Month: December 2009

Domestic Terrorism

by digby

Ezra writes about the AIG Mini Galts having a hissy fit if they don’t get their full fat compensation packages this year (despite promising to pay them back) and Feinberg subsequently reduces them next year as he’s empowered to do under the statues. He links to this article which says:

The AIG executives see Feinberg’s efforts to save a few million in retention payments, given the billions at stake, as a terrible business decision. “I just don’t understand why you would treat people this way,” one AIG executive says. “It’s economic and financial terrorism on the government’s own investment, by the government.”

Ezra writes:

So do you need these guys? Their contention is that you do. The $1.1 trillion that their unit has left on the books could blow up if the guy watching it doesn’t know which wire to cut. Folks I talk to say you probably don’t, but it would be a problem to have them all walk out of the office on the same day (which they’re threatening to do).

Who exactly are the terrorists again? The government which is asking that AIG live up to its promises or the whole AIG team which is threatening to walk out en masse and let the biggest insurance company in the world blow up (again), putting the entire financial system in jeopardy (again)? I think it’s fairly obvious.

Hey, it’s not just me who sees what these guys do in those terms. Here'[s a fellow who put it in pretty stark terms last spring:

“It’s almost like they’ve got — they’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger,” President Obama said on Thursday of the banks he’s chosen to bail out. “You don’t want them to blow up. But you’ve got to kind of talk [to] them, ease that finger off the trigger.”

A bad business decision it may be, but the government isn’t a corporation and it has an obligation to protect the country from terrorists. And terrorists is what they are — whining, selfish, spoiled little terrorists who can’t suck it up even for one or two years until this country can get back on its feet.

This could be Obama’s equivalent of Reagan and the air traffic controllers if he wants it to be. We all thought airplanes were going to fall out of the sky when he did it. And they didn’t. I somehow doubt that these financial whizzes are indispensable either. Most of them are bound to be “Brownies” — after all, the place really did fall part. And those that aren’t can be replaced too. The Masters of the Universe just don’t want people finding out that they aren’t actually worth the ridiculous salaries they are paid. Wouldn’t be prudent …

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Life after people

By Dennis Hartley

Sadly, this is pretty close to how I visualize my retirement.

You know what they say-“Misery loves company”. The dark shadow of apocalyptic doom looming over every other Hollywood release recently would seem to bear this out. “Hey, half my friends and relatives might be out of work, no one can afford health coverage, food bank cupboards are bare and we may be headed into a Hundred Year’s War in Afghanistan…but at least I’m not as bad off as that poor random bastard getting swallowed up by a huge molten crack in the earth on the screen-woo hoo!” And now The Road (based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel) has trudged into theaters, close on the heels of 9 and 2012. This one makes the latter two films look like a carefree romp in the fields.

Unlike 2012, which is the equivalent of disaster movie porno (utilizing just enough perfunctory bits of narrative to justify stringing together all the big production “money shots” involving volcanic eruptions, violent temblors, tidal surges and other assorted earth-shattering ka-booms) The Road is more concerned with the post-coital conversation, as it were. Okay, so the earth moved, a few of us survived…now what? How do we live? How do we eat? How do we get from “A” to “B”? How do we treat each other? Will civilization eventually rise from the ashes and right itself, or is it back to flint arrows and re-discovering the wheel? The nature of the World Changing Event that put them in their predicament is not quite specified, but the latter film’s two protagonists, notated in the credits simply as Man (Viggo Mortensen) and Boy (Kody Smit-McPhee) are wandering about in a cold, ashen environment resembling a nuclear winter. Curiously, we see stands of brush or trees spontaneously combusting on occasion, although there is no obvious scientific explanation offered or inferred as to the cause.

This is not a post-apocalyptic milieu a la Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, with relatively well-scrubbed characters sporting pearly white smiles, fashionable post-punk wardrobes and colorful personalities. The people in this hard scrabble landscape actually look like you would imagine they would without access to a hot shower, a bar of soap, toothpaste or a change of clothes for months (possibly years) at a time. We are talking grime. Serious grime. Let’s not even discuss the teeth (dental hygienists are warned: The Road will give you nightmares). Nearly everybody appears alarmingly malnourished, as well. It’s survival of the fittest, but hardly anyone is fit. Have I mentioned that this is a pretty bleak and depressing scenario? The story (such as it is) is pretty simple, really. The Man and the Boy are slowly, painfully making tracks to the coast, where they hope that the environment is more palatable (one would assume; the reasons are not made quite clear).

Along the way, they scrounge for food and shelter, ever on the lookout for roving bands of (for want of a better description) post-apocalyptic highwaymen, who would just as soon blow you away first and then search your corpse for whatever meager provisions you might have squirreled away in your clothing. The pair’s desperate walkabout becomes progressively more nightmarish; they barely escape the clutches of a motley crew not unlike the mountain men in Deliverance, only to then run into the family from The Hills Have Eyes . The only respite from the relentlessly grim proceedings is provided by sporadic flashbacks in the form of the Man’s uneasy dreams about his long-dead wife (Charlize Theron)-although those memories are not necessarily all pleasant ones, either.

I have not read the book; I will take the word of my friend who I saw it with that it is a pretty faithful adaptation (by Joe Penhall). Perhaps it is too faithful, as the film is a somewhat static and stagy affair. Director John Hillcoat (who helmed the 2005 sleeper The Proposition, which I really liked) does sustain a certain atmosphere and sense of foreboding; helped along by nice work by DP Javier Aguirresarobe (he did the lovely cinematography for Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona). Still, something was missing for me, although it is tough to pinpoint exactly what it was. It certainly was not the fault of the cast. Mortensen and Theron are always interesting to watch, and I thought young Smit-McPhee was very good. Robert Duvall is barely recognizable for most of his brief appearance, and if you blink you’ll miss Guy Pearce’s cameo (everyone’s well-disguised by those stunt teeth). I wasn’t bored, but I wasn’t on the edge of my seat, either. This may not be the road you want to take. Then again, misery loves…oh, never mind.

Previous posts with related themes:

9
2012
Top 10 End of the World Movies

Everybody hurts

By Dennis Hartley

Upstairs, downstairs, creepy stares: Catalina Saavedra in The Maid

Mike Leigh, meet Sebastian Silva. With his second feature, La Nana (aka The Maid) the Chilean writer-director has made a beautifully acted little film that plays like a telenovela, black comedy, intimate character study and social commentary, all rolled into one.

Catalina Saavedra is a revelation as Raquel, a live-in maid who has been employed by an upper-middle class Santiago-based family for over 20 years. More than just a housekeeper, she also has been the nanny to all the children since birth, and is ostensibly considered a family member. However, despite her dedicated years of service with the loving clan, who (with the exception of one of the daughters) treat her with the utmost deference and respect, Raquel vibes a glum countenance; she remains emotionally guarded and cryptically aloof most of the time. When some chronic health issues begin to compromise her efficiency, the mother (Claudia Celedon) decides to hire a second maid to give her a hand. The territorial Raquel is not at all pleased; passive-aggressiveness escalates into open hostility as we watch her transform into a veritable Cruella DeVille.

After manipulatively hastening the ultimately exasperated departures of two new hires in rapid succession, Raquel suddenly finds herself facing a formidable “opponent”. Her name is Lucy (Mariana Loyola). Her weapons are serenity and compassion. No matter what amount of bad vibes or acts of spite Raquel hurtles in her direction, they all appear to incinerate harmlessly in the aura of Lucy’s perennially sunny disposition before they can reach their target. Then, something miraculous begins to unfold-Raquel’s seemingly impenetrable defensive shell cracks, and as it does, the emotional repression of 42 years slowly peels away, resulting in unexpectedly delightful and engaging twists and turns.

Initially, I was reminded of Joseph Losey’s dark class struggle allegory, The Servant; but as the film unpredictably switched gears, I found it closer in spirit to the more recent Happy-Go-Lucky (which I reviewed here.) Saavedra’s wonderful and fearless performance is the heart of the film. In less sensitive hands, the character of Raquel could have easily been an unsympathetic and cartoonish villainess, but Saavedra never allows her humanity or “realness” to slip out of view. As written by Silva, Raquel is a reminder that everybody deserves a chance to be loved and understood. And that’s a good thing.

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The Squeeze

by digby

If you are looking for an example of the liberal populist argument, Elizabeth Warren has written a good one. The crux of it is that the system has been rigged for the last few decades by the Big Money Boyz against the average Joe and the answer to that is not more tax cuts for wealthy people and not more coddling of industries that have been getting away with murder. That’s been tried and it has led to massive wealth inequality and a rapidly shrinking middle class. What’s needed is an active government working to mitigate the excesses of the markets, mediate the complexity of the modern economy and providing recourse and support for average citizens. It’s not revolutionary or even particularly radical and so perhaps it’s insufficient. But it’s better than the technocratic twaddle you hear from the Democratic party, which is as comprehensible as Swahili to most people and has the visceral excitement of banana pudding.

As I’ve noted before, people have been propagandized with conservative dogma for years and the Democratic Party hasn’t even been offering much rhetorical support to those who are feeling this awful squeeze. People are turning to the explanations that have been pounded into them for decades about free markets, taxes and deficits and they are scapegoating culprits far more ancient than that.

If liberals hope to persuade people that their philosophy is preferable to the emerging wingnut rage, they’re going to have to at least try to explain why. So far it’s all been about mechanics and arcane concepts that seem remote and uninspiring. The fact is, as Warren illustrates in her piece, these problems aren’t just there because of the current economic crisis. It’s been building for decades as a result of those conservative dogmas to which people are clinging for the lack of anything more persuasive. It’s highly doubtful that once the crisis has passed that people are going to feel “normal” now that credit’s become far tighter and is likely to stay that way for some time to come. This reform populism is at least trying to address these real problems of real people in ways they can see, understand and feel.

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Brand Protection

by digby

I like salacious gossip as much as the next person. And the Tiger Woods saga is certainly salacious. People always love these stories because it’s fun to pass judgment on others, particularly those who have previously been thought to be above human failings and made everyone feel a bit like losers by comparison. We love winners, but we also love a fall from grace. It’s human nature.

I also don’t blame the tabloids for flogging such stories. That’s their bread and butter. This is all just part of our culture and saying that people shouldn’t be interested in sex scandals is like saying they shouldn’t like chocolate. Good luck with that.

But I just can’t bear it when so-called serious journalism twists itself into pretzel claiming that the story is really “important” because it violated some sacrosanct “value” and therefore it is in the public interest to show pictures of hot babes on a loop and endlessly ruminate publicly about sex. (After which, without a pause, they rend their garments over how all this will affect the children.) The Tiger story is particularly grotesque because they are having such a hard time justifying their overwrought, prurient interest that they are reduced to fulminating about how he is despoiling his brand like anyone in their right mind should give a damn about such a stupid thing.

If they would just admit they are interested in the story because they love gossip and it sells papers and boosts ratings I could respect them. It’s the ridiculous rationalization that it’s somehow in the national interest that’s insufferable.

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More Notes From Bizarroworld

by digby

Orrin Hatch is whining like a five year old that the Democrats always get everything and the Republicans never, ever get anything they want and it’s just not faaaaair:

He is, as always, full of shit. The Republicans had a 60 vote majority on virtually everything during the Bush years, thanks to a bunch of right wing Democrats who could be counted on to back anything that either cut taxes or led to the killing of somebody somewhere. The Democrats in opposition were so hapless they were only filibustering things the Republicans actually wanted them to filibuster most of the time.

This discussion is fascinating and a lot of people, including the NY Times are talking about trying to end the practice. Unfortunately, only the Senate itself can do that and the chances of that happening seem nil to me. (And anyway, I’m for just getting rid of the Senate altogether — it’s an undemocratic throwback to aristocracy and has no place in a modern democracy.)

Still, there’s a lot of worthwhile and interesting stuff being written about it and most of it leads me to agree with the idea that they really need to go back to the “attrition” method of dealing with filibusters rather than use the convenient cloture method. It’s messy, but would probably result in fewer of them.

Greg Koger is an expert on the filibuster and wrote a series of articles a few months ago for The Monkey Cage that are fascinating on this subject. This one, on the history is particularly instructive:

The gist of my explanation is that filibustering became an everyday event because senators began responding to obstruction by attempting cloture rather than attrition, i.e. waiting for filibustering senators to become exhausted. This change in tactics decreased the costs for obstruction, and once it was easy, then more senators were willing to filibuster against a broader range of proposals. This general argument has been made by reporters and Congressional observers over the years (e.g. this column by Norman Orstein and a 2004 NYT article) and in a 1985 “Congress Reconsidered” chapter by Bruce Oppenheimer. However, this thesis has a short half-life, so reporters are constantly re-discovering and re-answering the question; while academics do better, the underlying story is often omitted from our studies, and there is a great deal we do not know about how and why Senate tactics changed.

Just as there is more than one way to filibuster, there is more than one way to defeat a filibuster. I classify them as “closure” (a classic term meaning any rule for bringing about a decisive vote), “reform” (changing the rules, or making an unorthodox use of existing rules), and “attrition.” Attrition means that the coalition seeking to pass a bill remains in the chamber, dragging out the debate until the obstructionists are tired, have run out of opportunities to speak (there’s a limit of two speeches per topic), or leave an opening to start a vote—once a vote starts, it cannot be stopped. Attrition was the typical response to a filibuster before the Senate had a cloture rule and, as Gregory Wawro and Eric Schickler demonstrate, majorities did not NEED a closure process to win before 1917 (although Wawro and Schickler emphasize the role of informal norms as a restraint on pre-1917 obstruction).

The 1939 movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” concludes with a very realistic depiction of 1930s style attrition. Smith gains the recognition of the chair and begins speaking from his desk.

And Smith speaks through the night. His speech doesn’t have to be about the appropriations bill on the floor, so he can read from books, talk about the Constitution, etc. And, periodically, he can note the absence of a quorum and compel the other senators to show up in the Senate and prove there are enough senators around to conduct business.

But after a few hours, Smith is exhausted. And public opinion (“astroturfed” in the movie) has arrived in the form of telegrams, telling Smith to quit.

I’ll let you watch to see how it ends (see also the Mel Gibson version). Note, though, that the senators do NOT file a cloture petition, wait two days, and then vote. That would take too long, and would force them to vote to stop a filibuster. Attrition, even if it means lost sleep or a nap on an army cot, is preferable. Second, a filibuster is a public event: the media perks up at the outbreak of a filibuster (as they had when Huey Long was entertaining them from 1933 to 1935), and the filibuster is Smith’s means of “expanding the game” to allow the public to weigh in on the Senate’s proceedings with editorials and telegrams.

He goes on to explain how this changed, due to some embarrassing failed filibusters, a belief that they “harmed the dignity” of the senate, and hangover from the civil rights filibusters. But mostly it was because the Senators just didn’t want to have to hang around Washington all that much when they had junkets, speechmaking and hunting trips on their agendas. Real filibusters are hell on the fundraising schedule.

So, they turned it into kabuki and in turn that made the public increasingly see the government as do-nothing and hopelessly deadlocked:

The necessary condition for an old-school attrition filibuster was a team of intense warriors ready to defy the rest of the chamber—“a little group of willful men” as Woodrow Wilson put it. These groups were typically identified in press reports by ideology (liberals, conservatives, progressives), region (Southerners, Westerners, etc.), or policy preference (isolationists). Even filibusters conducted on behalf of a party (say, to forestall an investigation into a questionable election) were carried out by a few senators identified by name.

Once cloture became the test of a filibuster, however, the necessary condition for a successful floor filibuster was a coalition big enough to prevent cloture. In the context of a Senate that is polarizing for other reasons (hint: not because of redistricting), this increasingly means uniting one party or the other behind a filibuster. And often the most newsworthy filibusters are those when the minority party met behind closed doors and agreed to filibuster so reporters can use words like “stalemate” and “showdown.”

That sounds right to me.

And when you look at it that way, you can see that it is a tool of obstruction that is always more useful to the party that is organized around the idea of keeping the status quo and protecting the wealthy. And in the House of Lords, regardless of party affiliation, those who care about that can almost always gather 60 votes if they really want to — thus proving, once again, that Orrin Hatch is full of shit.

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So It’s Come To This

by digby

So Obama is going up to the hill tomorrow and Dana Bash on CNN indicated that the Democrats want him to finally weigh in on the public option. Evidently, they all agree that he is the only one who can break the deadlock.

Gosh, what do you suppose he’ll do?

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Baucus And His Women

by digby

The last thing I want to think about before I’ve had my coffee is Max Baucus’s sex life, but I had no choice since the scandal de jour seems to be that he stepped out on his wife with an also married staffer and then nominated that staffer for US Attorney (and later withdrew the nomination.)Now they are both divorced and live together. Whatever. I really don’t care who these people sleep with and they seem to have thought better of the US Attorney business. He’s a cad. She is too. I’m shocked, simply shocked.

But as Marcy Wheeler points out, he has indulged in another indiscretion which actually does bother me and affect all of us — and nobody gives a damn about that:

[W]hile we’re getting all scandalized about Baucus’s bad judgment, let’s talk about the bad judgment that did hurt taxpayers, rather than the one that almost did: the way in which the revolving door on his committee staff made it very easy for the insurance industry to write the Senate’s health care reform bill. I’m much more offended–and directly affected–by the fact that former Wellpoint VP Liz Fowler wrote the Senate health care bill than I am that Baucus nominated, then withdrew, his mistress for a plum job.

No kidding. I don’t care who he screws in his personal life, but the screwing of the American people is seriously offensive. Unfortunately, the second won’t get any notice at all and the first will become a scandal that could lead to political trouble. And I think that says it all about what’s wrong with our political system.

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Beautiful

by digby

The Republican braintrust of Coburn and Vitter thought they were being very, very clever:

Whenever Democrats talk about their proposed federally backed insurance plan, or public option, in the ongoing health-care debate, critics pipe up. If you think this public option is so great, they say, why don’t you demand that all members of Congress go on it, too?

Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown says that’s a fine idea. And this morning, he forced his way onto a Republican amendment saying as much, becoming a co-sponsor of a Republican protest measure that would require Congress to go on the public option if it passes.

Fact is, Republicans pushing the amendment are using it as a form of rotten eggs to hurl at their opponents. But Brown, a key sponsor of the public option legislation, likes those eggs.

[…]

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma didn’t seem to be in a hurry to bring on Brown as a co-sponsor. Coburn had Republican co-sponsors, but Brown’s office says the Ohio Democrat never could get a commitment to be added, despite nine calls from his staff to Coburn’s staff over the last week…

But in an open, televised proceeding, who’s going to oppose a senator’s genuine desire? So fellow senators granted Brown’s wish.

Dodd and Mikulski signed on too. And then this guy took to the floor:

You have to love that Sly Stuart Smiley “we’ve been married for 34 years” line.

I think Al’s finding his feet. He’s got six long years to drive the Republicans nuts.

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A Minority Thing

by digby

Isaac Chotiner at TNR caught this rather startling revelation from a New Yorker review of Going Rogue and another book about Sarah Palin called Sarah From Alaska by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe:

Palin, though notoriously ill-travelled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii. She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. “Hawaii was a little too perfect,” Palin writes. “Perpetual sunshine isn’t necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls.” Perhaps not. But Palin’s father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to Conroy and Walshe. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous, so she came home.”

Chotiner wonder why this hasn’t been discussed at all. I can only assume that it’s because the media has a liberal bias. Oh wait …

But it does explain why she is one of those people who seem to think there’s something hinky about Obama’s citizenship. She’s uncomfortable about all those odd foreign-ish people from Hawaii and Obama, with his mixed race and Hawaiian background quite naturally might be foreign too.

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Everybody Must Get Stoned

by digby

General Barry McCaffrey on Hardball:

The key is, can we create an Afghan security force that in a couple or three years will replace us? That’s the real question on the table.

Let’s just say, it’s a long shot:

As someone who has spent time in Afghanistan, Howie pointed out that the thing that nobody seems to want to admit about Afghanistan is that it’s not actually a country, its a bunch of tribes. And everybody’s stoned — their culture is organized around growing opium and they have the best hash in the world.

This is not a value judgment. It’s just an observation of a strong, thousand year old culture and thinking US soldiers can change it in a “couple, three years” is so absurd you just know they aren’t even remotely serious about doing it.

But hey, maybe that’s what they’ve got the DEA doing over there. After all, it’s been such a roaring success here in the US.

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