Month: January 2010

Chain Of Fools

by digby

I heard some bozo going on about this on talk radio the other day and I didn’t know where they were getting it:

A phony new email chain letter — one of the antiquated viral sort leftover from the AOL era — is claiming that the case against President Barack Obama’s citizenship has reached the Supreme Court, based on a forged and typo-riddled Associated Press “report.”

[…]

The full absurdity can be read below. (Obviously, sic throughout.)

VERY QUIETLY OBAMA’S CITIZENSHIP CASE REACHES SUPREME COURT

AP- WASHINGTON D.C. – In a move certain to fuel the debate over Obama’s qualifications for the presidency, the group “Americans for Freedom of Information” has Released copies of President Obama’s college transcripts from Occidental College . Released today, the transcript school indicates that Obama, under the name Barry Soetoro, received financial aid as a foreign student from Indonesia as an undergraduate at the The transcript was released by Occidental College in compliance with a court order in a suit brought by the group in the Superior Court of California . The transcript shows that Obama (Soetoro) applied for financial aid and was awarded a fellowship for foreign students from the Fulbright Foundation Scholarship program. To qualify, for the scholarship, a student must claim foreign citizenship.

This document would seem to provide the smoking gun that many of Obama’s detractors have been seeking. Along with the evidence that he was first born in Kenya and there is no record of him ever applying for US citizenship, this is looking pretty grim. The news has created a firestorm at the White House as the release casts increasing doubt about Obama’s legitimacy and qualification to serve as President.. When reached for comment in London , where he has been in meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Obama smiled but refused comment on the issue. Britain ’s Daily Mail has also carried the story in a front-page article titled, “Obama Eligibility Questioned,” leading some to speculate that the story may overshadow economic issues on Obama’s first official visit to the U.K. In a related matter, under growing pressure from several groups,

Justice Antonin Scalia announced that the Supreme Court agreed on Tuesday to hear arguments concerning Obama’s legal eligibility to serve as President in a case brought by Leo Donofrio of New Jersey .. This lawsuit claims Obama’s dual citizenship disqualified him from serving as president. Donofrio’s case is just one of 18 suits brought by citizens demanding proof of Obama’s citizenship or qualification to serve as president.

Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation has released the results of their investigation of Obama’s campaign spending. This study estimates that Obama has spent upwards of $950,000 in campaign funds in the past year with eleven law firms in 12 states for legal resources to block disclosure of any of his personal records. Mr. Kreep indicated that the investigation is still ongoing but that the final report will be provided to the U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder. Mr. Holder has refused to comment on the matter.

Millions of people will believe this BS. It’s really that easy.

And the writer who says that the email is some anachronism is wrong. These email chains are huge on the right and very powerful. These people don’t believe mainstream news (except Fox) but when they get something in their email from someone they know and trust they take it as gospel.

.

Oh God

by digby

Raw Story reports:

Police officers from two Chicago suburbs are being sued after one of them allegedly Tasered a man having a diabetic seizure because the diabetic involuntarily hit the officer while being taken to an ambulance.

Prospero Lassi, a 40-year-old employee of Southwest Airlines, filed the lawsuit (PDF) with a federal court in Chicago last week, following an April 9, 2009, incident in which Lassi was taken to hospital following a violent diabetic seizure — and being Tasered 11 times while unconscious.

That day, Lassi’s roommate found the man on the floor of his apartment having a seizure and foaming at the mouth, according to the statement filed with the court. The roommate called 911 for help, and police officers from the Brookfield and LaGrange Park police departments arrived to help with the situation.

As police officers were helping the paramedics move Lassi to an ambulance, Lassi — still in the midst of the seizure and described as “unresponsive” — involuntarily smacked one of the officers with his arm.

“Reacting to Mr. Lassi’s involuntary movement, one or more of the [officers] pushed Mr. Lassi to the ground, forcibly restraining him there,” the complaint states. “[LaGrange Park Officer Darren] Pedota then withdrew his Taser, an electroshock weapon that uses electrical current to disrupt a person’s control over his muscles, and electrocuted Mr. Lassi eleven times.

I nearly threw up when I read that. Horrible, horrible, horrible. And as usually happens, other officers stood around and did nothing.

.

Saturday Night At The Movies

You put THAT one on your list…seriously? Top 10 films of 2009

By Dennis Hartley

Tonight, I don my Kevlar vest once again, to humbly offer up my picks for the best films that opened in 2009. I should qualify that. These would be my personal picks for the “top ten” movies out of the 50 or so first-run features I have selected to review on Hullabaloo since January. Since I am (literally) a “weekend movie critic”, I obviously don’t have the time (or the bucks, frankly, with admission prices these days) to screen every new release (especially with that pesky, soul-sucking 9 to 5 gig that takes up my weekdays-y’know, the one that pays the rent and junk). I am getting invited to more press screenings these days (and it’s nice to be noticed); but I’m still paying my own way more often than not (I still get the vibe that web-exclusive writers are the second-class citizens of the film critic world-and don’t make me quote Rodney Dangerfield). But hey…enough of my problems.

So without further ado, I submit my list, as usual in alphabetical (not preferential) order:

The Baader Meinhof Complex – Director Uli Edel and writer-producer Bernd Eichinger must have spent some sleepless nights pondering how to market a film in the post 9-11 era that recreates a 10-year reign of terror by Germany’s most notorious (and nihilistic) group of underground radicals. Eichinger (who adapted from Stefan Aust’s book of the same name) has stated that the intention was neither to make “…a didactic film nor a modern morality play about German terrorism,” but rather present events as they actually occurred, and allow the viewer to draw their own conclusion. That neutral approach to the material may or may not be your cup of tea, but the three fearless and incendiary lead performances from Martina Gedeck, Johanna Wokalek and Mortiz Bleibtreu were exciting enough for me to include this absorbing political thriller in my top ten of 2009. Full Review

Inglourious Basterds-Sharing scant more than a title with the erm, correctly spelled 1978 original (which was itself a knockoff of The Dirty Dozen) Quentin Tarantino’s audacious “alternate reality” war adventure is ultimately less concerned with WW2 than it is with giving the audience a Chuck Workman on acid montage spanning the breadth of 20th century cinema. Love him or hate him, there are two aspects of filmmaking that Tarantino has inarguably proven to have a golden ear and an eagle eye for: crackling dialogue and spot-on casting, and he’s in top form here on both those fronts. In the context of purely visual storytelling, this is the director’s most assured, mature and resplendent work to date (beautifully lensed by Robert Richardson). And if the amazing Christoph Waltz does not snag a Best Actor nomination…there is no justice in this world. Full Review

In the Loop– It turns out that the savvy political satire is not dead; it’s just been sort of, er, resting …at least since Wag the Dog back in 1997. Writer-director Armando Iannucci and co-writers Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Ian Martin and Tony Roche (much of the same team responsible for the popular BBC series The Thick Of It ) have mined the headlines and produced a nugget of pure satirical gold. I daresay that it recalls the halcyon days of Terry Southern and Paddy Chayefsky, whose sharp, acid-tongued screenplays once ripped the body politic with savage aplomb. I guarantee you haven’t heard such creatively honed insults and deliciously profane pentameter singsonging from the mouths of thespians since HBO’s Deadwood rode off into the sunset. The great ensemble includes Peter Capaldi, James Gandolfini, Chris Addison and Mimi Kennedy. Full Review

The Limits of Control– In writer-director Jim Jarmusch’s universe, the story doesn’t happen to the people, the people happen upon the story; and depending on how receptive you are to that concept on that particular day, you’re either going to hail it as a work of genius or dismiss it as an interminable snooze fest. As it so happened, I was in a pretty receptive mood the day I saw this “existential hit man” thriller (OK, the term “thriller” is debatable). Any Jarmusch devotee will tell you that when you watch one of his films, there are certain things NOT to expect. Like car chases. Special effects. Flash-cut editing. Snappy dialog. A pulse-pounding soundtrack. Narrative structure. Pacing. Not that there is anything wrong with utilizing any or all of the above to entertain an audience, but you will find none of the above and even less. Still, I found the film oddly compelling. And a naked Paz de la Huerta had absolutely no bearing on that appraisal (are you buying this?). Full Review

The Messenger– Someone finally made a film that gets the harrowing national nightmare of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “right”. Infused with sharp writing, smart and unobtrusive direction and compelling performances, The Messenger is one of those insightful observations of the human condition that quietly sneaks up and really gets inside you, haunting you long after the credits roll. First-time director Owen Moverman and co-writer Alessandro Camon not only bring the war(s) home, but proceed to march up your driveway and deposit in on your doorstep. Ben Foster, Samantha Morton and Woody Harrelson are outstanding. I think this film is to the Iraq/Afghanistan quagmire what The Deer Hunter was to Vietnam. It’s that good…and just as devastating to watch. Full Review

A Serious Man-This is the closest that the Coen Brothers have come to writing something semi-autobiographical (sort of). They do set their film in a Minnesotan Jewish suburban enclave, in the summer of 1967 (when Joel was 13 and Ethan was 10). God help them, however, if their family was anything like the Gopniks (although if they were, it would explain a lot about the world view they expound in their films). Best described as a modern fable (neatly telegraphed by the film’s opening ten minutes-a blackly comic, “old school” Yiddish folk tale) it’s smart, it’s funny, it’s made (gasp!) for adults, and it’s one of the most wildly original films I saw in 2009. And there’s that provocative, enigmatic ending, guaranteed to instigate fistfights amongst cinephiles for years to come. Full Review

Sin Nombre– Every now and then a debut film comes along that has a voice. And when I say “voice”, I mean that the director’s confidence and clarity of cinematic vision has a tangible presence-from the very first frame to the closing credits. Maybe I’m jaded, but it doesn’t happen that much these days. So when I saw Cary Fukunaga’s amazingly assured first feature, Sin Nombre, it made me sit up straight in my seat. This modestly budgeted, visually expansive Malick-esque gem hinges on a simple narrative, but is anything but predictable. It’s an adventure, yet informed by a meditative stillness that makes the occasional frisson incredibly gripping and real. It delves into gang culture, but it isn’t a movie about gangs. It has protagonists who are desperately attempting to immigrate to the United States by any means necessary, yet this isn’t another earnest and preachy message film about the plight of illegal immigrants. It’s a “road movie”, but the future’s uncertain-and the end is always near. One thing I can say for certain-this film’s a winner. Full Review

Star Trek – You can only recycle a movie brand so many times before there is no where left to go but back to the beginning. Gene Roddenberry’s universally beloved creation has become so ingrained into our pop culture and the collective subconscious of Boomers (as well as the, um, next generation) that the producers of the latest installment didn’t have to entitle it with a qualifier. It’s not Star Trek: Origins. It’s just Star Trek. The best Star Trek stories have always been character-driven; specifically concerning the interplay between the principal crew members of the U.S.S. Enterprise. And it is here that director J.J. Abrams and screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman have delivered in spades. The film is not without flaws (a lackluster villain, just “ok” special effects) but the tight direction, sharp dialog and an enthusiastic young cast outweigh any negatives. And in the context of pure popcorn fare, this was about the best time I had at the movies in 2009. Full Review

Where the Wild Things Are-This is one of those films that actually got better and better the more I thought about it for days afterwards (usually a sign that a work of art has made some kind of meaningful impact on the viewer; I can’t tell you how many movies I watch these days where I’ve already forgotten what happened by the time the lights come up). Director Spike Jonze and co-screenwriter Dave Eggars get their Inner Child on in a big way in this bold and wildly imaginative adaptation of the classic children’s book by Maurice Sendak. Blending live action with expressive CGI/Muppet creations, they construct a child’s inner fantasy world that lives and breathes, avoiding the mawkishness that has been the ruin of many children’s films. In actuality, this arguably may not qualify as such in the strictest sense; perhaps no more than Pan’s Labyrinth) can be labeled as a “children’s” film. An insightful, compassionate, and strangely haunting “inner” journey. Full Review

The Yes Men Fix the World– What do you get when you throw Roger & Meand The Sting into a blender? You get this alternately harrowing and hilarious documentary featuring anti-corporate activist/pranksters Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno. This is a more focused follow up to their ballsy but uneven debut, The Yes Men. In that 2003 film, they established a simple yet amazingly effective Trojan Horse formula that garnered the duo invitations to key business conferences and TV appearances as corporate “spokesmen”. Once lulling their marks into a comfort zone, they would then proceed to cause well-deserved public embarrassment for some evil corporate bastards, whilst exposing the dark side of global free trade. (Most amazingly, they have managed not to suffer “brake failure” on a mountain road, if you know what I’m saying). By the end of their latest film, the Yes Men may not actually “fix the world”, but they succeed in giving it hope with their sense of compassion and infectious optimism. And that’s a good thing. Full Review

.

Thurmond’s Heir

by digby

Howie Klein makes a devastating case against Jim DeMint’s perfidious national security interference, culminating in my quote of the day:

As we pointed out last month before the terrorist attack DeMint had been hoping for, another Democratic President once said his biggest regret is not having hung another vicious South Carolina wingnut for treason. That senator was slavery’s most ardent and fanatic defender, the disgraceful John Calhoun, a kind of pre-Civil War political amalgam of Cheney, Strom Thurmond and DeMint. He was an early secessionist who is best known for the doctrine of nullification, something neo-Confederates and reactionaries are still yammering about to this day.

plus ça chang …

.

Dispensable After All

by digby

Following up on this post from this morning, perhaps there’s going to be a little policy to go with their rhetoric. Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg called the AIG Masters of the Universe’s bluff (sort of):

A top executive at American International Group Inc (AIG.N) has resigned because of pay curbs imposed by the Obama Administration’s pay czar, the insurer said on Wednesday.

Anastasia Kelly, AIG’s vice chairman for legal, human resources, corporate affairs and corporate communications, resigned effective Dec. 30 for “good reason” and is eligible for severance pay under the terms of the company’s executive severance plan, the insurer said.

Kelly stands to be paid about $2.8 million in severance, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Kelly’s resignation comes after Kenneth Feinberg, who is charged with monitoring pay levels at companies that received taxpayer funds, imposed pay caps for AIG’s top executives.

Earlier this month, Feinberg set the compensation structures for the 26th through 100th highest-paid employees at four firms, including AIG, limiting most cash salaries to $500,000.

Feinberg also granted less than a dozen special exemptions from the cash salary cap, including several AIG executives, after being urged to do so by Federal Reserve and Treasury officials.

Kelly met frequently with Feinberg to discuss pay issues as he prepared to rule on compensation at companies that received extraordinary taxpayer bailouts.

She was among five executives reported by The Wall Street Journal to have notified the insurer that they were prepared to resign and collect severance benefits if their pay was cut sharply by Feinberg. Chief Executive Robert Benmosche separately also had considered quitting because of the pay constraints, the Journal has reported.

Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University, said no AIG employee was irreplaceable.

“We have been duped into thinking that these AIG employees have some kind of secret code that no other employee could discover if they were hired to replace them and therefore they are able to basically hold the company ransom,” Hurley said.

Well, except nobody was duped. Everyone knew that this was a scam and they all pretended to believe it because they want to protect the absurd pay incentives that benefit all the overpaid elites. Why, if this idea catches on people might wonder if any of these obscenely overcompensated executives are worth the disgusting, gluttonous pay they give each other. And then where will they be?

But it is still a very good thing that Feinberg didn’t capitulate to blackmail. Their threats to blow up the company by walking en masse should have been a national scandal. At least they didn’t get away with that, even if the Democrats failed to properly frame it for political advantage.

It should not go without mention, however, that the people who walked were allowed to keep their million dollar-plus severance packages. After all, they couldn’t be expected to try to scrape by on the meager millions they already had. (And it’s also true that the Fed and Treasury intervened to exempt certain executives from the salary cap.) Still, baby steps …

.

Looking For A Reason

by digby

Lindsay Beyerstein gives us a nice overview of the state of the health care debate going into conference. She highlights some of the areas which are likely to be subject to improvement or further compromise, but pointedly notes Mark Schmitt’s essay on which he cautions, “everything will have to be cleared with the 59th and 60th most liberal senators.” Same as it ever was.

I am wondering, however, whether even the tiniest deviation from the Senate bill will peel off of Ben Nelson. He is under tremendous pressure from the right and I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds a way to back out. The Nebraska sweetheart deal embarrassed him, the Governor abandoned him and the anti-choice zealots are squeezing him just because they can. And Nebraska is the home of Mutual of Omaha (and other big insurance concerns.) He may very well be looking for a way out.

It’s possible that the Democrats will be able to finesse this. Nelson obviously doesn’t want to face his Democratic colleagues and tell them that he’s voting no after they did their big Mission Accomplished victory lap. But I would also guess that the party blithely allowing Lieberman to stab everyone in the back for whatever petty reason he pleases has not gone unnoticed. Nelson has no reason to fear that he would lose anything tangible if he bails. (Lieberman either, for that matter.) And the way the Democrats look at these things, I’m not sure they wouldn’t value keeping a 60th Senator in the “D” column over passing health care reform. Why that magic number would mean anything at all at that point is questionable, but I doubt that would sway them.

Nelson doesn’t personally care if health care reform is passed. But he’s being blamed for passing it by his conservative constituents and the national Republicans. We’ll see if he can hold the line, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him find some technicality at the last minute. And if he bails, there’s good reason to think Lieberman or Lincoln or some of the others might do the same.

As for the Democrats, the one thing we can all rally around in this Rube Goldberg contraption of a bill is the Medicaid expansion. Unfortunately, it’s also at the center of this Nelson problem and is being challenged by big Blue State Governors, Schwarzenneger and Paterson, as well. They say they can’t afford it and Nelson claims he stuck in the sweetheart deal in order to pave the way for all states to demand 100% funding of medicaid. Now, I think we liberals can all agree that would actually be ducky, since some states are barely willing to pitch in as it is, even if people are dying in a gutter, and federalizing medicaid completely would standardize health care for the poor across the country. It would be great if that’s where it led.

Except there’s one tiny little problem. The deficit vultures are nearing a state of shrieking hysteria already about federal spending and Obama’s most enduring principle in all this has been that it be deficit neutral. There is no way that the congress can expand Medicaid entirely on the federal budget’s dime. It’s possible that they can hold off this problem for another day and squeeze it through on this bill. But the funding issue is going to return again and again. It’s one reason why I am so skeptical that this Medicaid expansion is going to hold. Poor people don’t vote much after all.

It’s unlikely that Nelson won’t end up voting for the reforms. But this threat from the right very effectively tilts the playing field to the Senate bill because everyone knows that Nelson must be desperate to find a good reason to back off. They are going to be very nervous about making any changes with which he can possibly find fault. And that, unfortunately, means no changes at all.

.

Rebranding The Enemy

by digby

The Plan emerges:

An already difficult situation for Democrats in Congress is worsening as the 2010 political season opens.

To minimize expected losses in next fall’s election, President Barack Obama’s party is testing a line of attack that resurrects George W. Bush as a boogeyman and castigates Republicans as cozy with Wall Street.

It’s not a bad idea. But it would have been a little bit more believable if the Democrats hadn’t spent the last year scrupulously “looking forward not backward” and coddling Wall Street and the banksters.

George W. Bush is a ghost now and his VP has reanimated himself as a national security monster whose every utterance seems to force the President into ever more hawkish postures. And unlike Bush, Obama failed to use the term “mah predecessor” every five minutes and the Democrats didn’t bother to evoke him as the cause of everything evil in the world, so Bush is now a receding nightmare you’re happy to forget. It always seemed like a bad idea to me not to keep him front and center.

As for the cozy with Wall Street thing, well, it’s worth a try. It might have been better to have worked that angle aggressively right out of the box, tie the recession into Republican deregulation, strongly endorse serious financial market reform and aggressively take on Wall Street’s insane incentives and pay structure, but I suppose it’s better late than never. At this point, unfortunately, I’m just not sure if anyone will believe it.

Still, I like it. And anyway, what else can they do?

Update: This should help, although the Republicans will undoubtedly find a way to blame it on the Democrats:

The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation’s growth.

It was, according to a wide range of data, a lost decade for American workers. The decade began in a moment of triumphalism — there was a current of thought among economists in 1999 that recessions were a thing of the past. By the end, there were two, bookends to a debt-driven expansion that was neither robust nor sustainable.

There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.

Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 — and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.

And the net worth of American households — the value of their houses, retirement funds and other assets minus debts — has also declined when adjusted for inflation, compared with sharp gains in every previous decade since data were initially collected in the 1950s.

“This was the first business cycle where a working-age household ended up worse at the end of it than the beginning, and this in spite of substantial growth in productivity, which should have been able to improve everyone’s well-being,” said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank.

.

Go Sully

by digby

There were so many depressing stories this past year that sometimes you just hated to pick up a paper or tune on the news. But that landing on the Hudson really lifted my spirits when it happened and I’m glad to see Sully Sullenberger being honored all over the place.

Today’s was just great:

After a run of celebrity grand marshals, a real American hero led the Rose Parade on Friday.

Onlookers stood and cheered as Capt. Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger III rode down Colorado Boulevard in a vintage 1928 Pierce Arrow with his wife, Lorrie, and two daughters as part of the annual armada of flower-draped floats, marching bands and prancing horses.

Sullenberger said he did not hesitate when asked to serve as grand marshal because his family has watched the parade when he was growing up in Texas.

“It’s really an American institution, a celebration of American values,” he said after the parade. “I think people see those in me, and I’m glad.”

Hemingway called it grace under pressure and he has it in spades. If more Americans had it too we’d be a lot better off.

.

POS

by digby

He’s out:

Limbaugh was admitted to Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu on Wednesday afternoon after he experienced chest pains while vacationing in Hawaii. According to Limbaugh, doctors could not determine the exact cause of his pain. The right wing talk radio king used the moment for a political shot at President Obama’s massive effort to reform health care, saying he got the best medical care “right here in the United States of America.” “I don’t think there’s one thing wrong with the United States health system,” he said.

I wonder if they did a tox screen. Aside from weight loss, Oxycontin can cause chest pains. We’ll never know, of course, due to the privacy laws that Limbaugh and his pals only believe apply to themselves.

He really is an ass. If there’s a poster boy for everything that’s wrong with the health care system, it’s him. He gets the best care in the world because he’s paid hundreds of millions to spread lies and propaganda to ensure that nobody but people like him have the same privilege.

.

Human Nature

by digby

I guess it’s ok for strangers to look at other people’s naked bodies just as long as they don’t enjoy it.

But you know they will, right? It’s human nature and it’s only a matter of time before we find out that these TSA people are abusing this technology in one way or another. Remember this?

Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of “cuts” that were available on each operator’s computer.

“Hey, check this out,” Faulk says he would be told, “there’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, ‘Wow, this was crazy’,” Faulk told ABC News.

Faulk said he joined in to listen, and talk about it during breaks in Back Hall’s “smoke pit,” but ended up feeling badly about his actions.

“I feel that it was something that the people should not have done. Including me,” he said…

Asked for comment about the ABC News report and accounts of intimate and private phone calls of military officers being passed around, a US intelligence official said “all employees of the US government” should expect that their telephone conversations could be monitored as part of an effort to safeguard security and “information assurance.”

“They certainly didn’t consent to having interceptions of their telephone sex conversations being passed around like some type of fraternity game,” said Jonathon Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University who has testified before Congress on the country’s warrantless surveillance program.

Now picture your average airport workers on a dull day.

It will happen.

.