Month: November 2009

Time To End This

by digby

A drunk man tries to get away from the tasering and so they shot him dead:

“We’re really concerned about a guy leaving the parking lot of Chuckwagon [Inn] on Evergreen Way — in a white Corvette, he’s extremely intoxicated,” Tribble told the dispatcher.

Several officers from the Everett Police Department soon arrived; among them were Troy Meade, an 11-year-veteran, and Officer Steven Klocker. Meade arrived at about 11:39 PM; Klocker reached the scene a little less than five minutes later.

At the time Officer Meade arrived, Meservey was hedged in by cars on either side of his Corvette, and cut off by a parking lot fence in front of him. Meade pulled up behind Meservey’s car, effectively boxing him in.

Joanne Hancock, who was smoking outside the Chuckwagon Inn when the police arrived, went inside to tell others concerned about Meservey that “They’ve got him!” The news prompted a small group of people to go outside to watch the arrest.

By the time Klocker arrived to provide “backup,” Meade had spent perhaps five minutes trying to convince Meservey to get out of the car. Klocker would later report that Meade’s tone and attitude toward the intoxicated man were “belligerent,” and that he “used language which made him [Klocker] uncomfortable because of the nearby civilians.”

“I don’t know why the f**k I am trying to save your dumb ass,” Meade snarled at Meservey, according to Klocker’s account.

Both Meade and Klocker withdrew their portable electro-shock torture devices (more commonly called Tasers). Meade, who was closest to the driver, shot Meservey with his Taser through the open driver’s side window, inflicting two separate strikes — one five seconds long, the other six seconds’ duration.

“Why in the f**k did you do that?” muttered the drunken man, who — predictably enough — didn’t want to stick around for any more abuse. He reached for his keys and started the car, but he had nowhere to go: It lurched over a concrete curb and ran into an unyielding chain-link fence.

Bear in mind, once again, that Meservey was entirely boxed in. It was possible, albeit with some difficulty, for Officer Meade to reach through the window and seize the car keys, rather than escalating the situation by using potentially deadly force.

But Meade’s pointless escalation didn’t stop with the two Taser strikes.

After Meservey’s brief attempt to drive away, Meade — according to the official police account — took up a position near the left rear wheel of the Corvette, and pulled his gun.

“Time to end this,” bellowed Meade, according to Klocker. “Enough is enough.” From a distance of six to seven feet, Meade fired eight shots into the car, murdering Meservey.

Read the whole thing. It’s quite a story.

As the excerpt points out, they could have reached in and tried to get the keys out of the ignition. But they tasered him twice while he was sitting behind the wheel and his human instinct was to get away. He was, after all drunk. And when he reacted, the officer killed him.

There are still laws against shooting someone dead with a bullet even if shooting them dead with a taser is often considered the victim’s own fault. But it’s clear that using the taser in that circumstance was a factor that led to the the man’s death.

Police officers are routinely resorting to the taser against mentally ill and drunk citizens with catastrophic results. I guess we all have to understand that in America not being in your right mind is a capital crime for which we aren’t necessarily allowed due process. Good to know.

.

Profitably Prescient

by digby

Apparently, Goldman Sachs may have been lying to its investors while it was secretly dumping sub-prime mortgages. Who would have ever thought?

In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

Goldman’s sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation’s premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman’s failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.

They offed their toxic crap because they saw the iceberg coming and made a tidy profit at it. If they’d told people about it, others might have followed and then they wouldn’t have made such an enormous profit. What’s the problem? Sure the whole financial system eventually came crashing down, but Goldman came out smelling like a rose (after the government generously bailed out their insurer.) That’s why they are called winners and we are called losers.

But gosh, I sure hope we don’t try to make the case that the executives who conceived of and executed these plans did anything wrong, even it it broke a few little laws here and there. After all, they are the most talented individuals in the nation and we wouldn’t want to see them take their expertise and their superior productivity elsewhere. Where would be be without them?

.

Two Steps Forward

by digby

This is sad:

Despite America’s decades-long struggle to achieve racial equality and the election last year of the country’s first African-American president, Americans remain hopeful but highly skeptical that race relations will significantly improve in the near future, according to a new Gallup Poll.

In the survey, 56 percent said they believed that race relations would “eventually be worked out,” an almost identical result as the 55 percent who answered that way in 1963, Gallup reported.

“In short, despite all that has happened in the intervening decades, there is scarcely more hope now than there was those many years ago that the nation’s race-relations situation will be solved,” the company said.

Blacks remain much more pessimistic than whites that race relations will eventually improve, the survey found.

Last summer, during the presidential campaign, 50 percent of African-Americans said things ultimately would get better, but that number has fallen to 42 percent now.

The reason for this is simple. Black people, unlike well-meaning but sheltered liberals who have never dealt with racism, understand very well that it is a factor that’s fueling a hell of a lot of this anti-Obama teabag fervor.

They had high hopes that this post-racial society that everyone yammered about was upon them. And now they know that while progress has been made the seachange that Obama’s election represented probably only codified what had already happened. In fact, it may have ended up giving the racists a leg up because they can now claim that if the country can elect a black president it means that racism no longer exists. I’m sure that African Americas see that ploy for exactly what it is.

.

Get A Room

by digby

Chris Wallace gets all gooey about his interview with Republican Party chief, Rush Limbaugh:

I just want to give you my reactions. First of all, I had never met him. Very nice, very sweet, and I have to say, vulnerable guy.

He’s a real honey:

Wallace: What’s the first question you would ask President Obama?

Limbaugh: Why are you doing this? Why? What do you not like about this country that makes you want to inflict this kind of damage on it?

In fairness, Wallace admits that Limbaugh was pretty “tough” on the president when he says that he’s destroying the economy on purpose to advance his radical agenda, and doesn’t agree that Obama hates the troops, but he vouches for Limbaugh’s sincerity and notes that “it’s a free country.”

All couples have some differences in the beginning. I think they can work it out.

.

The People vs The Elites

by digby

On the Stephanopoulos round table this morning they pretty much agreed that the Democrats have huge, huge problems coming up in 2010 because of health care reform. (In suffering or prosperity, it’s always good news for Republicans.) But Ron Brownstein drew the landscape rather adroitly, I thought:

The heart of the choice is whether either George or Al — Reverend Sharpton — is right about what Americans want from government, because what you’re saying (pointing to George Will) is that we have a fundamentally Reaganite moment here in which people are saying government is doing too much, we want it rolled back and what you’re saying (pointing to Al Sharpton) is that people are angry that the government seems to be protecting the rich and not doing anything for me.

And to the extent that Obama and the Democrats can portray health care as something that’s not for Wall Street, but helping to provide security for middle class Americans, they have a better chance of selling it than it might now appear.

I think that’s right, but I think he’s also missing the Republican play on this. They are going to say that the Obama administration protects the rich … and that’s why you can’t trust government, on health care or anything else. It’s not a Reaganite moment, per se. The message is going to be much more populist in nature, railing not just against the liberal elites, but the financial elites as well by virtue of the hands off approach the Democrats have taken to the banks and Wall Street. George Will may even end up hating the Republican approach. But that’s good for the Republicans too. After all, there is no bigger elitist than Pompous George.

The Democrats may be able to counteract this populist backlash with a smart rebound in the economy and a health care bill that doesn’t end up forcing citizens to subsidize obscene health system CEO salaries and corporate profits. But if they don’t, the Republicans can likely successfully make the case that the government and corporate America are in league to rip them off. Unless the Democrats get some piece of this populist moment, they will be left holding the ball for the wealthy and being blamed for the Big Government that protects them.

I get that the Republicans are clowns and that they may not be able to get it together in time for he next election. And they have some serious problems with their crazies right now, which includes some of their leadership. But it’s a big mistake to count on their ineptitude as an electoral strategy. They aren’t entirely stupid and are already forming coherent, resonant message out of all this. They happen to be pretty good at that.

I think both Will and Sharpton accurately read the public mood. But the problem is that only the Republicans are paying any attention to it.

.

The Least Of Harry Reid’s Problems

by digby

Think Progress;

For months now, media critics like Media Matters’ Jamison Foser have pointed out that the press have often demonstrated a double standard when questioning opponents and proponents of the public option, only asking advocates about whether they think it is “better to have nothing than to have a plan that does not include the public option.” On CBS’ Face The Nation today, however, host Bob Schieffer put the question to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who claims that he is “all for health care reform, but is threatening to join a Republican filibuster to stop any reform bill that has a public option.

“But wouldn’t that mean that you might wind up with nothing instead of something?” asked Schieffer. Lieberman responded by saying that supporters of the public option are “stopping us from getting something done” because they’re making the option “the litmus test.” Pressed again by Schieffer, Lieberman admitted that he would prefer “nothing”:

SCHIEFFER: But is what you’re also saying is that nothing is better than a government health insurance, or a health insurance reform that includes a public option? Nothing is better than that?

LIEBERMAN: Well, the truth is that nothing is better than that because I think we ought to follow, if I may, the doctor’s oath in Congress as we deal with health care reform, do no harm.

There you have it. Meanwhile, here’s Dede Myers on Stephanopoulos this morning:

“I don’t believe anyobody believes there’s enough votes in the Senate to pass this. So what’s the fall back plan? An opt-in which brings back Olympia Snow.”

(I actually think this is more about Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman than it is about Olympia Snow, but that’s just a guess.)

Sheldon Whitehouse was quoted in The Hill on Friday saying the same thing as Myers:

The Senate health bill is drifting toward ending up with an “opt-in” provision versus an “opt-out,” one Democratic senator said Friday.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) predicted that healthcare reform in the upper chamber would shift from its current construction, which allows states to opt out of a public option, to a version that forces states to opt into such a plan.

“I think it’s falling into an opt-in, versus opt-out,” Whitehouse said during an appearance on MSNBC. “You have a public option, but it’s up to a state to take an affirmative act to take advantage of it.”
Whitehouse suggested the opt-in as a potential compromise on the public option to win enough Democratic votes in the Senate, where Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) has said he will vote against a bill containing a public option, and several other centrist Democrats have been reluctant to support the current proposal.

What we only suspected last week, when Harry Reid refused to say if he had the votes, is now right out there on the table. This is the blueprint for passing the bill. I guessed (although I obviously don’t know for sure) that it is a strategy that was planned from the beginning — throw the opt-out to the lefty fools, get them all excited and on board, and then pull this switcheroo and tell everyone it’s really the same thing. It will force public option advocates to babble about the details of opt-in vs opt-out, and that’s a difficult argument, which most people won’t instinctively see as substantial. Smart move.

If it weren’t for all the future premature deaths at stake, you’d have to say it would serve them right if Lieberman and/or Nelson end up refusing to play ball on opt-in and screw up their whole scheme. Unfortunately, it looks like this is the path they’ve chosen to get the bill to the conference and it sounds like they have the votes for it, despite Lieberman’s braying. (I bet he’ll hem and haw and then give a lugubrious, prime time speech about how he stayed awake at night tossing and turning and then realized that he needed to give the president a chance.)

Looks like it’s up to the House to just say no to the opt-in. Which means the best case scenario in the final bill will be the opt-out. Some people know how to negotiate better than others.

Update: By the way, the opt-out includes the opt-in. Obviously.

.

White House Treats

by digby

Good choice on both their parts:

The first lady was dressed as a leopard, with a smear of eyeliner, fuzzy ears and a spotted orange-and-black top. The president was dressed as a middle-aged dad, with a black cardigan, checkered shirt and sensible brown slacks.

I would have loved this when I was a kid:

.

Saturday Night At The Movies

A special midnight double feature for Halloween!

By Dennis Hartley

Part 1: Art is a strange hotel

Bill and Andy’s excellent adventure: Chelsea on the Rocks

Since 1883, the Hotel Chelsea in New York City has been considered to be the center of the universe by bohemian culture vultures. It has been the hostelry of choice for the holiest of hipster saints over the years, housing just about anybody who was anybody in the upper echelons of poets, writers, playwrights, artists, actors, directors, musicians and free thinkers over the past century. Some checked in whenever they were in town, and some lived as residents for years on end. Some checked out forever within its walls (most notably Dylan Thomas and Sid Vicious). Of course, not every single resident was a luminary, but chances always were that they were someone who had a story or two to tell. Abel Ferrara, a director who has been known to spin a sordid New York tale or two (China Girl , Bad Lieutenant, King of New York, The Funeral) has attempted to paint a portrait of the hotel with his new documentary, Chelsea on the Rocks-with mixed results.

Blending interviews with current residents with archival footage and docu-drama vignettes, Ferrara tackles this potentially intriguing subject matter in frustrating fits and starts. He never decides whether he wants to offer up a contextualized history, an impressionistic study, or simply a series of “So tell me your favorite Chelsea anecdote” stories (ranging from genuinely funny or harrowing to banal and/or incomprehensible).

The most fascinating parts of the film to me were the relatively brief bits of archival footage. For instance, a fleeting 15 or 20 second clip of Andy Warhol and William Burroughs sharing a little repast in one of the hotel’s rooms vibes much more of the essence of what the Chelsea was “about” in its heyday than (for the sake of argument) a seemingly endless present-day segment with director Milos Forman holding court and swapping memories with Ferrara in the lobby, during which neither manages to say anything of much interest to anyone but each other. There is a lack of judicious editing in the film, and therein lies its fatal flaw. Ferrara has an annoying habit of jabbering on in the background while his interviewees are speaking, to the point where it starts to feel too “inside” and exclusionary to the viewer. This is exacerbated by the fact that no present-day interviewees are identified. While some of them were easy for me to spot (Robert Crumb, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper and the aforementioned Milos Forman) the majority of them were otherwise obscure (perhaps I’d recognize them from their work, if I at least had a name). You get the impression that the director made this film for himself and his circle of peers, and it’s a case of “Well, if you aren’t part of the New York art scene and have to ask who these people are, then you obviously aren’t hip enough for the room.” He lures you into the lobby, but alas, can’t convince you to check in for the night.

Part Deux:

Creepy Lodgers and Seedy Inns: The 10 Worst Places to Check In at the Movies

Where the wild things are.

“People come, people go. Nothing ever happens.” So states a character in the 1932 classic, Grand Hotel. Obviously, he never stayed in any of the caravansaries on tonight’s top ten list, where the bad experiences go a bit beyond iffy room service or a fly in the soup. So on this spooky Halloween evening, I triple dog dare you to check in to any of these flops! Per usual, I present them in no particular ranking order. Um, enjoy your stay.

The film: Barton Fink
Where not to stay: The Hotel Earle

This is one of two films on my list involving blocked writers and eerie hotels (I’ll entertain anyone’s theory on why they seem to go hand-in-hand). The Coen brothers bring their usual sense of gleeful cruelty and ironic detachment into play in this story (set in the early 1940s) of a New York playwright with “integrity” (John Turturro) who wrestles with his conscience after reluctantly accepting an offer from a Hollywood studio to transplant himself to L.A. and grind out screenplays for soulless formula films. Thanks to some odd goings-on at his hotel, that soon becomes the very least of his problems. The film is a very close cousin to The Day of the Locust, although perhaps slightly less grotesque and more darkly funny. John Goodman and Judy Davis are also on hand, and in top form.

The film: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Where not to stay: The Mint Hotel

Okay, so the hotel in this one isn’t so bad. It’s the behavior going on in one of the rooms:

When I came to, the general back-alley ambience of the suite was so rotten, so incredibly foul. How long had I been lying there? All these signs of violence. What had happened? There was evidence in this room of excessive consumption of almost every type of drug known to civilized man since 1544 AD… These were not the hoof prints of your average God-fearing junkie. It was too savage. Too aggressive.

Terry Gilliam’s manic, audience-polarizing adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s classic blend of gonzo journalism and hilariously debauched, anarchic invention may be too savage and aggressive for some, but it’s one of those films I am compelled to revisit on an annual basis. Johnny Depp’s turn as Thompson’s alter-ego, Raoul Duke, is one for the ages. My favorite line: “You’d better pray to God there’s some Thorazine in that bag.”

The film: Key Largo
Where not to stay: The Largo Hotel

Humphrey Bogart gives a smashing performance as a WW2 vet who drops by a Florida hotel to pay his respects to its proprietors- the widow (Lauren Bacall) and father (Lionel Barrymore) of one of the men who had served under his command. Initially just “passing through”, he is waylaid by a convergence of two angry tempests: an approaching hurricane and the appearance of Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson). Rocco is a notorious gangster, who, along with his henchmen, takes the hotel residents hostage while they ride out the storm. It’s interesting to see Bogie play a gangster’s victim for a change (in one of his earlier starring vehicles, The Petrified Forest, and later on in one of his final films, The Desperate Hours, he essentially played the Edward G. Robinson character). The entire cast is spectacular. Along with The Maltese Falcon and The Asphalt Jungle, it’s one of John Huston’s finest contributions to the classic noir cycle.

The film: The Lodger
Where not to stay: Mrs. Bunting’s Lodging House

Mrs. Bunting is a pleasant landlady and all, but we’re not so sure about her latest boarder. There’s a possibility that he is “The Avenger”, a brutal serial killer who is stalking London. Ivor Novello plays the gentleman in question, an intense, brooding fellow with a vaguely menacing demeanor. Is he or isn’t he? No worries, I’m not going to spoil it for you! This suspense thriller has been remade umpteen times over the last eight decades, but IMHO none of them can touch Hitchcock’s 1927 silent for atmosphere and mood. Novello later reprised the role of the mysterious lodger in Maurice Elvey’s 1932 version.

The film: Motel Hell
Where not to stay: Motel Hello

OK, all together now (you know the words!): “It takes all kinds of critters…to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters!” Rory Calhoun gives a sly performance as the cheerfully psychotic Vincent Smith, proprietor of the Motel Hello (oh my, there seems to be an electrical short in the neon “O”. Bzzzt!). Funny thing is, no one ever seems to check in (no one certainly ever checks out). Vincent and his oddball sister (Nancy Parsons) prefer to concentrate on the, ah, family’s “world-famous” smoked meat business. Despite the exploitative horror trappings, Kevin Conner’s black comedy (scripted by brothers Steven-Charles and Robert Jaffe) is a surprisingly smart genre spoof and actually quite well-made. The finale, involving a swashbuckling duel with chainsaws, is pure twisted genius.

The film: Mystery Train
Where not to stay: The Arcade Hotel

Elvis’ ghost shakes, rattles and rolls (literally and figuratively) all throughout Jim Jarmusch’s culture clash dramedy/love letter to the “Memphis Sound”. In his typically droll and deadpan manner, Jarmusch constructs a series of episodic vignettes that loosely intersect at a seedy hotel. You’ve gotta love any movie that features Screamin’ Jay Hawkins as a night clerk. Also be on the lookout for music legends Rufus Thomas and Joe Strummer, and you will hear the mellifluous voice of Tom Waits on the radio (undoubtedly a call back to his DJ character in Jarmusch’s previous film, Down by Law).

The film: The Night of the Iguana
Where not to stay: The Hotel Costa Verde

Director John Huston and co-writer Anthony Veiller adapted this sordid, blackly comic soaper from Tennessee Williams’ twisty stage play about a defrocked, self-loathing minister (Richard Burton) who has expatriated himself to Mexico, where he has become a part-time tour guide and a full-time alcoholic. One day he really goes off the deep end, and shanghais a busload of Baptist college teachers to an isolated, rundown hotel run by an “old friend” (Ava Gardner). Throw in a sexually precocious teenager (Sue Lyon, recycling her Lolita persona) and an itinerant female grifter with a deceptively prim and proper exterior (Deborah Kerr), and stir. Most of the Williams archetypes are present and accounted for: dipsomaniacs, nymphets, repressed lesbians and neurotics of every stripe. The bloodletting is mostly verbal, but mortally wounding all the same. Burton and Kerr are great, as always. I think this is my favorite Ava Gardner performance; she’s earthy, sexy, heartbreaking, intimidating, and endearingly girlish-all at once (“I wanna COKE!”).

The film: The Night Porter
Where not to stay: The Hotel zur Oper

Disturbing, repulsive, yet compelling, Liliana Cavani’s film brilliantly uses a depiction of sadomasochism and sexual politics as an allusion to the horrors of Hitler’s Germany. Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling are broodingly decadent as a former SS officer and a concentration camp survivor, respectively, who become entwined in a twisted, doomed relationship years after WW2. You’d have to search high and low to find two braver performances than Bogarde and Rampling give here. I think the film has been unfairly maligned and misunderstood over the years; frequently getting lumped together with exploitative Nazi kitsch like Ilsa – She Wolf of the SS or Salon Kitty. That’s a real shame.

The film: Psycho
Where not to stay: Bates Motel

Bad, bad Norman. Such a disappointment to his mother. “MOTHERRRR!!!” Poor, poor Janet Leigh. No sooner had she recovered from her bad motel experience in Touch Of Evil than she found herself checking in to the Bates and having a late dinner in a dimly lit office, surrounded by Norman’s creepy taxidermy collection. And this is only the warm up to what director Alfred Hitchcock has in store for her later that evening. This brilliant shocker from the Master has spawned so many imitations, I long ago lost count. Anthony Perkins sets the bar pretty high for all future movie psycho killers. Anyone for a shower?

The film: The Shining
Where not to stay: The Overlook Hotel

Stephen King hates Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of his sprawling novel. Fuck him-that’s his personal problem. I think this is the greatest horror film ever made. Period. Jack Nicholson discovers that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Jack Nicholson discovers that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Jack Nicholson discovers that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Jack Nicholson discovers that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Jack Nicholson discovers…oh. Sorry. Uh, never mind…

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Previous posts with related themes:

The Docu-Horror Picture Show: Top 10 shockumentaries

All come, all ye Pagans: DVDs for All-Hallows Eve

.