novel (by Edward Anderson) that inspired Ray’s earlier film. Ripe for rediscovery.

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The Bush Legacy Lives On

by digby

We are going to be dealing with the conservative assault on civil liberties — particularly the fourth Amendment — long after he’s faded into obscurity:

Supreme Court Steps Closer to Repeal of Evidence Ruling

In 1983, a young lawyer in the Reagan White House was hard at work on what he called in a memorandum “the campaign to amend or abolish the exclusionary rule” — the principle that evidence obtained by police misconduct cannot be used against a defendant.

The Reagan administration’s attacks on the exclusionary rule — a barrage of speeches, opinion articles, litigation and proposed legislation — never gained much traction. But now that young lawyer, John G. Roberts Jr., is chief justice of the United States.

This month, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority in Herring v. United States, a 5-to-4 decision, took a big step toward the goal he had discussed a quarter-century before. Taking aim at one of the towering legacies of the Warren Court, its landmark 1961 decision applying the exclusionary rule to the states, the chief justice’s majority opinion established for the first time that unlawful police conduct should not require the suppression of evidence if all that was involved was isolated carelessness. That was a significant step in itself. More important yet, it suggested that the exclusionary rule itself might be at risk.

The Herring decision “jumped a firewall,” said Kent Scheidegger, the general counsel of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims’ rights group. “I think Herring may be setting the stage for the Holy Grail,” he wrote on the group’s blog, referring to the overruling of Mapp v. Ohio, the 1961 Warren Court decision.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined the Herring decision and has been a reliable vote for narrowing the protections afforded criminal defendants since he joined the court in 2006. In applying for a job in the Reagan Justice Department in 1985, he wrote that his interest in the law had been “motivated in large part by disagreement with Warren Court decisions, particularly in the areas of criminal procedure,” religious freedom and voting rights.

Justice Alito replaced Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who was considered a moderate in criminal procedure cases.

“With Alito’s replacement of O’Connor,” said Craig M. Bradley, a law professor at Indiana University, “suddenly now they have four votes for sure and possibly five for the elimination of the exclusionary rule.”

According to Justice Scalia, the police are much more professional that they used to be, so we don’t need these sorts of onerous rules to inhibit them from searching anyone thy choose for any reason. We can just take them at their word. (After all, if you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about ,right?)

The fight never ends.

h/t to bb
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