T-Day Flicks
by digby
There aren’t a whole lot of great Thanksgiving movies out there. Probably Planes, Trains and Automobiles
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"what digby sez..."
Month: November 2009
Indispensable Losers
by digby
The other night Eliot Spitzer was interviewed by Howard Dean (who was filling in for Maddow.) They had an exchange about the subject that makes me want to hurl heavy objects through the TV every time I hear some self-interested Wall Street jackass or fatuous gasbag babble on about how we can’t afford to piss off all the people who brought the finacial system to the brink because then they might quit. Like that would be a bad thing. A fair number of them would be getting off lucky just to lose their jobs because they belong in jail.
Spitzer said:
There’s an old saying, I think it was De Gaulle. ‘The graveyards are filled with indispensable men.’ The AIG folks who are saying they’re indispensable – test them. I think it’s time to call their bluff. Say to them, ‘you want to leave? Go away. We will replace you at one third of the pay.’ The entire structure of Wall Street pay is out of control.
The idea that in a country of 300 million people the only ones who are qualified to run these big failed and nearly failed banks and insurance companies are the same people who screwed them up is a sad comment on the state of American capitalism. These people are overpaid, overfed, pampered, egomaniacal Divas, not superheroes, and if they are the best we can do then we have much bigger problems.
This HuffPo piece reports on the fetid facts that prove the point:
A new study from Harvard, “Wages of Failure,” will only serve to stoke public anger at Wall Street compensation as it concludes that “since 2000, the top five executives at each firm (Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers) had received staggering amounts of cash bonuses and had sold mountains of stock.” While the CEOs of these companies lost hundreds of millions in stock when the firm went belly up (Lehman Brothers) or was bailed out (Bear Stearns), they still retained massive compensation packages.
As one financial compensation expert put it: “They were rewarded hundreds of millions of dollars, and they got that reward for making catastrophic decisions.”
I’m pretty sure they believe they deserve it just for being so special.
Update: In this post about the Federal Reserve’s intention to squeeze credit because they once again fear inflation (I guess that 10% unemployment just isn’t getting the job done?)the author notes that the people in charge are clueless.
That is not disqualifying, as we know. He quotes this from Yves Smith:
These statement is an indication of intellectual bankruptcy at the Fed, that they have learned nothing from the crisis. But that isn’t surprising. CEOs usually need to be fired after they have presided over a disaster. They are incapable of seeing and remedying their errors. Why should senior bureaucrats be any different?
Actually CEOs are told they are indispensable and are then given big bonuses after they have presided over a big disaster so these senior bureaucrats are holding themselves to exactly the same standards to which they hold all other elites of their caliber. It’s the American way.
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Nelson Reconciles?
by digby
Maybe I’m just drunk on cranberry fumes, but at first blush it actually looks as if Ben Nelson is actually helping keep the public option alive, (although he may not know it):
Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska, has offered up an interesting explanation for his vote to move forward with debate of major health care legislation: he stopped his fellow Democrats from playing parliamentary hardball that he said would have led to a fast-tracked bill and “sidelined” centrists like himself. In an op-ed in The Omaha World-Herald newspaper, Mr. Nelson suggested that had he not agreed to start formal debate on the health care bill, Senate Democratic leaders would have employed a tactic known as reconciliation to pass the legislation with a simple majority of 51 votes. To bring the bill to the floor for formal debate, the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, needed the votes of all 60 members of his caucus, 58 Democrats and two independents, including Mr. Nelson. Republicans voted unanimously against starting debate. “This past Saturday evening, I voted for the Senate to proceed to a full and open debate on health care reform with two goals in mind,” Mr. Nelson wrote in the Omaha paper. “The first goal is that the Senate, now able to follow normal parliamentary procedures, will produce a bipartisan bill cutting the cost of health care for Nebraskans and all Americans. The second goal is that by following normal procedures — allowing much debate, many amendments and even an opportunity to consider a complete alternative to the new bill offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — we have avoided for now bringing up health care legislation by using the tactic known as budget reconciliation.” Mr. Nelson said the road ahead would not be easy. “There are partisans on both sides who will try to undermine efforts toward the first goal,” he wrote. “However, if we don’t let the normal procedures prevail, it is likely reconciliation will prevail.” Mr. Reid has suggested that reconciliation is off the table. But Mr. Nelson said that would not hold firm if the Senate deadlocks over procedural issues. “It will be right back on the table if we allow the normal Senate parliamentary procedures to break down,” he wrote. He also noted that Republicans who have warned against the use of budget reconciliation to pass health care legislation had themselves used the reconciliation process to pass big bills when they were in the majority. “Some who discount the possibility of reconciliation have used it to avoid a filibuster in the past,” Mr. Nelson wrote. “They were against filibusters before they were for them.”
I realize this is all self-serving bipartisan tripe for the hometown crowd, but still, by saying that reconciliation isn’t off the table he’s keeping his most despised piece of the legislation viable. The public option has long been thought to be the piece most likely to be broken off for a reconciliation vote. He’s saying that Reid hasn’t made any real committment to keeping it off the table which means Reid’s still got the threat in hand, which I kind of doubted after last Saturday. (Indeed, I assumed he’d committed to taking it off the table in order to get Nelson on board for the first vote.) It looks like Nelson didn’t extract that promise after all and he’s using the threat himself as an excuse not to filibuster. It ain’t much, but it’s something.
For more on reconciliation, and what it means, Kagro X has a nice explanation of it today at Congress Matters.
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From The “I Did Not Know That” Files
by digby
From the Institute For Southern Studies:
Thanksgiving’s surprising Civil War roots
While its mythology might lead us to imagine America has been celebrating it ever since the Pilgrims joined with their Indian neighbors to throw a feast of gratitude after surviving a brutal winter, Thanksgiving as a national U.S. holiday is actually a more recent tradition — first proclaimed by President Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War.
Lincoln was inspired by a series of editorials and letters written by Sarah Josepha Hale, the New England editor of the hugely influential magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book. Though like earlier presidents he initially resisted Hale’s appeals, Lincoln eventually embraced the idea of creating a national Thanksgiving holiday as a day of unity amid the strife of the war.
In honor of the holiday, here is the text of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamation, issued on Oct. 3, 1863:
The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the everwatchful providence of almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United Stated States to be affixed.
Apparently FDR tried to change it to the second to last Thursday in order to lengthen the Christmas shopping season but it was no go.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
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Welcome To His Nightmare
by digby
I get that the administration may not feel that it can anger the intelligence community or the military by pursuing wrongdoing in the GWOT years under Bush. Ok, they don’t want those headaches and fear that all the patriotic spooks and soldiers will refuse to do their jobs and allow Americans to be killed if there’s even the slightest chance they could be held accountable for illegal acts. Right. Fine.
But I really wish someone could explain this ongoing Kafkaesque nightmare to me:
When the Obama Administration argued in a filing earlier this month that the Supreme Court should not consider an appeal by Don Siegelman, the former Alabama governor wasn’t surprised, even though the Obama filing maintained the Bush-era stance in Siegelman’s controversial corruption case.
“There’s really been no substantial change in the heart of the Department of Justice from the Bush-Rove Department of Justice,” Siegelman tells TPMmuckraker in an interview.
Siegelman, a Democrat, served roughly nine months in prison after his 2006 bribery conviction. He was ordered released pending appeal in March 2008. The case, which has been dogged by allegations of politicization and prosecutorial misconduct — including links to Karl Rove — centers on what the government called a pay-to-play scheme in which Siegelman appointed a large donor to a state regulatory board.
Siegelman has asked the Supreme Court to consider the definition of bribery, arguing that he merely engaged in routine political transactions. But, in the Nov. 13 filing that raised Siegelman’s hackles, Obama’s solicitor general argued that “corrupt intent” had been established in the trial.
While Solicitor General Elena Kagan was appointed by Obama, Siegelman says the DOJ staffers who are giving advice and making decisions on his case are the same people who were at the department under Bush. “The people who have been writing the briefs for the government are the same people who were involved in the prosecution,” he says.
The filing by the DOJ is a sign that the Obama Administration intends to stay the course in the case, despite entreaties to review it, including a letter from 75 former state attorneys general.
What am I missing here? I realize that this is the most egregious case of DOJ political involvement during the Bush years and the one that most closely involves Rove since Alabama was his personal stomping ground. But is the Obama Justice department really not even having disinterested parties reviewing this case? Are they so afraid of being “partisan” that they are actually taking Rove’s side in a monumental miscarriage of justice? If that’s true, it’s absolutely appalling.
This was a partisan prosecution designed purely to destroy a political opponent and install a member of the president’s party into office. It was allegedly engineered from the White House. There is nothing that could be more corrupting to democracy than something like that. Presidents have been asked to resign for similar things. To let that go is a grave, grave mistake.
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White House Punk
by digby
Among all the stories I’ve read today about White House state dinners, this has to be the one I enjoyed the most. Howie Klein:
My secretary buzzes me to say the White House is on the phone. “Is that that damn Daisy doing an imitation of President Clinton,” I asked. “No, no,” she said, “it’s the office of the White Houses social director.” Skeptical, I picked it up. I was listening to an advance CD of the next Chris Isaak album, Speak of the Devil and was totally engrossed in “Don’t Get So Down On Yourself” at that moment. The voice at the other end of the phone told me President Clinton had asked her to call me and request my assistance in arranging for Lou Rawls to come to the White House. Lou Rawls? I have nothing to do with Lou Rawls. But the President said I did so there was no getting around it. “You sure he doesn’t want to meet Joni Mitchell again,” I asked. No, Lou Rawls. I checked the old rosters and asked the old timers but Lou Rawls had never been on the Reprise label or the Warner Bros label. I called the White House back but they weren’t buying it. Apparently, if a president says so, it’s so. “Wait,” detective Klein asks; “what’s this all about?” The president wanted Lou Rawls to perform at a state dinner and he said I was the man who can arrange it. “Hmmm… who’s being honored with a state dinner?” It was a secret. “Give me a hint.” It turned out she let slip that it was Vaclav Havel, the President of the Czech Republic. I guess there would be no way to get Bedich Smetana but as soon as he mentioned Havel, I understood exactly what President Clinton wanted– and delivered. Havel and Lou Reed, a Reprise artist and a friend of mine, had such a powerful bond that Havel actually credited him with being part of the inspiration for the Velvet Revolution that freed Czechoslovakia from Soviet domination.
So a month or so later I was on the reception line cracking up President Clinton with an off-color joke and then sitting in the East Room next to Dick Lugar who was dancing in his seat to a red hot performance of Dirty Blvd.
I thought the dinner last night looked as if it must have been very nice. I was particularly impressed that they served a mostly vegetarian dinner for a vegetarian foreign dignitary and that they used some of the produce from the White House garden. Freepers and teabaggers see that as another example of Obama showing the world that the US is no longer a manly, macho, bloody meat eating empire, thus proving that the terrorists have won. (And then he pardoned that turkey too, the wimp!) I think it shows good manners and sets a fine example.
To hell with the critics.
And along those lines, here’s a neat idea from here in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica for people who like to eat from their own gardens but live in apartments. And if you can’t do that, there’s this, the wonderful Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, where I bought all manner of delicious, sustainable, Turkey Day fixins. Lucky me.
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The Producers
by digby
In case anyone is not clear on what right wing populism really is and how it’s manifested itself over the years, read this great piece by Dave Niewert. Here’s an excerpt which homes in on what right wing populism really is:
A giveaway moment came during Sean Hannity’s April 15 evening “Tea Party” broadcast from Atlanta, when he brought in a live feed from the Rick and Bubba Tea Tantrum in Alabama:
Hannity: And I’m going to tell you one other thing: When did we ever get to a point in America where, we’re nearly at the point where fifty percent of Americans don’t pay anything in taxes! Nothing!
[Crowd boos]
Rick: The numbers out are just astounding that, that, how much that the very top taxpayers actually pay. I feel like these taxpayers are disenfranchised. I want them to have a share of the burden just like they have a share of the vote.
That’s right — it’s the wealthy top percentage of the country that needs a tax break. After all, they are the one Obama’s targeting, right? So at least they’re being upfront about just who “the taxpayers” are whose interests they’re out marching to defend.
You could find similar sentiments on the right only the month before, in mid-March, when it was revealed that executives at the insurance giant AIG – which had just been the recipient of a massive government bailout – continued to pay themselves multimillion-dollar bonuses with bailout money. This spurred a loud round of protest, mostly from liberals and labor groups angry about the abuse of taxpayer dollars.
But Rush Limbaugh defended the bonuses, telling his radio audience: “A lynch mob is expanding: the peasants with their pitchforks surrounding the corporate headquarters of AIG, demanding heads. Death threats are pouring in. All of this being ginned up by the Obama administration.” Glenn Beck had a similar rant on his Fox show: “What I really, really don’t like here is the idea that we are willing to give in to mob rule. And that’s what this is: The mob in Washington getting everybody all – I mean, the only thing they haven’t said is, ‘Bring out the monster!’ It’s mob rule! They are attempting to void legally binding contracts.”
This kind of obeisance to the captains of industry and their utrammeled right to make profits at the expense of everyone else is a phenomenon known as Producerism, which is a hallmark of right-wing populism. It’s accurately defined in Wikipedia as:
a syncretic ideology of populist economic nationalism which holds that the productive forces of society – the ordinary worker, the small businessman, and the entrepreneur, are being held back by parasitical elements at both the top and bottom of the social structure.
… Producerism sees society’s strength being “drained from both ends”–from the top by the machinations of globalized financial capital and the large, politically connected corporations which together conspire to restrict free enterprise, avoid taxes and destroy the fortunes of the honest businessman, and from the bottom by members of the underclass and illegal immigrants whose reliance on welfare and government benefits drains the strength of the nation. Consequently, nativist rhetoric is central to modern Producerism (Kazin, Berlet & Lyons). Illegal immigrants are viewed as a threat to the prosperity of the middle class, a drain on social services, and as a vanguard of globalization that threatens to destroy national identities and sovereignty. Some advocates of producerism go further, taking a similar position on legal immigration.
In the United States, Producerists are distrustful of both major political parties. The Republican Party is rejected for its support of corrupt Big Business and the Democratic Party for its advocacy of the unproductive lazy waiting for their entitlement handouts (Kazin, Stock, Berlet & Lyons).
I think they tend to make their judgments about the upper and lower classes based as much on tribalism as anything else. (Recall that the populist hero Ross Perot was a billionaire who made his fortune from government contracts — but he sounded like a good old boy.) These things never play themselves out exactly the same ways but the fundamental appeals remain the same. The upper levels of society usually find a way to pull the strings and control these people, but the more vulnerable often suffer quite a bit at their hands.
Neiwert’s piece is a very important primer for those of us who are trying to understand where this Palin-Beck teabag phenomenon comes from and how it relates to other right wing philosophies like Randism and militarism. At the end of the day it all translates into ugly know-nothingism that lashes out at everyone but the adherents themselves, who see themselves as the defenders of the Real America.
I get the impulse and I feel the same frustrations. But their solutions are always worse than the problems they seek to solve.
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Bad Bargain
by digby
In case you were wondering if the Pete Peterson Foundation was happy about the Obama administration coming around to the idea that deficit reduction is more important than anything in the whole wide world in all circumstances, here’s their giddy press release:
“We are pleased to read in today’s Wall Street Journal that the Obama Administration is giving serious consideration to establishing a special commission to addressing our nation’s large and growing structural deficits and debt burdens. Employing such an extraordinary approach that engages the American people with the truth and the tough choices and will make a range of social insurance, other spending and tax-related recommendations for action by the Congress is essential.
“Based on recent public opinion polls commissioned by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, an overwhelming majority of the American people support the need for a special commission. Our foundation will release the results of our latest public opinion survey on Monday, November 30.
“America’s debt and deficit crises deepen with each passing day. A properly structured bipartisan commission would engage the American people about the true financial condition of our country and the need for a range of comprehensive reforms. This commission can lay the groundwork for the ‘grand bargain’ President Obama has said he wants to achieve during his presidency.
Do you think that the administration believes that just because Obama sets up a bipartisan commission to gut badly needed social programs that they won’t be blamed?
That Republicans will stand shoulder to shoulder with the president and accept responsibility for cutting spending and taxes in a time of economic insecurity the likes of which people haven’t seen in over half a century? Sure they will.
In case anybody has failed to grasp that this is a political project, they really need to read up on good old Pete and his “bipartisan” pals. (There’s much more here on Peterson and co.)
People got very angry with me for being critical of Obama’s rhetoric about a “Grand Bargain” before the inauguration. But I was chilled to the bone when I heard that people in the new White House were entertaining some notions of Obama doing an “only Nixon could go to China” play with so-called entitlement spending in the midst of a financial crisis. I can’t conceive of anything more politically unwise and less likely to result in any kind of positive policy outcome at this moment.
Democrats have done this before. Clinton left an unprecedented surplus which was designed to pay for social security and it was promptly squandered by Bush on unnecessary tax cuts for Pete Peterson and his rich friends. You will not recall any outcry about that from the deficit scolds because there weren’t any. Indeed, Alan Greenspan told everyone that these surpluses were bad for the economy and needed to be rebated to wealthy people as soon as possible lest calamity reign.
The lesson is clear. Democrats don’t get rewarded for “righteous” bipartisan gestures. They get impeached. And to dream that the American people will somehow reward the president for putting in place mechanisms for lowering the deficit is delusional. People don’t even know what the deficit is, they just think it’s a symbol of bad governance. Putting us on the road to “entitlement” destruction won’t change their opinion if they still see signs of …. bad governance. It has no real meaning to real people. Personally hurting financially and believing that their futures are in jeopardy does have real meaning — and the Republicans will make sure they know who to blame for it.
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Thanksgiving For Mankind
by digby
Since today is the 150th anniversary of the publication of one of the most important books in human history it would be appropriate to listen to some excerpts of Richard Einhorn’s oratorio “The Origin”, on the life and work of Charles Darwin.
A Great Tree (excerpt) from Bill Morrison on Vimeo.
Includes SUNY Oswego Festival and Community choruses, Eastern European vocal ensemble KITKA, Jacqueline Horner, soprano, and Eric Johnson, bass. Supported by grants from the New York State Music Fund, National Endowment for the Arts and Energy. Recorded by WCNY.
For those of you who may not know, Richard Einhorn is none other than my fellow blogger tristero. Seems he dabbles on the side as a world class composer.
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Being A Jerk Isn’t Illegal
by digby
Here’s a heartening little story for the day before Thanksgiving:
The City of Pittsburgh has agreed to pay $50,000 to a man who sued after being issued a disorderly conduct citation for gesturing offensively at a police officer.
The settlement, in which the city also agreed to retrain its officers in the limits of disorderly conduct law, was reached with Dave Hackbart, 35, after research undertaken by his lawyers found that police citations for swearing or offensive gestures were common here.
From March 2005 to July 2009, the research found, Pittsburgh officers cited 198 people for disorderly conduct on the basis of that sort of behavior, even though the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has consistently found such citations unlawful on free speech grounds.
“Hopefully we’ll send a message to other police officers across the state, where this is a consistent problem, that this is not legal,” said Sara J. Rose, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which helped represent Mr. Hackbart in a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city.
Now, it is very, very unwise to insult the police. You are looking for trouble and they may very well be motivated to find some for you. But the insult itself is not illegal in this country — citizens of a free country are not required by law to automatically treat government officials with deference and respect — and the culture that says they are is an authoritarian one.
It’s very telling that these officers have to be repeatedly trained to understand this. They have tough jobs, and are given all sorts of special privileges and powers because of it. But they should not be under the illusion that their powers and privileges extend to requiring that citizens treat them politely.
Evidently, many of them are, however:
Gay attorney Pepin Tuma was pushed, called a “faggot,” and arrested in Washington, D.C., Sunday because he made fun of the police.
Tuma was with two friends, also attorneys, discussing the recent arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. when he said aloud “I hate the police.”
A police officer then charged “40 to 50 feet” toward the men and pushed him against a transformer box, Tuma told the Washington Blade . “As Officer [J.] Culp moved me toward a police cruiser, he told me to just ‘shut up, faggot,'” he said.
One witness, D.C. attorney Luke Platzer, was reportedly asked by an officer to give a statement that Tuma was resisting arrest in a disorderly way. He refused, saying he saw no physical resistance by Tuma.
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It’s also this mentality that leads to so many of these unnecessary tasing incidents — the police feel insulted or get impatient with someone who is arguing with them and shoot them full of electricity to make it stop. They don’t seem to understand that the power of the law does not extend to protecting their sensibilities and ego.
It’s a terribly difficult job, I get that, and often they have nothing but bad choices in volatile situations. But police officers have a lot of discretionary power and having a deep and fundamental understanding of their role in a free society is absolutely necessary in order for them to use it wisely. After the vast expansion of the police state in the last decade, there are an awful lot more prisons and police agencies in this country, many of them with overlapping jurisdictions and incentives (and permission) to get tough. It’s more important than ever to make this stuff very clear.
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