Month: April 2010

Bankster BFFs

by digby

Jonathan at ATR unearths a very interesting little tid-bit:

Do you noticed what Alan Greenspan left out here? It’s not just he “knows” most of the people who profited off this crisis. HE’S WORKING FOR THE RICHEST ONE. John Paulson made literally billions of dollars by betting against the housing bubble, and hired Greenspan in January, 2008 before everything completely collapsed. (And not just that: Paulson also took a fraction of his billions and endowed an Alan Greenspan Chair in Economics at NYU.)

In case you didn’t get the connection, that’s the same John Paulson involved in the SEC complaint against Goldman.

Do read the whole post for the context. It’s quite interesting. Could even be earth shattering.

Update: Here’s more on Uncle Alan and his shifting rationales from Chris Hayes.

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“Free Money”

by digby

Professional conservatives forget themselves surprisingly often and their first instincts often reveal that that they are nothing more than nasty little bullies:

What’s that about?

Yesterday, the AP reported that Marlene Griffith, a widow of William Griffith, one of the 29 men killed in last week’s explosion at a coal mine in West Virginia, is suing Massey Energy, the owner of the mine. Griffith filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Raleigh County Circuit Court, arguing that Massey’s handling of work conditions at the mine plus its history of safety violations amounted to aggravated conduct that rises above the level of ordinary negligence. Marlene and here husband were to celebrate their 33rd wedding anniversary weeks after the deadly blast on April 5.

Indeed, as the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has reported, the mine where William Griffith worked had been cited for over 3,000 safety violations. Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, who has mocked safety regulators as being “as silly as global warming,” had gummed up the safety regulations process by filing endless appeals instead of paying fines and fixing safety problems.

Responding to the lawsuit, Nathan Coffey, the Public Affairs Coordinator of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), took to Twitter yesterday to mock Marlene Griffith. Coffey posted a link to the AP story about Marlene Griffith, sarcastically commenting that “Everyone wants free money!”

ALEC is a wingnut welfare operation designed to help craft corporate friendly laws and it’s run was started by Paul Weyrich.

The operative has apologized, but I’m sure that’s just because some damage control consultants understood that this is bad for business at the moment, what with all the deaths and all. But his true feelings are obvious and I think they’re common. This is, after all, what all those Republicans who scream and clap wildly at the words “tort reform” at political rallies want: they want to deny people like Marlene Griffith “free money.”

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Suppression Of Speech

by tristero

Nothing says that the makers of electronic content devices can’t censor content. That doesn’t make it a good idea:

A while back, apparently Apple blocked a whole bunch of apps that were basically soft-core porn — girls in bikinis, that sort of thing — and I didn’t notice, because I’m not in the market for that stuff, and don’t favor that kind of exploitation of women anyway. But when we didn’t stop the censorship of soft-core girlie pictures, who knew the next stop would be the censorship of political satire?

(Interjection from the Department of Arrogant Know-It-Allism:

In the history of freedom of expression there is an …intimate relationship between pornography and free speech, especially political satire.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled discussion.)

While I would agree that this is pretty heinous behavior on Apple’s part, you can, on an iPhone at least, go to any website you like. It is not necessary to patronize Apple’s iStore – the only stuff I’ve paid for are professional music apps – in order to get a lot out of the gadget. I finally got a chance to try the iPad and – someone please correct me if I’m wrong – it appears that you can copy text from their e-books app into a word processor – in other words, do what you want with your books.

Apple’s app store policies, as bad as they undoubtedly are, in no way compare to Amazon’s now-infamous erasure of 1984 – of all books! – from its Kindles without informing people beforehand. That is simply unacceptable. Everything about the Kindle points in a very disturbing direction: the closed, limited architecture, the fact that you license books and don’t own them, copying of passages is restricted to use within the device, and Amazon can remotely manage and program the contents of every Kindle they sell. This means I will never own a Kindle or any reading device that manipulates and controls my access to information so aggressively. (True, you can upload your own pdfs to the Kindle, but I’m not sure that even they can’t be erased by Amazon.)

It’s not enough that Amazon apologized: their entire model business model for providing consumers with information on the Kindle is exceedingly dangerous for the future of free speech. We not only must be able to own our copies of our books, it must be physically impossible for the distributors of these devices, or anyone else except the user, to alter or remove our books (and by extension, all media).

Repeat: Apple’s behavior sucks bigtime. Amazon’s is simply way, way, way beyond the pale and goes into something else entirely.

UPDATE: My smart spouse informs me that Apple is re-evaluating Fiore’s app now that he won a Pulitzer. WTF? Does that mean you need to be famous or officially approved before you can say something political (or erotic) in an app? What if Digby wanted to make an app of this blog? She’s not allowed because she hasn’t won a Pulitzer (yet)?

IN some ways, this makes Apple’s behavior and attitude even worse. It’s a first-rate example of the fallacy of arguing from authority.

Set-Up

by tristero

The whole purpose of this case, the only reason the Christian Legal Society of Hastings College of the Law chose to discriminate proactively against certain people and not others, was to bring a case to the Supreme Court in order to get opinions from Scalia, Roberts, and Alito which would further establish, at the SCOTUS level, the notion that the US is a Christian Nation. They don’t necessarily expect to win – as a layperson, I can’t believe anyone with half a brain would buy their reasoning. They just want to get Supreme Court opinions, even in dissent, on record.

In other words, it’s a setup:

The Christian Legal Society has long had a Hastings chapter that was recognized as a registered student organization, but in 2004, the group affiliated with the national Christian Legal Society and changed its policy to exclude from membership homosexuals and those who advocate or participate in pre-marital sex.

“When we did that, the director of student services said that the statement of faith in our bylaws violated their rules against discrimination on the basis of religion and sexual orientation,” says Isaac Fong, a former chairman of the campus Christian Legal Society.

“In practice, this meant that CLS was rendered invisible on campus,” Fong adds. “CLS was denied the ability to communicate with students or to have a physical presence on campus, and that caused the members of CLS to diminish to the point that there are only a few students left now.”

And that is what’s technically called a fucking lie:

The law school counters that the Christian Legal Society’s membership actually doubled in the year after it was denied official status, that the group held meetings on campus, organized a lecture and held banquets. [Emphasis added]

Indeed, CLS did stipulate in court that the school does have an all-comers policy. So, the core of Monday’s case is whether religious beliefs can trump a neutral school policy that applies equally to everyone.

In other words, this case is about whether the CLS’s peculiar profession of Christian belief – and very peculiar it is – deserves special status in the United States. That is, whether CLS’s kind of Christianity – or any specific kind of religious belief, for that matter – is established as a state religion.

Totenberg’s article implies that the only people who can’t join CLS are those who fall in love with someone of the same gender (or fuck without official government approval). You can be an atheist and still join the CLS. You can be Jewish and join the CLS. Hell, you can even be someone, like Ben Domenech who enjoys being powdered and diapered by hookers – well, at least that’s what I heard, if you know what I mean – and join CLS, provided – WARNING!!! Gruesome Image Alert! – Ben doesn’t masturbate while they’re singing him to sleep.

Despicable as it is, CLS is entitled to do this. And, as a card-carrying member of ACLU, I defend CLS’s right to be despicable. What they are not entitled to is official approval from a school with an all-comers policy. Nor are they entitled to lie in court about how they are victims of discrimination, rather than advocates for it.

This is a set-up and only a set-up. No, I take that back. I’m wrong. It’s not only a set-up, it is also gratuitously cruel. It’s what genuine Christians used to call, somewhat chauvinistically, un-Christian behavior.

Defending Ourselves Against The Little Pleasures

by digby

Dennis Praeger has written one of typically whiny columns about “the left” ruining all his fun with their political correctness. He says that with the exception of sex and drugs, we are robbing Real Americans of the “little pleasures” in life like making fun of people with disabilities and taking away “virtually all kids games that can make a kid feel at all bad or get hurt; wood-burning fireplaces; cars; most jokes or any flirting in the workplace; incandescent light bulbs; cool homes in summer; and more.” Whatever. If he thinks those things are more fun than sex and drugs, well, he’s got some strange fetishes — and he’s welcome to them.

But this one bears looking at more closely:

One of life’s great little pleasures is tobacco. Just watch old war reportage to see the serenity and joy a cigarette brought to a wounded soldier. Though I do not smoke cigarettes, I have been smoking cigars and pipes since I was in college (my father still smokes cigars daily at age 91), and it would be difficult to overstate how much I enjoy both.

No one opposes educating the public about the dangers of cigarette smoking. Cigarette smoking shortens the lives of up to a third of smokers, often in terrible ways, and that is what public health organizations should be saying. But the battle against smoking and tobacco has become a religious crusade for anti-smoking zealots, who are almost invariably on the Left. If the Left hated Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro as much as it hates “Big Tobacco,” the world would be a better place.

But because the Left hates the fact that people smoke (tobacco, not marijuana, which the Left defends) it uses totalitarian (I use that term with no exaggeration) tactics to eliminate it. Just as the Soviets removed Trotsky from old photos, anti-smoking zealots have forced the removal of cigarettes from old photos — from photos of FDR, from the famous Beatles photo — and from movies whenever possible. Torture and murder are ubiquitous in films, but smoking is all but banned — even cigars are now banned from James Bond films.

Smoking has been banned in entire cities, outdoors as well as in. In Pasadena, Calif., one cannot even smoke in a cigar store. That the Left has contempt for Prohibition reveals a lack of self-awareness that is quite remarkable.

I think it’s about what you want to prohibit and why. Why someone would think that limiting someone’s right to smoke is more totalitarian than forcing someone to undergo childbirth against her will, but I guess your mileage may vary.

I didn’t know about the Soviet-style removal of all signs of smoking from photographs and movies, but somebody forgot to check HBO — I just saw a couple of episodes of The Pacific last night and it depicts the soldiers smoking obsessively — and talking about smoking constantly. This seemed to me to be very accurate, since smoking is one of the most addictive drugs known to man. I know this because I used to smoke and quitting was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. And I’ll be living with the greater risk of developing cancer from that addiction for the rest of my life. Maybe Prager thinks that’s a pleasure, but I find it a curse.

I am ambivalent about anti-smoking ordinances that are purely punitive. Telling people they can’t smoke outdoors where they cannot affect anyone else’s right to smoke clean air seems a bit much. But I have to admit that quitting the final time was made much easier by the fact that I wasn’t confronted with smoking everywhere I went. And the relief of being in a confined space like a nightclub or bar without people smoking all around has been huge — those cues were very hard for me to resist. Even last night watching those soldiers smoke like chimneys for a couple of hours made me yearn for a cigarette and I haven’t smoked in many years now. I don’t wish to see history whitewashed, but I do know that there is a powerful psychological effect to seeing people smoke. It’s worth at least acknowledging that it might have an effect on kids, who should not be cavalierly sacrificed on the alter of a libertarian choice that kills you.

That being said, it seems to me that what Praeger really takes pleasure in is destruction and cruelty to others and he resents having those pleasures proscribed. And when he’s just destroying himself, I agree with him. He should be perfectly free to enjoy killing himself with tobacco when he’s by himself or other smokers — or enjoy watching cruel video games, for instance. And he can, as far as I know, still use incandescent light bulbs, drive gas guzzlers and air-condition his house, although he may have to suffer the disapprobation of people who think he’s being a selfish pig (or pay a premium to buy these things.)

That’s life. There’s no right to social acceptance for being a jerk and the market will always make the selfish jerk pay more for things that are scarce or only he wants. And people have always had the right to ask that society be just a little bit less sensitive to those who take pleasure in humiliating others rather than telling the humiliated that they need to “toughen up” and learn to take it (even if they haven’t always used it.)

Thankfully we have, as a society, drawn the line at forcing people to endure harassment by predators in the workplace or making people breathe noxious fumes just because Dennis Praeger takes pleasure in these things. And we try to protect kids from all kinds of things because they didn’t ask to be born of the pricks who spawned them. They deserve a little extra help since they can’t do it for themselves.

You see, “the Left” isn’t trying to take away “the Right’s” sadistic and selfish pleasure because they resent them having any enjoyment in life. There’s no moral case involved except to the extent it harms children, who don’t have agency. And we secularists (religious believers and non-believers alike) are known for our indifference to social dictates designed to help anyone get to heaven. The fact is that nobody cares what these people do to themselves. “The Left” is trying to change society’s acceptance of Praeger’s “pleasures” that hurt other people or the planet we are all forced to share. It’s an act of self-defense.

h/t to bb

Virtual Summit

by digby

Campaign For America’s Future is holding a Vitual Summit to try to beat back the self-serving propaganda of the Peterson Scold Summit that’s coming up. Here’s the notice:

If any of you come across a relevant post or article that you think could contribute to this subject please pass it along to me at digby at writeme dot com and I’ll either write about it or send it along to someone who might be able to use it.

It’s important that we not let up on this. The deficit is going to be the shadow issue of the election and the president’s deficit commission will submit its first report shortly after the votes are in. The commission is stacked with “entitlement” cutters, (only a few of them tax raisers well).

It’s entirely possible that Obama is planning to go into 2012 with a “Barack Goes To China” campaign to cut the safety net and prove once and for all that Democrats are “responsible” with the taxpayers money. You’ll recall that when Clinton did exactly that in order to change the way people think of the Democratic party, the Republicans impeached him, stole the election and then immediately gave the surplus to their rich friends. It didn’t change a thing — the teabaggers are screeching like harpies about socialism and communism as if that never happened. (Fool me twice …)

It’s important that the base makes it known in no uncertain terms that they will not be railroaded on this so that the Democrats can turn themselves into the party of Susan Collins and lose elections anyway. There’s a fight that needs to be had, head on, over what kind of government we want. It’s long past time the Democrats engaged it head on.

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Sociopathic Paychecks

by digby

Howie wrote a great post about CEO pay yesterday, in anticipation of a piece about the new wave of “run government like a business” candidates from the right (despite what should be populist revulsion at the mere mention of such a thing) represented by Galtian saviors such as Romney, Fiorina and Whitman. Noting the oddness of any market that couldn’t find enough talented people to undercut the salaries of the people who demand hundred million dollar salaries (you couldn’t find anyone in the whole world who wouldn’t do it for say 50 million?) his post features a very intriguing theory from Toys, War, and Faith: Democracy In Jeopardy by Maj. William C. Gladish. He posits that these jobs are actually much more difficult to fill than you might think, but not because they require such superior talent and dedication, but because they require that and something else which is much more rare:

“There’s another and more demanding requirement to meet. They must be willing to operate in a runaway economic and financial system that demands the exploitation of humanity and the environment for short-term gain. This is a disturbing contradiction to their children’s interests and their own intelligence, education, cultural appreciation, and religious beliefs.

It’s this second requirement that drastically reduces the number of quality candidates [for corporations] to pick from. Most people in this group are not willing to forsake God, family, and humanity to further corporate interest in a predatory financial system. For the small percentage of people left, the system continues to increase salaries and benefit packages to entice the most qualified and ruthless to detach themselves from humanity and become corporate executives and their hired guns.

There’s lots more at the link on what Gladdis calls “sociopathic paychecks.” And sociopath is an important word, because it’s really what’s required to fully understand what makes these people able to operate without conscience while believing themselves to be “doing God’s work.“

Howie offered this up as a useful primer:

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Blue Dog Howl

by digby

It looks like Marcy Winograd lost the floor fight against Blue Dog Jane Harman for the California party’s endorsement in a typically chaotic process — and strongarmed by the crusty old curmudgeon John Burton. But she put up a good fight.

Dday liveblogged the whole thing and concluded with this:

…The final count was 599 for Harman, 417 for Winograd. This means that Harman will receive the state party endorsement. Party Chair John Burton says “I do not believe the volunteers were bribed, couldn’t see, whatever.” He adds, “Next time organize in your own caucus and win it… how many people think Siskiyou County should vote on who should be the Congressman in Los Angeles?” A bit gratuitous.

In a statement, Jane Harman said, “My opponent’s attempt to thwart the will of Democrats from the 36th CD was correctly viewed as a corruption of the process. I am pleased that delegates from throughout the State have affirmed what the delegates who have worked with me and who know me best have decided.”

…I just talked to Marcy Winograd about this. She said that she was pleased to have substantial grassroots support for her challenge, though she came up short. In the future, she would prefer to see a less chaotic process – there was some concern that entire regions of delegates were not counted at all. As for John Burton’s comments, chiding Winograd from the dais, she called them “inappropriate.”

This is really all interparty kabuki and doesn’t mean much. The fact that Winograd even got a floor vote is a testament to Harman’s weakness. She is after all, a very powerful incumbent and nationally known figure in the party. They always hang together against grassroots threats.

What matters is the primary vote. LA Progressive puts it this way:

Harman vs. Winograd is the quintessential battle of opposites; conservative vs. progressive, corporate donations vs. grassroots donations, power broker vs. people power, special interests vs. people’s interests, war vs. infrastructure, war vs. jobs, war vs. education, war vs. housing, war vs. health, war vs. the environment, and on… This contest means the difference between reelecting an entrenched incumbent politician who supports militarism and corporatocracy or electing an inspired organizer and educator who’s dedicated her life to the local community and the community at large. Lila Garrett, radio host, progressive icon and convention delegate summed it up for me this way:

“Winograd vs. Harman is not just another ho-hum congressional election. It’s a battle to define the Democratic Party. If it is represented by a permanent war economy fed by a policy of permanent war, secret government, authoritarian rule – that’s Harman. It it’s a party whose first priorities are peace, universal education, healthcare, employment and dignity – that’s Winograd. They [Harman and Winograd] are polar opposites. Let the Democratic party be defined by this election. Then let those of us who care what our party stands for decide whether to remain Democrats or move on. It has come to that.”

I’m a believer in staying and fighting rather than “moving on” to quixotic, third party politics, but I agree with the rest. If Winograd wins this race it will send shockwaves through the Democratic establishment. Harman is considered untouchable, but as is demonstrated by the vote at the convention, she’s on the run.

But Harman is one of the wealthiest members of congress. She can flood the zone with her own cash if need be. Winograd, on the other hand, is dependent on contributions from like minded individuals who would like to have some representation in congress that answers to the people rather than corporations, defense contractors and lobbyists.

You can donate a couple of bucks here to support her effort.

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Supreme Pick

by digby

Here’s an interesting post at SCOTUSBLOG on the Supreme Court choice, dissecting each issue area and how a new justice could tip the court’s decisions one way or the other with Stevens’ departure. Since there are two fairly clear ideological camps, with Stevens firmly in liberal side, the effect is fairly subtle although it obviously depends upon the relationships forged among the judges, temperament, changing ideology. Still there are some areas worth looking at, and some are fairly unexpected.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

In the loose palace of exile

By Dennis Hartley

When You’re Strange: Just another band from L.A.

I can still remember the first time I heard “Riders on the Storm” by the Doors. I was all of 14. It haunted me then and haunts me now. Even though it wasn’t a movie, it was my introduction to film noir. Distant thunder, the cascading shimmer of a Fender Rhodes and dangerous rhythms. “There’s a killer on the road. His brain is squirming like a toad.” Fuck oh dear, this definitely wasn’t the Archies. I’ll tell you this-it sure as hell didn’t sound like anything else on the radio at the time (especially considering that it squeaked in at #99 on Billboard’s Top 100 for 1971, sandwiched in between the Fifth Dimension’s “One Less Bell to Answer” and Perry Como’s “It’s Impossible”). Jim Morrison’s vocals really got under my skin. Years later, a friend of mine explained why. If you listen carefully, there are three vocal tracks. Morrison is singing, chanting and whispering the lyrics. We smoked a bowl, cranked it up and concluded that yes, it was a pretty neat trick.

By the time “Riders on the Storm” hit the charts, the Doors had ostensibly begun to dissolve as a band; Morrison had left the U.S. to embark on an open-ended sabbatical in France. When he was found dead in his Parisian apartment in July of 1971 at age 27, it was no longer a matter of academic speculation-the Doors, Mk 1 were History. But what a history-in the short 4 ½ years that keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robbie Krieger, drummer John Densmore and lead vocalist Jim Morrison enjoyed an artistic collaboration, they produced six timelessly resonant studio albums and the classic Absolutely Live (which still holds up as one of the best live albums ever by a rock band). They are also one of the first bands to successfully bridge deeply avant-garde sensibilities with popular commercial appeal. It was Blake and Rimbaud… that you could dance to.

There have been a fair number of books about the band over the years; a few in the scholarly vein but chiefly of the “tell-all” variety. Like many Doors fans, my introduction to the Jim Morrison legend came from reading No One Here Gets Out Alive many moons ago. The book was co-authored by journalist Jerry Hopkins and Doors insider Danny Sugarman. In retrospect, it may not be the most objective or insightful overview of what the band was really about, but it is a wildly entertaining read. That was the same takeaway I got from Oliver Stone’s way over-the-top 1991 biopic. Interestingly, I found his film to be nowhere nearly as “cinematic” as the Doors music has always felt to me (Francis Ford Coppola nailed it-it’s all there in the first 10 minutes of Apocalypse Now).

Surprisingly, it has taken until 2010, 45 years (!) after UCLA film students Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek first starting kicking around the idea of forming a band, for a proper full-length documentary feature about The Doors to appear, Tom DiCillo’s When You’re Strange. You’ll notice I said, “about The Doors”. Stone’s film ultimately lost its way as a true portrait of the band, I believe, because it was too myopically fixated on the Jim Morrison legend; Morrison the Lizard King, the Dionysian rock god, the drunken poet, the shaman. Yes, he was all of that (perhaps more showman than shaman), but he was only 25% of the equation that made The Doors…well, The Doors. That’s what I like about DiCillo’s film; he doesn’t gloss over the contributions of the other three musicians.

In fact, one of the things you learn in the film is that Morrison himself always insisted that all songwriting credits go to “The Doors” as an entity, regardless of which band member may have had the dominant hand in the composition of any particular song (when you consider that Morrison couldn’t read a note, that’s a pragmatic stance for him to take). The band’s signature tune, the #1 hit “Light My Fire” was actually composed by Robbie Krieger-and was allegedly the first song he ever wrote (talk about beginner’s luck). He’s a damn fine guitar player too (he was trained in flamenco, and had only been playing electric for 6 months at the band’s inception). Manzarek and Densmore were no slouches either; they had a classical and jazz background, respectively. When you piece these snippets together along with Morrison’s interests in poetry, literature, film and improvisational theatre (then sprinkle in a few tabs of acid) you finally begin to get a picture of why this band had such a unique vibe. They’ve been copied, but never equaled.

The film looks to have been a labor of love by the director. Johnny Depp provides the narration, and DiCillo has assembled some great footage; it’s all well-chosen, sensibly sequenced and beautifully edited. Although there are a fair amount of clips and stories that will qualify as old hat to Doors aficionados (the “Light My Fire” performance on the Sullivan Show, the infamous Miami concert “riot”, etc.), there is a treasure trove of rare footage. One fascinating (but all too brief) clip shows the band in the studio constructing the song “Wild Child” during the sessions for The Soft Parade. I would have been happy to watch an entire reel of that; I’m a real sucker for films like Sympathy for the Devil, Pink Floyd – Live at Pompeii and Let It Be which offer a glimpse at the actual creative process. The real revelation is the interwoven excerpts from Morrison’s experimental 1969 film HWY: An American Pastoral, which I’ve never had an opportunity to screen. Although it is basically a bearded Morrison driving around the desert (wearing his trademark leather pants), it’s mesmerizing, surreal footage. DiCillo must have had access to a pristine master print, because it looks like it was shot last week. It wasn’t until the credits rolled that I realized this wasn’t one of those dreaded recreations, utilizing a lookalike. As a matter of fact, Morrison has never appeared so “alive” on film. It’s eerie.

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