Month: September 2009

The Purpose Driven Ratfuck

by digby

I haven’t written about the ACORN thing because the fact is that some ACORN workers got punk’d by a couple of preppie GOP ratfuckers and until the smoke cleared, there wasn’t going to be any point in discussing the larger issues at stake. And after ACORN’s credibility had been attacked non-stop for years, people were all too ready to look at that footage and draw the conclusion that the organization was some sort of lowlife criminal enterprise.

It was utterly predictable that CNN would belatedly “report” this morning that there are a lot of questions about the videos and that there are many examples of people who behaved differently when the ratfuckers approached them, but that after so many people have seen the videos, the damage is done. (see Cokie’s Law.)

It’s easy to blame ACORN employees for their bad judgment — the videos are embarrassing — but it’s also important not to throw in the towel and grant the conservative ratfuckers the moral high ground. The reason they did this wasn’t to excuse “lawbreaking” at ACORN. It was to discredit an organization that successfully registers black and Hispanic citizens to vote. We’ve discussed the Republicans’ sophisticted vote suppression program at length on this blog over the years and with their new minority status, I would assume this is more important to their hopes for an electoral resurgence than ever since they have little hope of enticing racial and ethnic minorities to their side, (particularly after their behavior of the past couple of months.)

The problem, as usual, is the Democrats, who are simply incapable of protecting their own political futures. Per Howie:

Huge victory for Glenn Beck! Only 75 Democrats had the guts to stand up for ACORN today when the not-so-hapless Republican minority forced through a motion by GOP crook Darrell Issa (R-CA) to defund the organization. This is so pathetic– and a true vision of the Republican idea of bipartisanship (even worse, if you can imagine than the rancid kind of bipartisanship corrupt Democrats like Kent Conrad, Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln, and Ben Nelson are always pumping for). I want to especially congratulate the Blue Dog coalition, Steny Hoyer, and the freshmen we helped elect who see nothing wrong in selling out our allies in a tough time. Here’s the list of the ones who didn’t sell out. read on

And Obama backed them up today …

(I would compare this to how the Republicans reacted when the Democrats tried to disable one of their important political allies. They gathered their forces, defended their guy and the resolution went absolutely nowhere.)

In this case, I would guess this is only the beginning of a long campaign to subliminally draw Obama into some sort of “welfare queen” series of scandals that will discredit him with a bunch of “where there’s smoke there’s fire, doesn’t pass the smell test” innuendo. If they can get him caught up in legal issues, all the better. This stuff operates on a lizard brain level and it’s important to speak to the lizard brain when refuting it as well.

The Dems could have fought this out on the merits, but they didn’t. Apparently, they are so damaged from years of constantly being called unpatriotic Jesus haters that when they are called something nonsensical like “reverse racists” they just reflexively flinch and start apologizing. It’s absurd. They just do not have any capacity to stare down criticism and cut off scandal mongering no matter how much it hurts them in the long run.

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Quote Of The Day

by digby

President Obama:

“You know, I’m amused. I can’t tell you how many foreign leaders who are heads of center-right governments say to me, I don’t understand why people would call you socialist, in my country, you’d be considered a conservative.”

You don’t say?

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Defense Of Marriage

by digby

I assume it’s only a coincidence that Al Franken sent this to me on the day the National Enquirer (aka The New York Times) splashed a huge, juicy, totally unnewsworthy gossip story about someone’s marriage on its front page. (You can’t be too careful lest your personal life be turned into fodder for Sunday morning snickering and tut-tutting among the morally superior crowd over croissants and cappuccinos.)

But whatever the reason, I like the letter. Maybe you got one too:

Dear Digby,

When our daughter Thomasin was in the second grade, her teacher asked each student to write a story about how their parents met. So, she came home and asked me how I met her Mom.

I explained that I was at what was known as a freshman ‘mixer,’ what she knew as a ‘dance,’ during my first year of college. I saw Franni from across the room. She was organizing some girls to leave and I really liked how she was taking charge, which, in hindsight, is not her best quality… Also, she was just beautiful. So I asked her to dance, and we danced. And then I bought her a ginger ale.

After the dance I escorted her back to her dorm and asked her for a date.

Thomasin wrote the story up with stunning accuracy. She told her class, “…my Dad asked my Mom to dance, bought her a drink, and took her home.” Even at a young age, she had a keen grasp of the facts and a real knack for editing.

That night – the first night of the best thing that has ever happened to me – was exactly 40 years ago today. When I was running for the Senate, I used to tell people, “Franni and I are running for the Senate. If we win, I get to be the Senator.” Well, we won. And what I said proved true – I get to be the Senator.

Another thing that’s true is that I wouldn’t be where I am today without the love and support of the most amazing woman in the world.

And, as we start the next chapter of our journey together, I wanted to send supporters like you a note. A funny story from long ago in hopes that you might take a moment today, remember a funny story about someone you love, smile, and be thankful.

All the best,

Al

P.S. Happy Anniversary Franni, I love you!

He’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it, people like him!

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Stalking tall

By Dennis Hartley

Limited goals: Oswalt and Corrigan in Big Fan

There are sports fans, and there are sports fans. And then there is Paul Aufiero, the protagonist of writer-director Robert D. Siegel’s new film, Big Fan. To say that Paul (Patton Oswalt) is an uber-fan of the N.Y. Giants football team is a vast understatement. The Giants are his raison d’être. Every night before he goes to bed, he doesn’t say his prayers. Instead, he religiously breaks out his dog-eared yellow-ruled tablet and furiously scrawls out a litany of devotion to his team, which he then delivers like a well-rehearsed sermon in his nightly call to a popular local sports talk radio program. Occasionally, he is compelled to offer a point-by-point rebuttal to his arch-nemesis, a Philadelphia Eagles fan who calls into the same show for the express purpose of antagonizing the Giants fans.

You see, Paul (who is sort of a cross between Paddy Chayefsky’s Marty Piletti and John Kennedy Toole’s literary creation, Ignatius J. Reilly) has a lot of spare time to devote to defending the honor of his team against evil radio trolls, because he doesn’t really have too many other distractions in his life. A 30-something bachelor who still lives with his mother, he works an undemanding job as a parking lot attendant and has virtually no social life (if this sounds like it’s shaping up to be one of those depressing character studies about empty lives of quiet desperation, I am here to tell you something…um, you’re right.) Well, Paul does have one friend named Sal (played by indie film stalwart Kevin Corrigan) who shares his undying love for the team (he doesn’t date much, either).

One night, while Paul and Sal are out and about enjoying a bit of the Staten Island nightlife (who knew?) they happen to spot one of their beloved team’s star players (Jonathan Hamm) getting into a limousine at a local gas station. The two pals, walking on air and feeling beside themselves with fan boy giddiness, decide to surreptitiously tail the player and his entourage, to see how the other half lives. Eventually, they find themselves at a pricey strip joint in Manhattan, where Paul eventually screws up enough courage to make a beeline for his hero’s booth, in hopes of a meet and greet. Unfortunately, the evening (and subsequently, Paul’s life) proceeds to go sideways from that point forward.

The film is an odd mish-mash of broad social satire and brooding neo-realism; but for the most part, it works quite well (as long as you aren’t expecting a “feel good’ experience). I suppose it has something to say about the cult of celebrity, especially as it applies to the tendency in our society to turn a blind eye to the blatantly sociopathic public behavior of some multimillionaire athletes. The story takes a few unexpected twists and turns that reminded me a lot of Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ’66, another quirky indie character study that keeps you on your toes by challenging your expectations right through to the end.

Oswalt is quite impressive, giving a fearless performance in this decidedly unflattering role (you are most likely to be familiar with him from his work as a standup and the myriad of quirky supporting characters he’s played on TV shows like Reno 911). Corrigan is excellent, as always (when is somebody going to give this perennial second banana a starring role?). Michael Rapaport (who appears to be the “go-to” actor when a “drunken mook” is required) is suitably obnoxious as Paul’s radio tormentor, known on-air as “Philadelphia Phil”. Gino Cafarelli is good as Paul’s brother, an ambulance-chasing personal injury lawyer, and the unknown Serafina Fiore is a hoot as his wife, an orange-tanned, big-haired, high-maintenance East coast princess straight out of Sopranoworld.

This is the directorial debut for Siegel, who also wrote the screenplay for last year’s critically acclaimed, Oscar-nominated The Wrestler (which I reviewed here). There are enough parallels (dark character study, sports backdrop, blue-collar East Coast milieu) to suggest that there may be a certain theme running through his work. Or perhaps it’s too early to judge, based on two films. It will be interesting to see what he decides to do next.

I really admire your work: The Fan (1996), The Natural, Bend It Like Beckham, The King of Comedy, Nurse Betty, Garbo Talks, All About Eve, Fade to Black (1980), Sunday (1997), The Fan (1981), Fanboys, Trekkies, Free Enterprise, Cinemania, Stardust Memories, Heavy Metal Parking Lot, Rock Star, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Groupies: The Movie, Misery , Secret Window , Play Misty for Me, Talk Radio, Following.

Previous posts with related themes:

The Killing of John Lennon

Mister Lonely

The Hoax/Color me Kubrick

Choke

Part II

Picky, picky, picky: It Might Get Loud

Three buskers in your hedgerow: White, Page and the Edge

“My goal is to trick these guys…” a visibly nervous Jack White confides to the camera with somewhat forced bravado as he heads for an exclusive guitar player’s confab with U2’s The Edge and the legendary Jimmy Page, “…into showing me their tricks.” As our cocky young Mr. White comes to learn (along with the viewer) during the course of Davis Guggenheim’s new rockumentary, It Might Get Loud, “tricks”…erm, are for kids.

I will confess that, despite being a huge Zep fan, I was going to give this one a pass (at least until the DVD) because it offended my sensibilities that anyone would infer that the other two (talented as they may be) deserved to be mentioned in the same breath as Pagey-but a friend shamed me into dragging my lazy ass out to the theater. White (singer-guitarist for the White Stripes and The Raconteurs), The Edge and Page may seem like odd bedfellows; but once I “got” the filmmaker’s intent, it started to sort of make sense.

Each of the film’s three subjects represents a distinct type of species within the genus of Rock Guitarist. First, you have The Primitive (represented by White). The Primitive is raw, instinctually expressive and spontaneous (any piece of wood with strings will do…plugged into something that makes noise). Then, we have The Gearhead (represented by The Edge). The Gearhead is the antithesis of The Primitive; he is controlled and precise, obsessed with hardware and perennially tweaking his settings to match the elusive Perfect Tone he hears in his head. Finally, we have The Virtuoso (Page), who can pick up any stringed instrument, from a mandolin to a Les Paul, and make it sing like a gift from the gods (or as Page dubs it, “the whisper and the thunder”).

Guggenheim cuts back and forth between separately filmed interviews, with each artist discussing his influences and techniques. The individual interviews offer a bit more insight than the summit, which feels staged and awkward at times; and when the three do play a few numbers together, the result is disappointingly pedestrian (it’s not unlike the discordant sonic wash of “Riffs ‘r’ Us” that assaults you when you stroll into a Guitar Center on a busy Saturday afternoon). At least they do a passable rendition of “Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground”, which is one of the few White Stripes songs I actually like.

I suppose your reaction to this documentary will hinge on how much of a fan you are of the musicians who are profiled. For me personally, Page has the most interesting back story and could have easily provided enough fascinating material to fill the movie’s entire 97 minute running time. He’s kind of the Zelig of rock guitarists; over the course of his career he’s proved adept at nearly every style of modern pop music you’d care to mention. As a teenager he played in skiffle, blues, and R&B bands, and by the mid 60s had become one of England’s most in-demand session players, playing with everyone from Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey to The Who and The Kinks (although it isn’t mentioned in the film, one of his most recognizable solos-for-hire is that fuzz-toned psychedelic riffing on Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man”). Of course, once he joined The Yardbirds, the stage was set for the formation of Led Zeppelin, and the rest is History.

I don’t mean to belittle the fact that U2 is one of the most popular bands on the planet, or that Jack White doesn’t have his moments of inspiration; but in the context of the filmmaker’s intent, you do wonder what he hoped to achieve by bringing these three disparate stylists together. As a guitar player, I could compartmentalize what each artist brings to the table, but I was still scratching my head when it was over. Now, if you will excuse me, I think I’ll plug in and brush up on a bit of that “whisper and thunder” myself.

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“Respects The Corporate Form”

by dday

I missed this the other day.

In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law.

During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court’s majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong — and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges “created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons,” she said. “There could be an argument made that that was the court’s error to start with…[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.”

After a confirmation process that revealed little of her legal philosophy, the remark offered an early hint of the direction Justice Sotomayor might want to take the court.

“Progressives who think that corporations already have an unduly large influence on policy in the United States have to feel reassured that this was one of [her] first questions,” said Douglas Kendall, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center.

She may want to take whatever direction she wants now, but she’s outvoted at the moment. Still, it is possible that the latest Supreme Court Justice understands that a corporate entity given human characteristics for purposes of law but out of the reach of legal culpability for so many of its actions represents a lack of fairness and twisted logic.

This whine is priceless:

“I don’t want to draw too much from one comment,” says Todd Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. But it “doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that she respects the corporate form and the type of rights that it should be afforded.”

Right, um, there is no corporate form. There are only corporations who have convinced enough conservative jurists over the years that they can claim personhood to protect their own wealth or strike down regulations but not when their companies break the law and those harmed seek accountability.

As I said, not the biggest or most meaningful shift now, but something to keep in mind as Sotomayor’s career on the bench continues. The biggest area in which the Court has moved to the right in recent years is on the subject of corporate law, and someday we’ll have to do something about that. Maybe Sotomayor can be the beginning of a new trend.

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Hot September In Little Rock

by digby

There’s going to be a lot of activity in Arkansas in the next couple of weeks. Blue America has another ad in the can, ready to go, asking Blanche Lincoln to follow her constituents’ wishes. After discussing the new polling showing that she is under fifty percent and that her constituents strongly approve of the public plan, Amato writes:

The major reason we first targeted Lincoln back in July was that she’s running for reelection in 2010, while many of the ConservaDems on the Senate Finance Committee did not have to face their voters. It’s amazing that she’s under the 50% threshold now. We’ll be running another wave of TV ads coming up, and I wanted to thank all our readers for making this possible. You can still donate to Blue America’s Health Care for Choice Act Blue page so we can keep fighting for the public option

And Change Congress is on the case too.

Today, we are announcing our latest TV ad — calling out the “Blue Dog Democrat” leader, Rep. Mike Ross (Arkansas), for his special-interest contributions from the health industry. Click here to see the ad and help us air it in Arkansas. This ad includes a substantial cameo by Keith Olbermann, and for those of you who know my voice, you’ll recognize a certain narrator. Congressman Ross recently switched his position on the public health insurance option — opposing it, despite the fact that Arkansas voters favor it 55% to 38%. He’s also taken over $900,000 from special interests that oppose reform. We obtained footage of Ross complaining about how much money he needs to raise to get elected — so in the ad, we challenge him to support the bipartisan bill in Congress to replace special-interest-funded elections with citizen-funded elections. We need to raise $15,000 to air our ad 200 times in Arkansas — can you chip in? If we surpass that goal, we’ll air the ad in Washington, DC as well — so all of Congress sees it. This ad is bound to make a splash. Any help getting it on the air is most appreciated. Thanks for helping to Change Congress.

I hope WalMart has air conditioners on sale this month.

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Cover Up For God And Country

by digby

Can someone tell me what kind of arrogance would lead someone to write a letter like this, and more importantly, why anyone would pay attention to it?

We respectfully urge you to exercise your authority to reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations that took place following the attacks of September 11.

Uh, at least three of the people who signed this are implicated in the crime. How absurd it is that they are strutting around like some sort of heroes, when in fact they are publicly urging the president to engage in a cover-up from which they stand to benefit.

And as Emptywheel adroitly points out:

They’re not asking Obama to pardon those CIA officers under investigation, which would be a proper request of the President; they’re asking Obama to spike an investigation the Attorney General has deemed necessary. They are, in short, asking for legal process to be set aside for, ultimately, a political decision. And they’re making that request by appealing to an investigation conducted under a prior Attorney General–Alberto Gonzales–still (as far as we know) under investigation for politicizing DOJ.

The post-September 11 interrogations for which the Attorney General is opening an inquiry were investigated four years ago by career prosecutors.

They’re further making that request by appealing to a US Attorney–Paul McNulty–also involved in that politicization.

Career prosecutors under the supervision of the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia determined that one prosecution (of a CIA contractor) was warranted.

So they pile up political interference on top of political interference. Now, these former DCIs repeat the term “career prosecutor” four times. And it may well be the case that–unlike some other cases under Alberto Gonzales–there was no interference here. But they ignore one of the precipitating causes for the investigation being reopened: The Office of Public Responsibility’s finding that there was serious misconduct involved with the referrals in these cases (the DCIs say there were fewer than 20).

Read on ...

Today, good little soldiers all over the village and the media are popping up all over the place to tell us how incredibly serious these people are and how important it is that they be listened to.

We’ve completely institutionalized elite criminal activity in the country to the point where we not only fail to prosecute it, we don’t even recognize it.

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Rational Economic Decisions

by digby

The LA Times reports that “strategic defaults” comprise a fair number of mortgage defaults these days. These are people with good credit scores who are keeping up with their mortgage payments who nonetheless walk away from their mortgages. The reasons are:

* Strategic defaults are heavily concentrated in negative-equity markets where home values zoomed during the boom and have cratered since 2006. In California last year, the number of strategic defaults was 68 times higher than it was in 2005. In Florida it was 46 times higher. In most other parts of the country, defaults were about nine times higher in 2008 than in 2005.

* People who default strategically and lose their houses appear to understand the consequences of what they’re doing. Piyush Tantia, an Oliver Wyman partner and a principal researcher on the study, said strategic defaulters “are clearly sophisticated,” based on the patterns of selective payments observable in their credit files. For example, they tend not to default on home equity lines of credit until after they bail out on their main mortgages, sometimes to draw down more cash on the equity line.

Strategic defaulters may know that their credit scores will be severely depressed by their mortgage abandonment, Tantia said, but they appear to look at it as a business decision: “Well, I’m $200,000 in the hole on my house, and yes, I’ll damage my credit,” he said of defaulters. But they see it as the most practical solution under the circumstances.

I don’t want to hear one conservative complaining about this. We are told incessantly that people should make such economic decisions. Indeed, much of modern economics has insisted that it’s rational decisions like this that make free markets efficient.

Is it moral to default on their financial obligations unless they have no choice? I’m sure that people wouldn’t have thought so once. But that hasn’t been the ethos of the past few decades, by a long shot. And in a world where there are banks being bailed out by the trillions and CEOs are paid salaries and bonuses in the millions despite their epic failures, it’s hard for me to see why the average “savvy” homeowner should be looked at askance for essentially doing the same thing. It’s the natural result of a culture that averts its eyes when the leaders of its financial sector game the system for their own profit. Everybody becomes a hustler.

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Regional Power

by digby

From Steve Benen:

This was predicted more than ten years ago by conservative Christopher Caldwell. Nobody listened.

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What Moved Him

by digby

A towering neo-conservative intellectual died yesterday — William’s Dad. He lived to a ripe old age having had a long and prosperous life. He was a very important man in American politics, having been among those who provided the intellectual purpose and fundamental principles of modern conservatism.

Here’s something he wrote in 1993, to give you and idea about what animated him and, therefore, the movement which carried forth his ideas:

For me, then, “neo-conservatism” was an experience of moral, intellectual, and spiritual liberation. I no longer had to pretend to believe–what in my heart I could no longer believe–that liberals were wrong because they subscribe to this or that erroneous opinion on this or that topic. No–liberals were wrong, liberals are wrong, because they are liberals. What is wrong with liberalism is liberalism–a metaphysics and a mythology that is woefully blind to human and political reality. Becoming a neo-conservative, then, was the high point of my cold war.

It is a cold war that, for the last twenty-five years, has engaged my attention and energy, and continues to do so. There is no “after the Cold War” for me. So far from having ended, my cold war has increased in intensity, as sector after sector of American life has been ruthlessly corrupted by the liberal ethos. It is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other. It cannot win, but it can make us all losers. We have, I do believe, reached a critical turning point in the history of the American democracy. Now that the other “Cold War” is over, the real cold war has begun. We are far less prepared for this cold war, far more vulnerable to our enemy, than was the case with our victorious war against a global communist threat. We are, I sometimes feel, starting from ground zero, and it is a conflict I shall be passing on to my children and grandchildren. But it is a far more interesting cold war–intellectually interesting, spiritually interesting–than the war we have so recently won, and I rather envy those young enough for the opportunities they will have to participate in it.

I guess it’s serendipitous that could be synthesized so well into the well worn grooves of primitive racism and tribal hatred isn’t it? Let no one say that Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are anti-intellectual. All they have to do is point to Irving Kristol as their mentor.

He had a major impact on American life of the past thirty years. Brad Delong points out this quote to illustrate just one small corner of his influence:

“Among the core social scientists around The Public Interest there were no economists…. This explains my own rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems. The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority – so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government…”

Same as it ever was.

And he’s greatly admired for all those things:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was a longtime admirer and former President George W. Bush, whose administration was heavily populated by neoconservatives, awarded Kristol a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002, praising him as “a wide-ranging thinker whose writings have helped transform America’s political landscape.”

On Friday night, Bush called Kristol “an intellectual pioneer who advanced the conservative movement.”

Yes, he did.

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