Month: July 2009

Redux

by digby

Please say this isn’t happening again:

After the legendary corruption of the Iraq occupation—private contractors fashioning spurs for their cowboy boots from stolen Iraqi gold, vanishing pallets of shrink-wrapped cash—you’d think the US government would be keeping an extra-close watch on the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. But you’d be wrong. Who says so? The guy in charge of rooting out corruption. Even as the Obama administration steps up spending in Afghanistan, it’s shortchanging the government auditors responsible for ensuring that taxpayer dollars don’t wind up in the pockets of swindlers and opportunists.

Afghanistan already places fifth in Transparency International’s annual ranking of the most corrupt nations in the world. The US plans to spend nearly $14 billion there over the next financial year on military operations and reconstruction projects, up from about $11 billion this year. Yet Arnold Fields, the official charged with keeping track of this money—as well as foreign investment in US-sponsored programs—says in an interview with Mother Jones that he lacks the tools for the job.

[…]

Perhaps more so than Iraq, Afghanistan is an ideal destination for would-be war profiteers. As Fields told members of the House Armed Services Committee in March, “Iraq had much more upon which to build…We are really constructing as opposed to reconstructing in Afghanistan.” At the time of the US invasion in 2003, Iraq boasted the world’s third-largest oil reserves, a per-capita annual income of $4,000, an average life expectancy of 70 years, and 74 percent literacy. Afghanistan, by contrast, has no natural resources to speak of, per-capita annual income is just $800, life expectancy is a dismal 45 years, and only 28 percent of the population can read or write. It has precious few paved roads, no railways, and only four airports with runways suitable for large aircraft. Its mountainous, landlocked geography is a haven for insurgents. Moreover, whereas Iraq under Saddam Hussein possessed a corps of competent technocrats, Afghanistan’s civil society has been decimated by more than 30 years of uninterrupted warfare. Much of the countryside is now under the sway of tribal warlords and devoted to harvesting opium, by far the country’s most lucrative industry.

Corruption thrives in such conditions.

No kidding.

If this happens in yet another administration somebody might get the mistaken idea that it’s a feature, not a bug.

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The Master At Work

by digby

Wolcott on Palin and her followers:

David Seaton lives in Spain, where presumably a greater premium is put on charm, since here in the states those of the ultra-right persuasion tend to bypass charm and go straight for the Popeye mug. Why just today I read a Palin idolator, after designating Democrats the party of fisting and rimming, uncork yet another wishful prophecy of civil war that would pit Christian gun-toters against heathen Project Runway fans in a blood-cleansing that would restore America to its rightful place in the 19th century. How they long for this clarifying reckoning while clinging to their Barbie doll of redemption, Sister Sarah. Seaton:

The people who follow demagogues aren’t interested in thinking, they are interested in feeling: demagoguery is a form of political pornography: up and on, who cares about the “plot”?

This would explain why the pro-Palin bloggers tend to be the most insistent on asserting their masculinity and rhetorically beating their hotdogs against the steering wheel, while waiting for the light to change.

Damn.

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A Present From Teddy

by digby

Here’s a little piece of surprising good news that’s floating under the radar in the health care debate:

WITH LITTLE FANFARE, a new public program to help pay for long-term care for adults is moving through Congress. The premium is low and the coverage is good.

Largely geared to personal and health services provided in the home, though it extends to nursing home care as a last resort, the new coverage is built into the emerging formula for national healthcare reform.

The need for home care is immense. More than 10 million Americans receive home care, and the number will rise rapidly as the population ages. Estimates hold that 75 percent of us will need home care at some point during our lifetime.

This kind of medical/social service is of inestimable benefit to the chronically ill, the elderly, the mentally disabled, and to adults recuperating from a temporary illness. Home-based personal assistance would allow many of them to return to work. And it would be a godsend for the 90 percent of Americans who have had no meaningful protection against this medical expense.

[…]

The long-term care program has the backing of President Obama as well as about 100 organizations for the disabled, elderly, and workers, along with 80 percent of voters queried in opinion polls.

This is Kennedy’s baby and it’s a really good idea. Commercial long term care insurance, which only rich people have anyway, is expensive and terrible. This is one of those things that will make a huge difference in many people’s lives if it actually happens. And it’s happening completely under the radar, a sort of secret bequest from the man who’s been pushing for universal health care for more than 40 years.

h/t to bb

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Too Big To Think About

by digby

I don’t think I was alone in finding it shockingly arrogant for Goldman Sachs to announce their insane bonuses last week. Trumpeting such a thing in the midst of this horrific economy is beyond poor taste.

There was a point not all that long ago in which I thought Goldman doing this would bring about such disapprobation in the public and among lawmakers that they wouldn’t even try it. It seemed so stupidly provocative to demonstrate such outsized, piggish greed before the dust even settled, that it seemed impossible they would try. But I was the one who was stupid. They can strut around giving the whole country the finger and daring somebody to do anything about it and nobody cares.

And it’s actually more reprehensible than I thought. The venerable Barrons mildly suggests that Goldman is cheating its shareholders, thus leaving themselves undercapitalized. Again. But why would they concern themselves with such a thing? They are too big to fail.

But it’s actually worse than that. Here’s Matt Taibbi:

Last year, when Hank Paulson told us all that the planet would explode if we didn’t fork over a gazillion dollars to Wall Street immediately, the entire rationale not only for TARP but for the whole galaxy of lesser-known state crutches and safety nets quietly ushered in later on was that Wall Street, once rescued, would pump money back into the economy, create jobs, and initiate a widespread recovery. This, we were told, was the reason we needed to pilfer massive amounts of middle-class tax revenue and hand it over to the same guys who had just blown up the financial world. We’d save their asses, they’d save ours. That was the deal.

It turned out not to happen that way. We constructed this massive bailout infrastructure, and instead of pumping that free money back into the economy, the banks instead simply hoarded it and ate it on the spot, converting it into bonuses. So what does this Goldman profit number mean? This is the final evidence that the bailouts were a political decision to use the power of the state to redirect society’s resources upward, on a grand scale. It was a selective rescue of a small group of chortling jerks who must be laughing all the way to the Hamptons every weekend about how they fleeced all of us at the very moment the game should have been up for all of them.

Now, the counter to this charge is, well, hey, they made that money fair and square, legally, how can you blame them? They’re just really smart!

Bullshit. One of the most hilarious lies that has been spread about Goldman of late is that, since it repaid its TARP money, it’s now free and clear of any obligation to the government – as if that was the only handout Goldman got in the last year. Goldman last year made your average AFDC mom on food stamps look like an entrepreneur. Here’s a brief list of all the state aid that is hiding behind that $3.44 billion number they announced the other day. In no particular order.

Read on. It’s enough to make you sick. But if you think that anyone in government is going to do anything about it, think again. Here’s Mike Lux:

Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase are becoming bigger, richer, and more powerful, while unemployment, home foreclosures, small business bankruptcies are going up. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase are not only too big to fail, they are so big that everyone else is failing. As Paul Krugman pointed out, the things they do actually are harmful to the rest of the economy.

This whole Too Big To Fail thing (especially with Goldman and Morgan getting ever bigger and more powerful) is the elephant in the room, the issue on the table central to most of the most serious problems in our economy, but it’s the issue almost everyone is too scared to take on. Reporters tell me stories of (relatively progressive) Democratic Congresspeople too frightened to attack Goldman Sachs by name on the record. The White House completely avoids the Too Big To Fail issue in their banking regulatory reform policies (many of which are actually quite good, by the way) because, as folks on the WH staff have told me, they know they would get beaten by the Wall St lobby on the hill. Even the progressive groups working on banking issues, the ones doing very admirable work on other aspects of the financial issues such as Elizabeth Warren’s great idea of a new consumer protection agency on financial products, are mostly taking a pass on Too Big To Fail related issues because, as one consumer lobbyist told me, “we don’t want to lose our credibility on the Hill.”

Credibility. Seriously.

The problem isn’t that Goldman Sachs is too big to fail. It’s that this level of in-your-face corruption and greed is too big to wrap our minds around. So we’re just pretending it isn’t happening. It’s one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen.

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The Circus Is In Town

by digby

These birthers are too much:

A controversial suit brought by a U.S. Army reservist has been joined by a retired Army two-star general and an active reserve Air Force lieutenant colonel.

Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook filed the suit July 8 in federal court here asking for conscientious objector status and a preliminary injunction based upon his belief that President Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as president of the United States and commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.

However, before the issue got to court, Cook’s orders to deploy to Afghanistan were revoked….

[…]

The government, in its response to the suit, claims that Cook’s suit is “moot” in that he already has been told he doesn’t have to go to Afghanistan, so the relief he is seeking has been granted.

“The Commanding General of SOCCENT (U.S. Special Operations Central Command) has determined that he does not want the services of Major Cook, and has revoked his deployment orders,” the response states.

In a pleading revised after the revocation of Cook’s orders, Taitz argues that the application for preliminary injunction is not moot and that retired Maj. Gen. Carol Dean Childers and active U.S. Air Force reservist Lt. Col. David Earl Graeff have joined the suit “because it is a matter of unparalleled public interest and importance and because it is clearly a matter arising from issues of a recurring nature that will escape review unless the Court exercises its discretionary jurisdiction.”

Lou Dobbs’ fill-in, Kitty Pilgrim, actually featured the crazed lawyer behind this last week, so it’s starting to seep into the mainstream.

This sideshow is ridiculous, of course. But it would be foolish to forget that the Paula Jones case was too.

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Saturday Night At The Movies Part II

Double feature: 500 days of Spring-Winter/Summer

By Dennis Hartley

Whatever Works: The fine art of eating and complaining

I can anticipate the chorus of detractors. “So-Woody Allen has written and directed yet another fantasy about a neurotic, misanthropic middle-aged Jewish intellectual Manhattanite who meets a young, hot, wide-eyed Shiksa who is irresistibly (and inexplicably) attracted to him? Enough, already!” So he has written and directed another fantasy about a neurotic, misanthropic middle-aged Jewish intellectual Manhattanite who meets a young, hot, wide-eyed Shiksa who is irresistibly (and inexplicably) attracted to him, OK? And it’s smart, insightful and funnier than hell. You got a problem with that?

Allen may have found his most perfect avatar yet in Seinfeld co-creator/Curb Your Enthusiasm star (and fellow native Brooklynite) Larry David, who I think proves here that, contrary to what many may assume, he really can act. In his HBO series, David plays “himself” as a self-absorbed character whose latent hostility is primarily channeled via classic passive-aggressive behavior. As Allen’s protagonist Boris Yellnikoff, there is nothing latent at all about the hostility. He openly hates everybody, including himself. A textbook fatalist, Boris never passes up an opportunity to unceremoniously kick any tiny hint of enthusiasm to the curb and remind anyone in his proximity that it is all for naught.

A “retired” quantum mechanics physicist (now that’s funny right there), Boris has chosen to live in a dumpy apartment (because, you know, why bother?) and make a few shekels here and there giving chess lessons to “cretinous” children, whom he browbeats and berates like a Parris Island drill instructor. His social skills with adults aren’t so hot, either; still, he manages to find several New York intellectual/Bohemian friends to pal around with; one suspects it’s because they are the only people who can bemusedly tolerate his bristly diatribes about the cruel and unfeeling universe for any length of time.

When it comes to love and romance, Boris subscribes to accepting whatever Fate and Chance throws your way with a shrug; “Whatever works,” as he is fond of telling his friends. That credo is put to the test when Fate and Chance drops a young homeless woman with the unlikely moniker of Melodie St. Ann Celestine (Evan Rachel Wood) onto his doorstep (literally). Melodie is a southern bumpkin who has run away to the Big City to escape her overbearing fundamentalist Christian mother (Patricia Clarkson) and good ol’ boy father (Ed Begley, Jr.). Boris reluctantly offers her his couch for a night, and I think you can guess what comes next. After this setup, Allen kicks the story into his patented Urban Fable mode, adding flourishes of Pygmalion and Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

It’s very theatrical, flirting at times with door-slamming farce, but Woody Classic, all the way. The cast is game, especially the always wonderful Clarkson and Begley, who both chew major scenery as their stereotypical Southern countenance undergoes an unlikely (but inherently entertaining) transformation once each gets a taste of the Big Apple. Allen also tosses a barb or two at the N.Y.C. art scene (reminiscent of John Waters’ Pecker).

Admittedly, this is the cinematic equivalent of a 12” remix of Woody’s Greatest Hits, but it’s got a great beat, and you can dance to it. Let’s face it, Allen is not getting any younger, and if he occasionally relents his cranky contrarian tendencies and gives his most ardent fans what they want (i.e., something resembling his early, funny films), is that a bad thing? He’s given us 40 years of great laughs; and though I know in my heart of hearts that his best work is history, I’ll keep looking forward to his movies. What I am trying to say is: I know he’s not a chicken…but in these tough times, I can use the eggs.

Deconstructing Zooey: The 500 Days of Summer

Speaking of the Woodman, some have compared director Marc Webb’s certified Sundance hit 500 Days of Summer to Annie Hall. While it obviously draws narrative inspiration from Allen’s post-deconstruction of a fizzled romantic relationship, it offers a fluffier, albeit ingratiating variation on that film’s theme, buoyed along by a hip (if calculating) soundtrack, winking references for film buffs, and the charm of its two leads.

At the beginning of the film, we are duly advised in mock-serious tones by a narrator with mellifluous pipes that what we are about to see is “…not a love story.” It is, rather, a retrospective appraisal of a relationship that didn’t work out, between a hopelessly romantic young man named Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and a more cautiously pragmatic young woman named Summer (Zooey Deschanel). Tom and Summer Meet Cute at the office. She is “the new girl”, he writes greeting cards (uh…soul of a poet?). And in portents of a love affair born in emo heaven, they bond over a mutual appreciation of Morrissey (I’m sure that the filmmakers had ‘em at the Smiths reference at Sundance).

You math majors in the audience have probably figured out by now that the “500 days” refers to the length of said relationship. Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber opt for the non-linear approach in their narrative, giving us characters who (like Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim) appear to have become “unstuck in time” (day 147 might segue into day 18, which dissolves into day 310, etc.). While this device does become “gimmicky” rather quickly, director Webb takes full advantage of the footloose structure to inject a lot of visual playfulness. He throws in everything from Bergman references to an exuberant, fully choreographed MTV-style number (I think it’s the film’s best scene).

Under closer scrutiny, the film isn’t really much deeper than an MTV video; but it’s a fun ride all the same, with enough originality and inventiveness to separate it from the pack of largely vacuous piffle that passes as “romantic comedy” these days (I don’t sound bitter, do I?). I’ve only seen Gordon-Levitt in two other films (Brick and The Lookout) but I’m impressed by his range; I think he’s got a long career ahead of him. Deschanel (America’s answer to Audrey Tautou) has an effervescent screen presence that (for me, at least) makes up for the fact that she plays the same quirky, saucer-eyed Object of Desire in everything I’ve seen her in; but who can resist those baby blues? Like many first-time directors eager to pull out all the stops, Webb may have put too many eggs in one basket here-but I look forward to seeing what else this promising filmmaker has up his sleeve.

Previous posts with related themes:

Top 10 romantic comedies

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

I Love You, Man

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Saturday Night At The Movies Part I

T-minus 5

By Dennis Hartley

The passing of Walter Cronkite, just several days shy of this upcoming Monday’s 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, has added a bittersweet poignancy to the occasion that is hard for me to put into words. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that some of my earliest and fondest childhood memories of being plunked in front of the TV are of being transfixed by the reassuring visage of Uncle Walter, with the familiar backdrop of the Cape Canaveral launch pad behind him. Remember when the coverage of NASA spaceflights were an exciting, all-day news event, as opposed to a perfunctory sound bite sandwiched in between wall-to-wall minutiae about the latest celebrity death?

Good times.

With that in mind, I thought I’d toss out a few ideas for a little Uncle Walter Space Launch Memorial Film Festival in your media room this weekend. This is sort of a quickly cobbled together “Top 5”; I’m sure you’ll have some additions (ahem-like you even need my encouragement!). If you have cable, a couple of these will be airing on Turner Classics on Monday as part of their all-day moon flight fest (check your listings).

The Right Stuff – Director-writer Philip Kaufman’s masterpiece (based on Tom Wolfe’s book) is a stirring dramatization of the inspiring achievements by NASA’s original Mercury astronaut team. Considering it was made on a relative shoestring, the film has an amazingly expansive sense of historical scope. What keeps it all grounded, however are the richly drawn, down-to-earth characterizations that also makes it a very intimate story. It certainly didn’t hurt to have that dream cast-including Ed Harris, Sam Shepard, Dennis Quaid, Scott Glenn, Barbara Hershey, Fred Ward, Pamela Reed, Lance Henriksen, Scott Wilson, Veronica Cartwright, and Levon Helm. TCM will be airing this on Monday.

In the Shadow of the Moon – The premise of this 2007 documentary (my full review) is simple enough; surviving members of the Apollo moon flights tell their stories, accompanied by astounding mission footage (some previously unseen). But somehow, director David Sington has managed to take this very familiar piece of 20th century history and infuse it with a sense of joyous rediscovery. In the process, it offers something rarer than hen’s teeth these days-a reason to take pride in being an American.

The Dish-A wonderful little sleeper from Australia that is based on the true story of a relatively little-known but crucial component in facilitating the now-iconic live TV images of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon-a tracking station that was set up in the midst of a sheep farm in Parkes, New South Wales. Quirky characters abound in Rob Sitch’s gentle culture-clash comedy (it’s very reminiscent of Bill Forsythe’s Local Hero). It’s not all played for laughs; the re-enactment of the moon-landing telecast is unexpectedly moving and guaranteed to put a lump in your throat. Sitch and the same team of writers also collaborated on another personal favorite of mine called The Castle.

For All Mankind-A unique documentary culled from thousands of feet of mission footage shot by the Apollo astronauts themselves over a period of years. There isn’t a lot of typical documentary-style exposition; it’s simply a continuous montage of imagery with narration provided strictly by the astronauts themselves. Coupled with Brian Eno’s ambient soundtrack, it has a hypnotic effect that recalls Koyaanisqatsi at times. Criterion recently released a restored DVD version. This is another one that will be airing on TCM.

Apollo 13 -Although it feels a bit overly formal and somber at times, Ron Howard’s straightforward dramatization of the ill-fated mission that injected the phrase “Houston, we have a problem” into the zeitgeist still makes for an absorbing history lesson. It does excel at giving the viewer a sense of the gnawing, claustrophobic tension that the astronauts must have felt while brainstorming a way out of their harrowing predicament. Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton have excellent chemistry together as crewmates Lovell, Swigert and Haise, respectively. Ed Harris was born to play Ground Control’s legendary flight director, Gene Kranz (the physical resemblance is uncanny).

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Obama Locks and Loads

by digby

In today’s radio address he finally laid down some requirements for his signature on a health reform bill:

[A]ny plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, cost and track records of a variety of plans – including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest – and choose what’s best for your family. And that’s why we’ll put an end to the worst practices of the insurance industry: no more yearly caps or lifetime caps; no more denying people care because of pre-existing conditions; and no more dropping people from a plan when they get too sick. No longer will you be without health insurance, even if you lose your job or change jobs.

Now, how those things are defined are a teensy bit vague, but this is a step in the right direction. Up until now he has only expressed preferences and has not said that certain things must be included in a bill he would sign. It’s helpful for keeping Dems on track if nothing else.

But that’s just the sausage making part. The larger points made in the speech are really good and it’s too bad that only about 12 people will hear it.

You’d think this wouldn’t have to be said, but it’s actually an argument that can’t be made often enough:

This is an issue that affects the health and financial well-being of every single American and the stability of our entire economy.

It’s about every family unable to keep up with soaring out of pocket costs and premiums rising three times faster than wages. Every worker afraid of losing health insurance if they lose their job, or change jobs. Everyone who’s worried that they may not be able to get insurance or change insurance if someone in their family has a pre-existing condition.

It’s about a woman in Colorado who told us that when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, her insurance company – the one she’d paid over $700 a month to – refused to pay for her treatment. She had to use up her retirement funds to save her own life.

It’s about a man from Maryland who sent us his story – a middle class college graduate whose health insurance expired when he changed jobs. During that time, he needed emergency surgery, and woke up $10,000 in debt – debt that has left him unable to save, buy a home, or make a career change.

It’s about every business forced to shut their doors, or shed jobs, or ship them overseas. It’s about state governments overwhelmed by Medicaid, federal budgets consumed by Medicare, and deficits piling higher year after year.

This is the status quo. This is the system we have today. This is what the debate in Congress is all about: Whether we’ll keep talking and tinkering and letting this problem fester as more families and businesses go under, and more Americans lose their coverage. Or whether we’ll seize this opportunity – one we might not have again for generations – and finally pass health insurance reform this year, in 2009.

The insurance companies, the politicians who serve them and the wealthy ideologues who want to ensure that the rubes never realize that they have the power to challenge the ruling class, are working overtime to redirect the free floating anxiety people feel over jobs and health care and a whole host of very real problems to a fear of abstractions like future deficits. I think people have to be reminded that the status quo equals the very real and immediate threat of losing everything they have if they get sick.

You’d think they wouldn’t need to be reminded, but years of propaganda and slick marketing have trained people to have a Pavlovian response when they hear the words “deficit” and “government takeover” no matter what the context. The president has always addressed that in his speeches, but it’s getting crisper and more explicit.

And that’s good because the forces for the status quo are working hard to get their story out.

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The Professional

by digby

As a certified boomer I, like all the rest of my behemoth cohort, grew up with Walter Cronkite as the the voice of authority. If he said it, it must be true. Obviously, that wasn’t always the case, but we knew that if it wasn’t true it wasn’t because Cronkite was carrying some hidden agenda or blindly following conventional wisdom for social or careerist purposes. He was a professional journalist who saw his job as being important to the functioning of democracy.

That doesn’t mean that he, like most of the journalists of his generation didn’t serve as conduits for government propaganda. The WWII school were all bathed in trust for governmental integrity for a long, long time. But Cronkite was one of those who tried to keep his eyes open and when it became clear that he’d been lied to, he didn’t retreat into blind allegiance to power, but rather used his own rather significant position to push back. There weren’t a lot of people of his generation who did that.

He really did seem to represent that straight arrow, all American decent good fellow that the pale imitations like Tim Russert and his league of phony sycophants pretend to be. He would,at times, stand up and say what was obvious,as he famously did after going to Vietnam in 1968. But he continued to do so even recently when the entire DC press corps was behaving like a bunch of Jonas Brothers fanboys. (In 1998, he even used his “most trusted man in America” reputation to subtly admonish the DC panty sniffers.)

I always thought it was interesting that the man who everyone saw as the straightest of establishment straights during the turbulent 60s, had morphed 30 years later into someone who the DC establishment would have put on the far left if it had been anyone but him. He wasn’t the one who’d changed.

The truth is that he knew what his job was and understood the job of citizen as well:

For a country’s citizens to be truly free and the government to be held accountable, he said people must have a free press that gathers all the facts.

He said an example of the alternative would be a situation like what he witnessed after WWII, after the Nazi concentration camps were freed. The people who lived in nearby towns cried at the sights of the persecuted Jews and told reporters they had no idea of what was going on behind the walls of the camps.

Many were probably telling the truth, he said, but that did not make them any less responsible.

“They applauded as Hitler closed down the independent newspaper and television stations and only gave them his propaganda,” Cronkite said. “When they did not rise up and say, ‘Give us a free press,’ they became just as guilty.”

Update: Gordon at C&L has some footage of Cronkite you aren’t seeing in all the eulogies. His commentary was more sophisticated than I remembered.

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Speaking Of Headlines

by digby

Chuck Todd couldn’t have put it better:

Bush-era intelligence issues trip up Obama

Here’s why:

Barely six months old, the Obama administration faces a political problem caused by how the CIA handled a secret counter-terrorism program. Though President Obama has insisted he wants to look forward and push an ambitious domestic agenda, a series of intelligence-related issues has the administration and Congress looking back at the George W. Bush years.

They really can’t frame it any other way.

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